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What I am thankful for this year

12/22/2017

I think perhaps one of the hardest things to do for many is to tell others what you are thankful for. I'm not sure why this; is it pride, vanity, fear of being vulnerable, or just lack of practice? But I think most of us would agree we spend too much time complaining about what we don't have and not appreciating all that is around us. So I wanted to say what I am so thankful for in 2017.

1) An incredible family. Truthfully, I don't deserve the wife and children I have. I mess up SO MUCH and yet my kids and wife still love me. That's a Christmas miracle!

2) A successful voice teaching business. I'm especially thankful this year because after Hurricane Harvey, I had serious concerns if I would have ANY students left. League City was hit hard, and voice lessons are a luxury. You don't need them to survive. I'm eternally grateful to have so many devoted students, gifted beyond measure, who choose to take singing lessons with me.

3) Incredible support from colleagues in the high schools, my church, and former students. They give me new ideas on how to teach weekly and serve as role models for how I conduct myself professionally.

4) My former voice teachers. Simply put, I would not be here without their guidance and insight. They believed in me when I doubted myself and never gave up on me, even when I was too stubborn to understand. In particular, I want to thank Dr. Timothy Jones from the University of Houston, who is the MODEL of what a man should be at all times: professional, always courteous, confidence without arrogance, and grace in all situations.

I could list a lot more things I'm grateful for, but that would take up a lot more of your time!

Thank you to all who made this year so wonderful and 2018 will be even better!

DWS

Keys to a Successful Audition

12/20/2017

We are entering audition season for a lot of high school seniors, and while there are differences between collegiate and professional auditions, they share some common elements on how to have a successful audition.

1) Be MEMORABLE (in a good way!)

The most important element of any audition is that the judges REMEMBER your audition! That may seem simplistic, but people forget this rule over and over. You need an element in your audition that stands out aside from your singing - is it your acting, personality, musical interpretation, difficulty of repertoire etc...?

2) Sing What You Are Good at and Can Be Cast At RIGHT NOW

When choosing audition material, do not pick music that you love, or want to perform in the future. Pick music you are good at RIGHT NOW, and from roles you could be cast at RIGHT NOW! Judges want to see and hear you perform repertoire that you can perform well and show an awareness of what you are good at, as opposed to what you might be good at in the future.
A corollary to this rule: You do not need to have the most difficult song to succeed in an audition. While singing a song of incredible difficulty well can be beneficial, it isn't necessarily memorable. People want to be entertained. Even if you can sing a difficult song well, if you sing it like a robot and it has no entertainment value whatsoever, how likely do you think you will get the job over a more 'fun' performer?

3) Look the Part!

An audition is a JOB INTERVIEW. Not singing in the shower or with friends; you must look like a professional. That means nice clothes, makeup and hair done etc...It also means that you practice your introduction and anticipate any questions the judges may have for you. For a college audition, that may mean questions about your performance history and grades.

4) Have an answer for the most important question: Why do you want to attend our college (or sing this role)?

This is the classic audition question, and for collegiate auditions, is practically a given. Judges want to know why you applied: was it the great theater and vocal training, friends who have attended, or reputation of the school? If you don't have an answer, you practically DOOM your chances. So know why you are applying, and practice your delivery. It is that important.

5) Don't anticipate the judges' reactions. Sing your best and put on a happy face.

I cannot tell you how many auditions I have done in which I felt I messed up in one way or another, and then later find out that I got a role. In fact, oddly enough, my experience has been this: when I feel I had a poor audition, I get the role! Bizarre, right? And yet it points to a central fact about auditioning and life in general: we greatly overestimate our flaws and undervalue our strengths. So if you 'mess up' in audition, pretend like it didn't happen and keep going strong. You will be amazed by how many judges miss your 'mistake' and hear the good parts of your audition.

DWS

Singing with resonance

12/15/2017

One of the first goals of any decent voice lesson is to increase the volume for any singer. Even with today's high-tech microphones, we still expect good singers to be able to project well into an audience without amplification. Not only is a powerful singer useful when no amplification is available, a singer with big pipes is also a sign that a singer is proficient in their instrument (assuming they can sing loud without tension).

However, as I tell all my students, our actual instrument is quite puny in terms of a tuba or guitar. Our vocal instrument, the larnyx and its vocal folds, is TINY! The instrument that produces all our sound, the vocal folds themselves, are smaller than the size of a nickel's edge. Needless to say, our vocal instrument is not meant to create a booming sound through pure strength.

What we can do as singers, however, is enhance the resonating power of our instrument. You have probably heard most voice teachers say "Sing with your whole body!" While that piece of advice isn't particularly useful in terms of producing a sound, it is essentially correct: a singer who uses all of their resonance - expanding the chest cavity, opening your mouth and laryngeal space etc... - will create a magnificently loud sound without any stress on the instrument.

There are lots of ways to develop resonance, but one of my favorites is a simple visualization technique that I learned from a colleague of mine, Kym Reeves at Clear Springs High School. Imagine your mouth is stuffed with really hot potato chips (why and how they got hot is a logical question, but just follow along for now!). Now imagine that you must do everything possible to prevent your mouth from smashing those chips. You will probably feel that your mouth and vocal tract is much more hollow and open than before. If you can maintain this sensation while you are singing, you will instantly have more resonance than before.

There are more sophisticated and long-term techniques to produce greater resonance and amplification in one's voice, but I find this 'hot potato chip' visualization to be a remarkably quick way to demonstrate the open sensation needed to produce a loud sound.

DWS

Should I use vibrato when I sing?

12/8/2017

I get this question a lot: What is vibrato? And is it a good thing for singing?

First, vibrato is a very natural thing for human voices to produce. Vibrato is essentially a wave in the pitch a human voice produces. That wave can be fast or slow, wide or thin, but everyone produces vibrato to a certain degree. Vibrato is so natural to singing that instrumentalists are taught from an early stage to produce vibrato so their instruments 'sing!' Even if you cannot hear vibrato from a singer, it is there - it just happens that the vibrato is so slow or thin that our ears have a hard time picking up on it.

Whether vibrato is desirable or not is entirely dependent on the style of music that you sing. Even the quality of vibrato (how fast, slow, wide etc...) changes from genre to genre. In opera, the preferred vibrato is noticeably faster than a country singer. But both genres do use vibrato.

When it comes to training vibrato, however, you have to be very careful. If you try to produce vibrato unnaturally, the sound that comes out is typically very forced and unpleasant to listen to. Unnatural vibrato can actually damage your voice! Therefore, a good voice teacher trains vibrato by working on elements that will allow your natural vibrato to emerge. Breath support and relaxing/releasing tension in your tongue and throat will allow the vibrato to emerge.

One final note: For the vast majority of singers, vibrato is not produced naturally until you are 15 or older. For vibrato to emerge, your vocal instrument has to develop to a certain point before vibrato comes out when you sing.

DWS

SInging Competition Notice

12/3/2017

I received this notice about a local competition. It looks legitimate and the show's star is REALLY, REALLY good. Please check it out and let me know if you would like to audition. Participants must be under 24 years old. The email I received is below.

Good morning,

I am a casting producer on a new local PBS TV Show, with WUFT. This is a virtual show and the deadline is January 15, 2018. We found your information online and wanted to know if one of your students (under 24 y/o) are interested to audition for this show. While we cannot guarantee that your students will be picked, we truly believe that you should apply/fill out the form for the creative producers to consider. The show will star, the PBS national artist, Ethan Bortnick who will be advising and judging talent to see who will win. The winner will get to perform Live with Ethan on his concert. If you have any questions, please email me at”[email protected]".

Below are some links and we wish you good luck!

Audition Here:
https://www.celebrationofmusic.com/audition
About PBS - WUFT
https://www.wuft.org/
About Ethan Bortnick
https://ethanbortnick.com/bio

What I am thankful for this year

Keys to a Successful Audition

Singing with resonance

Should I use vibrato when I sing?

SInging Competition Notice

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