» Slice of Singing: Vocal Blog

For the most part, I have trouble respecting ‘reality’ shows like NBC’s The Voice. After last night’s show though, I’m psyched because I saw a outcome for a really fine singer and performer. Jermaine Paul. Jermaine Paul There’s a little Blues Club on 72nd Street here in NYC where I happened in one night and was totally blown away by a singer. It takes a lot fo...

Is your voice locked up inside of you? Do you know there’s a great voice inside of you but you just don’t know how to let it out? Don’t know how to Set Yourself Free? I was in exactly the same place many years ago. That all started changing when I finally realized that traditional vocal training wasn’t helping to Set Me Free. Through a great deal of study and research and ...

Should music be created only for it’s beauty? Or does music have other ‘responsibilities’? To entertain, to stretching the listeners’ imagination, to challenge your hearing, to move you emotionally, to open your mind to new possibilities, to propose a new idea of beauty? Eckart Tolle writes in his amazing book, The Power of Now, “Because we live in a mind-dominat...

Last week a young family member pass away of a degenerative brain disease. For a long while – years in fact – no one knew he was ill. As the disease progressed, eating away at his brain, there were only 2 sentences that he was able to utter. These 2 sentences were about being asked to join his favorite band on stage to sing a few songs. As the rest of his brain became violent for no r...

Brava! Adele!! On Adele’s website, she says, “Oh goodness!! I’m absoloutly flabbergasted! In between laughing my head off, welling up, needing to sit down and trying to maintain an open fire (which is pretty much impossible huh!?) I keep having flashbacks to Sunday night. The most incredible night of my life. Thank you to you all, I am so overwhelmed, it’s the strangest feeling. I ...

Combat Stage Fright No one is immune from stage fright. Even the most seasoned of performers experience some stage fright. Stage fright is not a rational decision, it is an irrational emotion. The good news is you can make a choice about what you will listen to in your head; what you concentrate on; what you respond to; and what you energize. Stage fright is an adrenaline rush – all this frenet...

The music world is saddened by the untimely death of Whitney Houston, named ‘The Voice’ for her powerful and gorgeous singing. Over the last several years though, the voice was in great decline probably due to drug and alcohol abuse. Whitney’s voice was not only her identity but also her fame and fortune. Those of you reading this are singers in one way or another and you know yo...

They call it eating crow. That’s what I’m doing right now. The trailers I had seen for SMASH!, created by Steven Spielberg, had music that sounded over-produced and cliche. Broadway is fantasy, but the singing and acting are REAL. I objected right here on this blog to that pop sound with all the auto-tune and other pop music electronics. My bad. The show itself was amazing! I’m a...

Stephen Sondheim’s Follies is running on Broadway with a cast of fabulous performers. The ‘star’ of the show is supposed to be Bernadette Peters. That’s the way the producers planned it anyway. This show is a lesson in maintaining your vocal technique. The story is about a 30-year reunion of Follies performers when the old theater is about to be torn down and turned into a...

It’s always exciting to see theater, especially musical theater brought to the general public. Let’s face it, theater tickets are exorbitantly expensive. The average bear isn’t going to get to New York or London or any other metropolis with mega-watt theater performances. Angelica Houston Now Steven Spielberg is bringing us a TV series about the making of a Smash Hit Musical &#...