Transcripts
1. Introduction: Singing is powerful because it's very cathartic, it's
very emotional. It's just another way for
you to express yourself. Hi, I'm Valerie Morehouse and I'm a celebrity vocal coach. Some of the singers that I
work with include Sam Smith, Britney Spears, Olivia
Rodrigo, and many, many more. In this class, you're
going to begin to build the foundation for your own voice so you can start on your own journey
to singing success. Who I'd really want to impact in this class is everybody
that just wants to sing. The mistakes are where
the magic happens. I want to be able to
create a safe environment for people to start
something that they've always been
too terrified to do. I really want to help you create a sustainable
singing practice. What you're going to gain
after taking this class is a great start to understanding how the
singing voice works, warming your voice up, how to do basic scales. You're going to hear
a little bit about the music industry. We're going to bring in a
special guest, Bishop Briggs, and she is going to talk
about her journey as a artist and what it takes
to be in this business. It's very physical. The more you work
the vocal cords, the stronger they will get, just like an athlete. So if you stick with it, you're definitely going
to see those results. I've coached the
world's top singers and recording artists,
now it's your turn.
2. You Can Sing: [MUSIC] I wanted to
welcome you to my class. I think this is going to be very eye-opening and give
you the basics and the foundation of
singing and not to be fearful of what
you're about to embark on. You may not have known that 97 percent of
the world can sing. I know that sounds like
a really big percentage, but in all my years teaching, I would say that's
pretty accurate. There're very few people in my 24 years of teaching
that I've turned away. If you feel that you can't sing, the probability is
that you probably can, so I would encourage you to stay tuned into this class and
discover that for yourself. Singing is sharing your
voice with the world. There's an awesome
responsibility sharing what you have
as a gift and as a talent and I think singing
is so important because it does give us a chance to
communicate with other people. Finding your voice is
definitely not easy, but you have to put the
work in in order to get to the gold at the end
of the rainbow, if you will. You have to put the
work in so that you're able to sing effortlessly and you're able to tell your story because if you're
onstage or you're in your room or you're in the studio wherever
you are singing. If you're thinking about singing and you're
thinking about technique, you're not having
a good time and you're not sharing your
story with your audience, so it's very important to get through those
fundamentals first, to put the work in, so that you can be
creative and you can share in a very organic way. Oftentimes people think about singing as they have it or they don't and even though
that can be true, the real truth about singers is understanding that the
voice is a muscle, so the vocal cords are
actually made of muscle. You can teach them to do
anything you want them to do, like running a marathon. If you said you wanted to run a marathon and someone said, "You should just
stick to five miles." You would look at them
like they were crazy. You can train for a marathon. You can also train
to be a singer. When you strengthen
those muscles and you strengthen
the vocal cords, you really see the
outcome and so you're just putting the time
in like an athlete. If you take those steps
and you do that at home, you can start to sing. Singers find their voice
in a myriad of ways. Some people think they sound good in the shower
or good in the car, you discover your voice in
all different types of ways, but this class is really geared towards taking it to the
next step and really finding out what you can do with the instrument that you have and understanding that
you might be a lot better than you
actually think you are. Songs are very important
to us as human beings; it lifts our souls, it lifts our spirits, it can bring us out of despair, it can change our mood, it can put us into a place
where we weren't before. I think song is so important
because when we can use music to lift us out of a certain place
as a human being, it elevates us as human beings and it
really does help us to grow and to feel certain way about life
where five minutes before, maybe you felt upset about something and you
turned a song on, and it lifted your spirits in some way or just
shifted your mind. I really want to explore
in this class the idea of how important a song is for everybody and
for you personally. At the end of this class, you'll be able to sing a song you've always wanted to sing, it'll help you
develop a toolkit to create a sustainable
singing practice. All you need for this
class really is just an open mind and some
drinking water and then later you're going to grab
a bottle of water and a straw to do straw
phonation exercises. In this class,
you'll see me break down the voice in
two categories. Typically we have
male and female, but I don't want
that to limit you or put you in a box because I don't want you to identify
as male or female, I want you to identify as the singer that
you feel you are. I'm so excited to
have you with us so far and in the next lesson, we're going to work
on identifying your vocal personality. [MUSIC]
3. Identify Your Vocal Personality: [MUSIC] Traditionally,
when singer starts singing may get boxed into
one of two categories. If you're a male, you might have heard the
terms tenor, bass, baritone. If you're female,
you might have heard the words soprano, alto. That's not really how I work. I believe that with two vocal cords which are actually made of
muscle and tissue, you can do anything,
you can sing anything. Everybody can train
and everybody can do what the vocal
cords are meant to do. We want to identify that
and show you that today. All singers are
not created equal, but we don't like to
put you in those boxes. We like to show you
that you can sing way above that and beyond that. An example of that, when I look at a
piece of sheet music, I don't look at it and
say, ''Oh my gosh, this is too high for me to
sing or this is too low.'' Because my voice is trained, I look at it with the idea that it's just going
to be different. It's going to sit
differently in my voice. It's going to sit differently
high or differently low, but I don't box myself into whether I'm a
soprano or an alto. That's very limiting, and you typically
do not want to do that in contemporary music. If you're coming to
this class and you've never sung ever in your life, but you've always had
a passion to do it, maybe you're scared, maybe you tried to sing at the school play or you
audition for something or even a parent might
have told you not to quit your day job because that
has happened before, I promise you that. Singers typically
have these fears that are internal and innate. I want to bust through
that for you today and show you that almost
anybody can sing. They can be ear trained, they can learn to sing. I'm going to walk you
through those steps so that you understand that if you're brand new to singing and you've always wanted to do it, I'm going to show you
how to unlock that. Starting this class,
I want you to take a moment to pull out a piece of paper and write down five things that you
think singing is, that you have fears
around singing. Five things that perhaps are scary or frightening
to you as a singer, as a new singer, as somebody that's been
singing for years. Maybe some of those five
bullet points that you wrote down or perhaps maybe my brother is the singer
in the family, not me. Maybe I was told in choir that I wasn't good
enough to be in choir. Maybe I audition for a school musical and
I didn't make that. All of those things
that we have as human beings are fearful. Singing is very vulnerable and it's very fearful
for a lot of people. My clients they're making millions of $ singing and
doing this for a living, they're still terrified
to go out on stage. So you're not alone, it's not just you. We all have those internal fears and I want to help you
tackle those today. If you've written
all those things down and you have your list, what I want you to
do is l want you to rip that up into
tiny little pieces. Once you've ripped all those up, I'm going to show you
how to break down those walls and those
barriers today, when we bring in two students and I'm going to
show you some of the things that they have to go through as
artists and singers. We're going to show their mess, if you will, and how they
get to the other side. In my profession,
I've worked with hundreds and hundreds of
singers, probably thousands. But what I want to really
process and bring to you today is the idea in
its simplest form, that there are two
types of singers. There are shades of gray, but there are pullers, which I call the type A, or they're flippers,
which I call type B. What that means is when
a singer comes in, if they're a puller, what that means is they're using too much muscle to hit the note. If you've ever tried
to sing a song and you get to the bridge or the chorus and it's too high, and you're heaving up and
you're struggling and you're pulling with muscles
to try to hit the note, that would be a puller, so we need to give you exercises
that are more aspirate. What that means is more breathy. We go to that part of the
chart and we give you these breathy exercises that
go against your tendency, not with your tendency. The other one that you may
fall into is the flipper, and that's where you have
too much air in the voice. What that typically
does for a singer on the back-end is it
causes a lot of airflow, perhaps too much airflow, and so the singing
voice is weak. So you're either too heavy
or you're too breathy. As a singer, we want to
balance those two out. You don't want to have too
much air in the voice ever, but you also don't want to have too much muscle in the voice. You want those two
to be very equal. We're going to talk
about how the neck and the anatomy bothers that process and disrupts that process and we're going to tell you how to get
yourself out of it. But those are typically
the two categories. You have the puller, which is too much muscle and too heavy, and you have the flipper,
which is too much airflow. You're either getting
too much power, too much volume, or you're getting too much
air on the voice. Either one of those are not a good place for
the singer to be. You'll never find balance. We're going to talk about how to find that balance
in a little bit. Before we pull our
recording artists in, I want to talk to
you a little bit about song construction. Typically in any given
song, you have a verse, you've a chorus, you've another verse, you've
another chorus. Everybody writes
differently, but that usually is the
construction of a song. As we go through this, you'll understand how we're
breaking the song down whether we're going
through the verse or we're getting to the chorus. The components of a
verse typically are, that's the beginning
of the song. Verses are typically
a little bit lower. The chorus typically
gets a little higher. That's something where
the lyrics are the same. You have the hook of the song. That's where it
really gets going, and it's very emotive and it typically gets a
little bit higher. When we hit the choruses
for most singers, that's where they get the most nervous because that's where they have to deal with
their tendencies. Their tendencies being puller, too much muscle or flipper, too much air in the voice. Again, we want to
balance those two. Very important to understand, that's always the scary
part for a singer, but we are going to identify that with our recording artists. I would like to welcome
Casey Baer to the studio, who is a new and up-and-coming
recording artist and she's going to
help us out today, and we have Ethan Roche, who is also going to help us out today with some of
our tendencies. What I want you to do
now is think about if you were in this
class with me here, what song would
you want to sing? What have you been listening to that you've
always wanted to sing? Maybe there's something
you've been struggling with. I want you to choose something that is difficult for
you and that you find challenging because
I'm going to show you here with both Casey
and Ethan how we break down the
problems and how we glue their vocals back
together in a really cool way. We're going to go into
song selection and identify the puller
and the flipper, and watch both of
these singers do their thing and identify what
that is for you at home, whether you fall into one
category or the other. Casey, let's turn to you. What song did you select today? I picked Impossible
by Shontelle. Awesome, high enough chorus. Let's start with that chorus
and see what happens. [MUSIC] Nice, so that's a part of
the chorus. That is a pull. You can hear sometimes
when we pull, you're going off
pitch a little bit, because the TA muscles
are pulled a little bit. That would be an
example of a puller. If you feel that
you're doing that [MUSIC] that's using
too much muscle in the neck and the
larynx going up too high. You're pulling chest voice
up too high without a mix. Now we're going to identify somebody that uses too much air, which we would call a flipper. Ethan, what song did you select? I thought it'd be fun to
do Gold by Chet Faker. Awesome. Give me any part
you want to start from, and we'll see what happens. We'll go right into
the chorus. [MUSIC] If you hear that, that's a high note for
him, the word, feeling. What he did instead
of screaming it, getting himself into
trouble, he flipped. The codes got a
little bit further apart and he added more air and so that was a
light breathy sound. At home, I want you to use either your own songs or the two that we've just
demonstrated here, and keep practicing
and trying to identify if you are
someone that's a puller, using too much muscle to sing, singing too loud, over singer, and those are all pullers. Or if you're a flipper where
you're using too much air, you're going into
your head voice for female or head voice, falsetto, if you're a man, just using too much
air in the voice and too much airflow
that would be of puller. It's very important for you
to identify which one you are because that is going to inform the rest of
this class for you. Once you've identified
what it is, we'll be able to walk you
through some steps to fix it. If you're struggling at home, figuring out whether you're
a puller or flipper, feel free to upload a video of yourself singing to
our project gallery, and one of us will
be able to listen to it and identify it for you. In our next lesson, we're going to be exploring
the anatomy of the voice, which is very near
and dear to me, because it's where most
singers struggle and have issues where they
don't know about singing. Please join us for that. [MUSIC]
4. Learn About Your Voice: [MUSIC] One of the
most important things that I teach as a teacher
is vocal anatomy. What happens with vocal
anatomy is it really does pull back that curtain of mystery of how
you use your voice. Because some people just
sing straight out the gate. Other instrumentalists, they
may play piano or guitar, but you have to practice, it's hours and hours of practice. With singing you can
really have a nice voice, but really not know how to use it, and how to deal with it. I really want to go over the vocal anatomy with
you today and talk to you about how the singer sings
and how the voice works. We're going to be talking
about what I call the SPA or the sound
producing anatomy. It's all the chambers of sound, we're going to go into
what chest voice is, what mixed voice is, what head voice is? We're going to talk
about the vocal cords, what they're made of. Then we're going to
talk about the neck muscles and how they can really hinder a singer's
ability to perform. Vocal anatomy is very
important because if you don't understand what you're
dealing with as a singer, it's very difficult
to find your pitch, to be on pitch, meaning to sing on key, so you're not singing off key because none of
us want to do that. It also helps you find your balance as a
singer and vocal tone. If you've never heard of
the chambers of voice, there's a very specific term
that we use as singers to talk about where the
voice is resonating from, and what resonation
is a sound and vibration where we
feel the sound. There's three
chambers of sound and three chambers in
the actual body. There's chest voice, which is located here in the chest area. This is a resonating space. We have lungs and the back and it's very
cavernous so we can feel it if we put our hands
on our chest and go ooh, we can feel it
vibrating from there. Then we have the second
chamber which is mixed voice, that typically we want it to be located in the nose
and the mouth, which is what you here
maybe called the mask. This is where we want to
vibrate and resonate from. Notice I bypass the neck, we don't want to feel
anything in the neck. The third chamber of
sound is head voice. We typically want
to feel that in the top of the head
and the forehead, that's again the highest
part of your instrument. If you think of it like living room, dining
room, kitchen, I want to go into
your house and I want to knock down all the doors and I want you to have an open
concept plan for your singing. One of the reasons that we
can do anything we like to the cords as teachers
and we can train you in such a specific way, is because the vocal
cords are made of muscle. They're muscles with a little
bit of tissue in there. The muscles can
expand and contract, they can lengthen and dampen, they can do a lot of things that you don't know that
they're able to do. They're very important to understand in part
of your training. Talking about the vocal chords, again, they're
muscle and tissue, they're sitting inside
what's called a vocal box and they're
in your neck. One of the things that we have to talk about is the larynx. The larynx is the
part of the anatomy that gets in the
way of all singers. If you put your hands
on your neck and just go, you can feel it. If you put your
hands here again, men identify it more easily
as an Adam's apple and go, you can feel it hike. If you go, you can
feel it lower. We never want to be too
high or too low as singers, we always want to be neutral. The larynx is a very important
part of our anatomy. One of the things that you
may not notice as a singer, is you may not know when
you're off pitch or on pitch. Really all that means is
when you listen to a song, are you singing in the
key that's written? Are you hitting the note that they're hitting or
are you off slightly? Some people can be
a little bit sharp. What sharp means is
you're a little bit too high on the pitch or flat. Think of it flat, you're a little bit too
low on the pitch. If you have a C, [MUSIC] you may be singing
[MUSIC]. Can you hear that? That sharp, it's not
quite a C sharp. It's still a C but it's
a little bit sharp. It's driving a little high. If you hit [MUSIC]
again and you sing [MUSIC] it's a little bit flat. Those are the differences
between sharp and flat. There's a lot of
conversations about pitch and people don't know
exactly what it is, but I think even a
beginning singer or even a non-singer
can hear it. You can listen to other artists and hear when they're off key, they're not quite
hitting the note whether it's a little bit
sharper, little bit flat. Volume is very interesting
for me as a teacher because louder is
not always better. You have a lot of vocal
coaches in your past, perhaps if you've
trained before, they'll tell you sing louder. That's a big red flag. Louder is not better
and it's not balanced. You don't want to sing
too heavy and too hot. You want to use the microphone
as a tool, not a prop. Just remember, louder
isn't always better. Tone I think is something
that we're born with. After all the years that
I've been teaching, tone is hard to teach. I always say that I can deal with a student
on a technical level, a physical level,
and emotional level. But their tone is their tone. Tone is something that is very special and it's
a very inherent, you may not be the best
singer on the planet, but you have a really good tone and a good quality
to your voice. That may be the thing
that makes you a star. Tone is a certain
quality of the voice. It might be a warmer tone
or a more shrill tone. Maybe you like death metal, are you like heavy metal, are you like hard rock? There's a certain
screamy, growly, gravelly tone they have to
their voice or something they put on the voice
that's typically tone, or if you're more
of a classical, maybe you listened to a
Katy Perry or an Adele. They have a certain tone
to their voice that is very pop and contemporary. Some is warmer, some is colder, some is more shrill, is just the idea and the sound
around their instrument. Breathing is a really
interesting topic because I typically
like to teach singers to balance the instrument
and the anatomy first, and then add breathing. I'm going to use an example. If you're a weightlifter and
you have a bar and a bench, if you have five pounds on
one side and 50 on the other, and you try to bench press that weight, what's going to happen? It's going to topple over. That's exactly what
happens to the voice. We have this
breathing apparatus, which is our lungs and our
back and a solar plexus. Guys it's not down here
where your bellies are, sorry, it's up high. When we take a deep breath in, if we're really
supporting our voice, but we haven't balanced
the instrument yet, it will blow us out. The vocal cords can withstand
a few pounds of pressure where the breathing
apparatus is very powerful. If you start over
breathing too soon, it can actually blow
your voice out. The sound producing
anatomy or the SPA, which is what I like to call it. I was always coming up or trying to come up with something that dealt with all
of the anatomy, the chest voice, the
chambers of sound, everything that you're
going to be learning about in this class. It's all very important and
technique is very important, but I don't really want you
to lose sight of the fact that your anatomy is
your own anatomy. Wherever your voice is,
beginning, intermediate, advanced, whatever you
like to sing, your tone, your style, your
character is you, and only you can command that, nobody else looks like you, sounds like you, walks
like you, talks like you. Really embrace that, the character of your voice, the sound of your voice, the tone of your
voice, it's unique. You don't have to be
a perfect singer. But if you really
believe in your story, and you believe in your tone
and your expressiveness, that's half the battle. Join me in the next lesson
as we go through the scales. Basically what scales
are is they're warm-ups, and how to use the voice and use the techniques so when
you sing your live songs, you're placed and you're
not pulling or flipping. [MUSIC]
5. Practice Basic Scales: One of the things that we have to do as singers is warm-up. It's really Scary not to
warm up because you're not placed when you go to record a record or when
you're on stage live, if you don't know where your
voice is supposed to sit, the whole show is very
difficult for the singer. We really want to understand what the warm-up
is, how it's important. I didn't love warming up
either when I was younger, but there's a reason that we're doing it
just like athletes, we have to get the fundamentals
down before we sing. Scales are something
that we use on the piano and we take
the singer through a myriad of exercises that teach them how to use the
voice to how to shift, like a high-performance car from first gear to second
gear to third gear, back to second, back to first
without stalling their car. We want it to be as
fluid as possible. It's very important to get that seamless sound that we warm up with the
exercises first, which are the scales and
then we add the songs next. At this point you should
have a pretty good idea of what category you
fit into if you're a polar or if you're a flipper. What we're going to do
now, is give examples, with the scales and the warm-ups with
both of our singers. One being a polar and how to identify it and fix it
and one being a flipper, how to identify it and fix it. Scale is what we use
to warm up the voice and typically with any
student I start down, we'll say if this
is a male singer, [MUSIC] it sounds like this. [MUSIC] I'm going to play that one more
time that's called a running arpeggio scale. When the singer
identifies it and is able to hear it and
sing it properly, it gives you a
running start and so it shows all your problems
and that's what we want. We want it to show
the problems because that running scale
moves you from chest to mix to head
voice and back down. If there's a problem
in the vocal, we can identify it. This is again, what
it sounds [MUSIC]. We make up a half-step. [MUSIC] Then we go so on and so on until we
reach the singers break. The next one that we drew
is a very short scale [MUSIC] and so on and so forth. I will take them on the
exercises that we need to fix. If they are polar,
I'm going to give them exercises that
are more breathy, more aspirin that goes
against their tendency. If they're flipping, I'm going to give
them something like a Gee or Go that brings
the vocal cords together, so they have a little
bit more closure, so that they can sing with a little more intensity and intention and not be so breathy. I'm going to start by identifying the polar and the flipper in the
arpeggio scale. This is how we would
typically start a lesson and get
a singer moving. Ethan, I'm going
to start with you, we're going to start
in the male key here. I'm going do it once. [MUSIC]. The reason that we do the arpeggio scale
just to remind you, is because it shows
all your weaknesses. Ethan's got it and we're
going to start down here. [MUSIC] Excellent. [MUSIC] We're
approaching that bridge. [MUSIC] He's flipping
on the bridge now. [MUSIC] Give me one more. [MUSIC] You notice what he's doing when he
gets up a little bit higher is the
shoulders are going, it's that feeling of
" no something is changing in my voice and I
don't know how to control it." We use the arpeggio scale
to identify that his voice started a little
heavier and then it got a little lighter
as we got to the top. If I'm really being specific, we have a dual personality here. We have a polar and a flipper. Ethan's actually a
really good example of doing two things at once. He is pulling the TA
muscles a little bit, but he's also using a
little bit too much air at the top of his register. What I want to do
is move to Casey. We're going to start
in the female octave, [MUSIC] so I've got to
move up a little bit. I want to identify, what's going on with more of a heavier pool where somebody's using a little
bit too much muscle. We're going to take
the arpeggio again, because you typically
have more weight. I'm going to give you
an aspirin exercise, which will be the Wee, it's got more air in it
to create more airflow, so it's not so hard. Here we go. We. [MUSIC]. Good.
[MUSIC] Awesome. [MUSIC] Good job. [MUSIC] It's getting higher. [MUSIC] It's getting
a little bit higher. [MUSIC] Here we go. [MUSIC] Good job. [MUSIC] Give me one more. [MUSIC] Good. You'll hear a little
cracks in the voice. That's good. I tell all my singers
the cracking and being a little bit pitchy with the vocal cords
when you're warming the voice up is a good thing. When you're trying to
control every single note, nothing good is happening. The vocal cords are like
muscles, like stretching. They have to warm up
before you engage, so I encourage my
students to do that. Not everything has
to be perfect, especially in the warm-up, that's where we get to
show all the mistakes. If you see what Casey did, she went all the
way up the scale, but because I gave her a
breathy exercise like a Wee, she didn't grab and she didn't
pull and she actually did really well and she made it all the way up to
those high notes. If you're a male singer, you're going to start with
the arpeggio scaling, I'm going to help
walk you through it. We're going to go to the bottom. We're going to start in
the male octave down here. What you're going to
do is if you fall into the category of being a flipper, then we're going to do exercises that are
opposite of that. If you have too much
air in your voice, you're going to do
something a little harder, what we call Glottal. I like to usually,
typically start with a Gee, so it's not breathy. It's [MUSIC]. You
try it with me. [MUSIC] Then we're going to go half step, same
thing [MUSIC]. We're going to go
half-step higher. [MUSIC] One more. [MUSIC] Now, Give me one more. [MUSIC] You should have noticed if you were male singer that you have a problem there. That's the bridge,
the F, F-sharp, 99 percent of all male singers
have a problem on the F, the F sharp, that's where
they do one of two things. Again, we talk about they're either too much muscle
or too much air. If you have too much
air in the voice, you'll feel it's heavier. [MUSIC]. You'll feel that as
opposed to [MUSIC]. The gee will help you bring the vocal cords together a little bit
in more function. Now, the other
thing that you can do, shorten the scale. We're going to run through
the short arpeggio. It's just a shorter way
to deal with the scale. It's actually harder to do
than the running arpeggio, but I'm going to show you
what that looks like. If you have too much
air in the voice, a really good exercise for
you to do too, is above. It's very neutral, it's not
too breathy and it's not too chesty or pulley if you will for lack of a better term. I'm
going to walk you through it. I'm going to start [MUSIC]. Now, you go. [MUSIC] We're
going to go up a half step. I'm going to go [MUSIC]. Now, you go [MUSIC]. We're going to go
up a half step. [MUSIC]. Now, you go [MUSIC].
Another half step. [MUSIC]. You go. [MUSIC] One more. [MUSIC] Now, you go. [MUSIC] And Just
start with that. You'll start to feel the strength in your
voice and you'll get rid of some of that air that's escaping through
the vocal cords. If you are a male singer as well and you have the
opposite tendency. You're not singing
with too much air, but rather you have
way too much muscle in the voice and you're
pulling up the chest voice, we're going to start
a little bit higher. We want to get to the bridge, the F, F sharp where you
really feel the problem. I'm going to
demonstrate that with an exercise that gives you a little bit more
air in the voice. We're going to go
back to the Wee because it's very aspirin. You'll go [MUSIC]
now, you go [MUSIC]. Now [MUSIC] now, you go, [MUSIC] now, you go [MUSIC] now, you go. [MUSIC]. We're going to
do one more here we go. [MUSIC]. Now, you go. [MUSIC]. You'll find that that's the F, that's right where the man's
bridge lives and sits. Beyond that's a little trickier, but just go that far and use the Wee to add a little
bit of air to your voice, so it doesn't feel so heavy and so pulled and
so much tension in the neck and
that's the best way to approach that at home. Now, we're going to switch gears and we're going to move
into the female voice. I'm going to move up a little
because we have to start up the higher octave [MUSIC]
for the female ear, so if you're a female singer, this is too low [MUSIC]. Sounds a little bit more [MUSIC] right for
you in that key. What we're going to do
is we're going to go up the same scale. [MUSIC] But we're going to
deal with the female flipper. We're going to do a Go, [MUSIC]. Do you hear the
hardness of that G? It's [NOISE] that gets your vocal cords together if you have too
much air [MUSIC]. Now, it's your turn. [MUSIC]. Now, I'm going
to demonstrate [MUSIC]. Now, it's your turn. [MUSIC] Now, I'm
going to demonstrate. [MUSIC]. Let's keep going [MUSIC]. That's really past the bridge. A woman's bridge, again
as an A to a B flat, I've taken you all
the way up to a B. What that G does
is it just gives you a little bit
more cord closure, so the vocal cords are
shut a little bit more, so you can feel the air leaving and you can feel the chest voice coming
in a little harder. We're going to go back
to the female voice now. We're going to
deal with a polar. That's again, when you have too much muscle in
the voice and you're just grabbing at everything
and everything feels loud. We want to pull that back. We want to add an exercise. It's a little bit more neutral. We're going to go back to
the Wees where we come in and you sing, [MUSIC]. You can already hear
there's more air in the voice, it's more soft. It's not as hard and grabs. We're going to take that and you're going
to follow along. [MUSIC] Now, you go. [MUSIC] Now, you go. [MUSIC] Now, you go [MUSIC]. Let's do one more [MUSIC]. Now, you go [MUSIC]. You're on the bridge again. For female, you're
on that B-flat. That's the note where
you're going to do one of two things you're going to
pull or you're going to flip. You're going to have too
much air, too much muscle. That's going to show you, you've got to the
top of the bridge. The wee is going to help you have more air and the
voice and more flow. It's not hard and
it's not heavy again, going against your tendency. What I'd like you
to do at home is practice some of those scales. Learn the running
arpeggio scale. See if you can sing
that on key and then practice the
other smaller scale, which is a little bit
shorter and see if you can help encourage whatever
your tendency is, if you can go against
that tendency. In this next lesson,
we're going to talk about Lip Bubbles and why
they're so important. [MUSIC]
6. Roll Your Lips: Two of the most basic
exercises that most of us do as teachers is called the lip
bubble and straw phonation. One of the reasons that the lip bubble is so
important is because it disengages all the neck
muscles, the TA muscles, the larynx, everything is relaxed and the
only thing that's moving and vibrating
in that moment when you do a lip bubble
is the vocal cords. Guess what? That's exactly
what we want to happen. If you put your hands
here and just go [NOISE]. Try that at home. [NOISE] Now I want you to
go a little bit higher. [NOISE] Try it at home. [NOISE] Notice where
the sound is moving. In my body and in
most people's bodies, the sound moves from here, here to here to here. It's moving up in your face. So all you can do is feel the sound and the
resonance in your face. That's what we want
to accomplish. Now that we've talked
about the lip bubble, we're going to use an example
with Casey and show you how this is done and
what it looks like and sounds like and feels like. Casey, I'm going to start
you a little higher. I'm going to have you
grab your fingers and gently pull your cheeks up. We're going to do the
running arpeggio. What that's going to do is not only give her an exercise to feel all the neck muscles relaxing and only the vocal
chords moving and phonating, it's also training her
ear at the same time. We're killing two birds
with one stone. Here we go. [NOISE] Good. [NOISE] Awesome, keep going. [NOISE] Very good.
[NOISE] Give me one more. [NOISE] Give me one more. Listen to how easy
that is for her. It sounds easy. It feels easy. There's no tension in the neck. So that's exactly
what we want to do is singers is get
rid of the tension. If you can make a sound on that type of scale on
the running arpeggio, that's half the battle and that's why I like to
start with these. What did you feel
when you did that? When we first
started doing them, I always felt this
tingling itchy tiny thing in my nose because
of the vibrations. Because that's where you're
supposed to feel it. But I've done them for so long. As I continue to do
them, you either don't feel it or it's
just not there anymore. I don't know the difference. But when you first do it, it's how you know
that it's the spot. Yeah, you're in the right place. You're singing from
what's called your mask, instead of all the
intrinsic muscles in the neck which we're trying to actually just get away from. That's why we like
the lip bubble. We're going to pick it
up with Ethan here. We're going to do the
lip bubble as well. One of the things that we do in the lip bubble is we pull the cheeks up as you
saw us do with Casey. The reason for this is
it makes the lips move. A lot of us can't do
that out the gate, our lips won't move,
they won't go anywhere. Typically the sound stops and so they can't get
through the exercise. When you rub your cheeks and
you pull them up like this, it just keeps the lips moving so that you
can finish the scale. Let's try that.
Ethan, Here we go. [NOISE] Perfect. [NOISE] Love it. [NOISE] Keep going.
Give me one more. I lied. Again,
give you one more. Now you hear how
easy that sounds for him and how smooth the
vocal is. We love that. There was a little issue
in being a teacher, I have to address it. You're not quite getting
up to that pitch. What I want you to do is give it a little bit more function. You can push one
foot into the floor. [MUSIC] Make sure
you get up there. [NOISE] He did it.
That was amazing. When you push into the floor and you would
take the tension off the neck and you put it into the quad muscle or body
part that can handle that, all of a sudden the
vocal cords function properly instead of
the neck tensing up. Its magic. I want you
again to try this at home. It's really important for you to experience this because
I always tell singers, it's not about
demonstrating as a teacher. It's about giving singers
tools so that they can feel the sensations they
need to feel on their own. If you're a male singer and
you're doing a lip bubble, we're going to start you
down in the mail octave. But what I want you
to understand about it is why it's so important. It doesn't allow you to use any of the neck muscles at all. It just has the vocal
chords moving for you and that's the function
we want as singers. Again, not only can you deal with an ear training exercise, but you can deal
with the anatomy moving the way that
we want it to move. I'm going to start
the male singer down here and I'm going to
do it once myself. Then I want you to follow. [MUSIC] Now, it's your turn. [MUSIC] Your turn. That's just giving
you a little introduction. That's again the F,
that's the man's bridge. You'll find that whether
you're a pole or a flipper, it doesn't matter
with these exercises because it's not letting you
engage anything in the neck. You'll feel that really
nice, smooth vocal. We're going to move
to the female singer. I want you to go ahead and take your hands and place them here. Again, [NOISE] just
get the lips moving. We're going to add
that arpeggio scale. I'm going to do it once and then you're going
to do it after me. [NOISE] Now it's your turn. [MUSIC] Again, you're going
to feel the ease and that sensation of
ease when you sing, you're not going to
feel any neck tension. That's why again, we
love the lip bubble. Join me in the next lesson to
talk about straw phonation.
7. Smooth Your Vocals: In this lesson, we're
going to talk about straw phonation and
why it's so amazing. It really just helps you
only use the vocal cords, which is what we're
trying to do. It taps out all the
muscles in the neck. The TA muscles, the larynx, none of those muscles
are working and moving. Only the vocal cords are
the only muscle that's resonating and phonating and that's the outcome that
we're looking for. This little contraption here is just a bottle of
water and a straw. Usually I like straws that bend. They have metal ones,
not a huge fan. I like things that are
pliable and malleable. But what this does
is it compresses the voice from the very get-go. When you're in the studio, if you were to sing on a mic and you sang
something too loud, your producer would
compress that vocal. Well, what this does
is it doesn't again, like the lip bubble allow
you to use the neck muscles, the TA muscles, or the larynx or anything else in
the neck to sing. The only thing that vibrates and resonates are
the vocal cords. That's how we strengthen them. It's isolating the muscle
that's meant to work and getting the
muscles that are not supposed to help out to tap out. Again, it's like
doing the sit up, when you're not using your neck and your
back to get you up, you're only using your
abs and your core. I'm going to demonstrate
what this looks like, and it's fun because
you get to blow bubbles like you did when
you were a little kid. I'm going to do this acapella. I'm going to start
here from A. I'm just going to do [NOISE]. It's fun. I love this part. What it does is I can
feel it's massaging my vocal cords and
it's making them work without any
tension in the neck. Casey, we're going to
try this with you now, we're going to go
all the way up. Here we go, water and straw. [NOISE] Awesome. [NOISE] Give me one more. Now one of the cool
things about this is that Casey is already on an F. This is way above her first bridge and you're not feeling any tension, right? Nothing at all. What does it feel
like when you're making sound through the straw? It feels super light, like you feel nothing here, which is exactly the point. You feel like a little bit of vibration up here in your mask. But you feel, like you were saying, like the massaging aspect, you just feel it. There's no tension. Yeah. Just the vocal cords are moving. Totally. What we can do later
at some point too, is you'll take this and
blow the melody of one of your songs into the water and straw and you'll be
placed immediately. I want to try the male now. We're going to come down
a little bit further. Ethan, here we go, try it. [NOISE] Awesome. [NOISE] Give me one more. [NOISE] I have to
point this out. Ethan's on a high A
right now where he was struggling a little
earlier about right here. This is where he is
[NOISE] with the straw. This is his first
bridge [NOISE] this is where he is [NOISE]. You hear how much
higher that is? Way higher in pitch.
How did it feel? Relaxing. Yeah. No tension. My only focus was to get oxygen and then hit the pitch exactly without worrying
about any of these muscles. Exactly, I love that. Okay, so now that we've done
the straw and the water, what I want to do is demonstrate how easy this is
to do in a song. Casey, we're going
to take the song Impossible and
you're going to just sing a little piece
of it for us. You're going to sing it once, and there'll be a little
struggle because it's fresh. Then I want you to blow
into the water and straw. Then we're going
to sing it again and we're going to see
if we hear a difference. Cool. Let's just sing it out the gate. [MUSIC]. You hear where she's
a little cold now, that's why you have
to keep warming up, guys as singers, there's a
little bit of a struggle. Now let's replace you, blow it into the
water and straw. [NOISE] Where do
you feel the sound? Up here. As opposed to where it was here earlier. Blow
it one more time. [NOISE] Now, please sing the lyric
and put the song there. [MUSIC] She's in her phase. Can you hear that?
Can you feel that? One hundred percent. It doesn't hurt,
it's not strained. No, it just immediately
goes straight there. Exactly, and so you're
just talking on pitch instead of singing
and overworking. You're working smart, not hard. I want you to practice
that at home. I want you to use your
straw and your water, and I want you to
blow into the straw and water the
melody of the song, probably the chorus because
it's the most high. Just do it 2, 3, 4 times until you start feeling the vocal cords balance
and smooth out. Then start singing the
lyrics and you'll find that it's going to
change the voice incredibly and it's just going to make all
those muscles that are tense and tired tap out really quickly and
that's what we want. Try that at home, the next thing I want to
move into is creating your own singing practice
and what that looks like. But before we get into that, I want to thank Casey and
Ethan for coming today. Thank you for being so
brave and joining us. Of course. Thank you for having us. [MUSIC]
8. Create Your Singing Practice: [MUSIC] In this lesson, we're really going to figure out how to create your
singing practice. Remember that the vocal cords are a muscle and they have to be carefully trained in a way so that they can
function properly. Hopefully, at this point,
you've been able to identify whether you
are polar or flipper. We use the exercise as the lip bubble, the
arpeggio scale, and the straw
phonation to help you move smoothly through
those problems. What I want you to
do at home is find out now that you've
identified polar or flipper, use the exercises that we identified for your
specific tendency, whether they're the
wheeze or the gags, you're going to figure
that out on your own. You're also going to
take the water and straw and the lip bubbles
and continue on with those. As you get stronger each day, you can add more time. The first day maybe
five minutes, the next day maybe 10 minutes. Then what I'd like you to
do is move to your song. Once you get the song, make sure you use the
straw on the water, blow the melody into
the straw on the water, find out where your voice
is supposed to be placed. You can actually
feel it in the body. Keep doing that and
then attack your song from top to bottom and see if you can make it through
the whole thing. Once you've been
doing the practice every day and you've
built up from, say, maybe five
minutes to 20 minutes, I'd like you to try to fit that into your schedule once a day, once every other day, and sing through a
song, maybe 45 minutes. Once you're starting
that practice at home, you may want to
pick other songs, 45 minutes is a long time
to be singing one song. As you get comfortable
with the first song, maybe choose another
song that you'd like to sing or
something you'd like to tackle and go back and
start from the top again. Warm-up, use the
water and straw, the lip bubbles to sing on
the melody of that song, the courses are a little
harder to attack, and get comfortable
with that and sing that song through
top-to-bottom. If you don't have 45 minutes
to sing, do what you can, warm-up for five or 10 minutes, then practice a song for
another 10 or 15 minutes. Just make this a daily
practice so that you're getting something in and
you're constantly building. Because just like working out, you need 20 minutes to
get your heart rate up, you need that 20
minutes to really build the muscle and strengthen
it on a daily basis. Just like working
out in the gym, singing is similar where
you want to take some time off because the muscle is building and building
and getting stronger, but it also needs some
rehabilitative time. It needs a day or so in-between
where you do vocal rest. I would encourage you to do the singing and do
the practice a few days, but then take a day off. Let your voice bounce back, let your body bounce back, just like you would do at
the gym because you'll come back much stronger. One of the things that I
constantly talk about to my singers in my career is
taking care of their voices. You need to take
care of your voice. You need to understand that it's in your body and
it's very delicate. The vocal cords are very
strong when used correctly, but they can also become very
weak when used incorrectly. I come across a lot of damage on a daily
basis from swelling of the vocal cords
or people have allergies or they have
nodules or polyps, or just wear and tear. It's very important
that you understand what's going on with your
voice on a daily basis. If you're singing and you couldn't get through
the scales that we demonstrated or your voice cuts out after two or three nodes, that's a red flag that
something bigger is going on. By the way, you don't have to just be a singer to
have vocal damage, you can also damage your
voice by being a salesperson, being on the phone too long, talking with vocal
fry all the time. I want you to really take that seriously and check that out. I want to leave you with some words of
encouragement through a very quick story that I
cannot get out of my head. I remember working on a TV show and I never could get my
lead actor to come in. I had a whole cast
of characters, everybody came in and sang, but my lead male was
just dragging his feet. I couldn't understand
why he wouldn't come in. Finally we got them in, we had to go through a bunch
of music for the show. He comes in, I ran through
some of the scales and he actually had
quite a nice voice. I didn't know if he
could sing or not. I gave him a compliment on
his vocal and I watched him turn his back to me and I started seeing his
shoulders go and I thought, oh my gosh, he's crying. What I learned from that
moment was that he didn't want to come in
because he was afraid of that happening
in front of me, so that's why he was stalling. He'd had a parent and someone in his life as you
tell him that he couldn't sing and
he never forgot that moment and it was a
traumatized moment for him. When we got through
the fear of that and I actually told him
he had a nice voice, he got to put that away and he started his singing journey. I want to encourage you
that it's not just you, it happens to everyone. If you're feeling that way, then you have a nice story that shows you that
you're not alone. Anybody can do this, but everybody is fearful. That particular client went
on to get rid of the fear. He took the compliment
and he ran with it and he was able
to sing every day, do his warm-ups, he started getting better
and better and better. Everything became
more simple for him and he really
started to enjoy the process of shooting a
show that required singing. So I really encourage
you to do that on a daily basis and
grow your craft. I want to thank you for sticking with it so far and the
work that you've put in. Even though I can't hear
you saying I wish I could. I really want to encourage
you to continue on. Join me in the next lesson to figure out what your
next steps could be. [MUSIC]
9. Take the Next Step: As a singer, there's all kinds of directions
that you can take. There's not one right
path or wrong path. But one of the things that I often tell my singers is really commit to the process and not
be attached to an outcome. Because as a singer,
whether you're beginning or you're huge star, oftentimes, the idea wrapped around that is not to be worried
about what's going to happen at the end and not having any anxiety attached to what's going to
happen at the end, what's going to
happen to your career and how good are
you going to sing, how good are you going to be? It's really just being
committed to your process and taking it step-by-step
and day by day. One of the things that I would encourage you to do
on this journey, if you want to take
it a little further, I would really encourage
you to find a vocal coach. If you do start on that path, make sure there's
a few things that you really want to consider. When you're trying to
find a vocal coach, having a big roster of
clients or celebrity clients, funny enough, it
doesn't always mean they're an experienced
amazing teacher. There's a myriad of reasons why people go into
voice coaching, but there's no
certification process. Even a massage
therapist has to have 600 hours on a person, on a body before
they're allowed to get a certificate or a license. We don't have that in
the vocal community. I really would
encourage you to check out your teacher very carefully. find out who they've trained. Really make sure you
do your homework. You always have to make
sure that your teacher is a vocal teacher. A vocal teacher or a voice teacher is someone
that understands anatomy. They probably have
worked with an ear, nose, and throat doctor before, or maybe they've worked
with many and they really have a vast knowledge of the anatomy and the
anatomical ways that a singer has to
sing and perform. One of the great things we
have today's technology. We can do lessons on
FaceTime or Zoom. We have these ways of teaching clients through the computer. It's quite clear, and if the client and the
teacher has a nice setup, it does feel like you're in that personal experience
and in that room with them. It's quite awesome. My recommendation, just starting out as
a 30-minute lesson. A lot of teachers do hours, but sometimes it's
diminished returns because as a beginner singer, that's a long time for
you to be singing, going through
scales and warm-ups and technique and singing songs. I like to start with 30 minutes just to
diagnose the singer, get an idea of what you
need, what's working, what isn't and why
and maybe run through parts of the song
so that you don't feel overwhelmed in that lesson and you're not over singing while you're still trying to
strengthen those muscles. The average cost
of a vocal lesson, depending where you live, can be as low as
$50 a half an hour. But typically because
of the clients that I work with
and being in LA, it is a little elevated, so I'm lower than some
and not as high as most. You're going to pay for a celebrity vocal coach
with a great track record, anywhere between $200 an
hour up to $700 an hour. If you resonate with
me and with my style, I have two amazing
associate teachers that work with me and work
with a lot of my clients too. We're always accepting
new clients. I never want to
turn anybody away. It's why I created a
associate program. I definitely understand
that that is a cost commitment and not
everybody wants to commit that. You may not want
to pay those rates and I totally understand that. But what you can do outside of that is join a local
singing community, maybe join a choir. There's musical
theater programs. There's all kinds of programs that you can do
something in a group. Sometimes you have
to be very careful with warm ups in those groups because you can have your own tendency
and you don't want to be doing the same warmups. But you usually can
find somebody who gravitates towards somebody
in that community. They can start to steer you in the right
direction vocally. Some people just
want to sing for fun in their home
in their shower, but there are other people
that might want to go, maybe you want to go a little
bit further with this. What I want to talk to you now about is the music
industry and what artists have to go through on
a daily basis to be a star. [MUSIC]
10. Get to Know the Music Industry: [MUSIC] In the music industry, there's definitely a
love-hate relationship and I'm going to break
down what those two are. Let's talk about
what people love about being in the
music business. They love the writing process, they love seeing their songs come to fruition, of course, they love hearing the feedback
or the fans in real-time, they love hearing a
song on the radio. That's super exciting for me whenever my clients are on
the radio and I'm like, oh, this station,
here's another artist. That's exciting for
us as musicians. They also love just the
joy of communicating with fans and telling their
stories on a daily basis, so all of that is very, very joyful for the
artist in a good way. One of the misnomers about
the music industry always being so glamorous is
actually it's not glamorous, it's actually a very,
very difficult lifestyle. The hate part is really the
touring becomes monotonous. You have to do the same show, you have to be on every night. You have to worry
about your voice and your vocals and
losing your voice. You've got meet and greets
where you talk to your fans. There's a lot of
wear and tear on the body and it becomes very, very difficult to be
on every night when you're just tired and sometimes you just
want to go home, so it's not all it's
cracked up to be. There's a lot of rehearsing and there's a lot of
things that happen externally where these
artists are working 24/7 and so that's really the
hate part of the business. One of the things that's
interesting about this business too looking from the outside in, is watching the struggle that these artists
have to go through. There's always a struggle, there's never a
good moment because you're either always
struggling to make it, make the next dollar, make the next record, have another hit song, make more money,
pay the label back. There's all these pressures
and then the other side of that is that once you've
actually made it as a singer, there's pressures
to stay on top. There's pressures
to pay more people. There's pressures to
not fall off the track. There's pressures to sing
and to stay relevant. No matter where you are as
an artist in this industry, there's always a struggle. People always think that artists have all this money
and they have all this fame and what
a glamorous lifestyle. The money part of it
is really difficult because when you're an artist, you typically sign to a
small label, a large label. You have these deals
with the label where they fund you all this
money just to get your wardrobe and
your music video done and maybe produce a
record or try to fund tour. Oftentimes you don't
see that money back for a very long time. They could fund you 300,000
to half a million dollars. Because you're not really
selling records anymore, you're not making a lot
of money from streaming. You're really relying
on the live element, the touring element, so oftentimes these artists, it could be years
before they see any money because
they owe the label all this money that
they have fronted to them on the front
end of their career. One of the biggest
secrets to being a successful artist is really
loving the rigors of tour. You really have to want it. You have to love being on a bus. You have to love the excitement
of being on the road, even when you're tired
and even when you have done five cities
and 15 or 20 shows, you really have
to love that part of the business because I do have clients that
love the lifestyle. But the touring can get a little monotonous for them and
when they're on tour, sometimes they just want to come home and they want to rest. If you're going to be an artist, that's got to be a part of it that is really exciting for you. One of the things that's
interesting about getting into the music industry today
with all the social media, is that you really have to
do a lot of your own work. I used to have a manager or a label do it for you
and you'd show up. Now, the singer
really has to put a lot of effort into
marketing themselves, and so typically a label won't take you on because
they just don't have the money
they used to have. They won't take
you on unless you have a built-in platform. The method to the madness
is TikTok and Instagram. But oftentimes, unless you have hundreds of thousands
of followers in a built-in platform, the labels will shy away. I had a client that had a
very interesting story, very cool voice, she has some really
good solid songs. There was a bidding war for
her and when all three of the labels found out she had no social media presence,
they dropped her. The realities of building
a career today really does include social media and you really
have to work very, very hard at
building a platform, so it's not about
just singing anymore. You really have to be
a business person and you have to be your
own personal manager. You have to love doing that. You have to love creating, and you have to love
posting or making TikToks and getting out
your music to the masses. That's a really important part
of being an artist today. There's so many things that
goes on behind the curtain in the music business from
getting an attorney, building your team,
finding a manager, managing your own career. There's a lot that
really goes into that, but there's a lot of information online that you can find
about those process. A record label, if you want to go with
a big record label, maybe you want to be a big
fish in a smaller sea, so people will go with
an independent label. Nowadays people are so involved in their careers
that they're really starting their
careers on their own with platforms and social media, so that's very important
to know starting out. A big piece of advice
that I'd give you going into this is really again, be committed to your process. Don't be attached to an outcome. Because the second you do that, you're chasing yourself as
a singer and as an artist. If you love what you do, if you like to write songs, find somebody that can write
with you, write together. Find out what your creative
process is and really just be in that process
on a daily basis, you will succeed doing that. But if you're always
worried about, will I be a star? Do I have enough followers? If you're really focused on
the outcome of your career, you're not going to enjoy the moment and you're
going to miss it and you probably won't get out of that lifestyle
of what you need. You'll definitely get
what you need if you just put one foot in
front of each other, do the work, do the practicing, do the warming up, being the moment day to day, and don't worry about
what's going to happen tomorrow or next year, let the universe
take care of that. You just take care of yourself,
take care of your voice, take care of your
health, and have a really good time doing it
and you'll be successful. In our next lesson, we're going to invite in the
incredible Bishop Briggs. She's going to talk about
her journey as an artist. [MUSIC]
11. Reach for the Stars: Bishop Briggs: [MUSIC] Today we have something really special
in store for you. In studio, we have the incredible Bishop
Briggs joining us. In a little bit we're
going to get to ask her questions and talk
about her career, what got her started, where she is now and
her music history. In 2016, her single River
went viral on Spotify. In 2018, she released
her debut album, Church of Scars, and just a year later released her second album, Champion. She sold out multiple
headlining shows. She's done Lollapalooza
and Coachella. She's also performed in
American Idol and she's been featured on The Tonight
Show starring Jimmy Fallon. Bishop is not only an
amazing singer songwriter, I also consider her a friend. She's a client. We want to welcome you to the studio today. Thank you so much
for joining us. Thank you so much. It's so incredible
to have you here. Thank you for saying
such kind things. It's such an honor to be here. I feel like you have such
big pipes as a singer. Often people will describe
you as having this big, huge voice and you do a fair amount of screaming
in your set as well. So that takes a lot of energy. It takes a lot of muscle.
It's high octane. Yes. I think one of the
biggest things that I remember working on out the
gate was this mixed voice. Yes. This idea of mixed
voice so that you're not pulling up from the chest. We talked in this class about pullers and flippers
and those categories. You would have fallen into that category of being a puller, bringing too much
weight to the vocal. Pretty much what
our session was was a huge therapy experience because you're really
trying to undo habits that you've done vocally your entire
[LAUGHTER] life. Especially when I met
someone like you, you really hone in
on mixing that soul and that texture of the
person's voice with skill. Making sure they're
not straining, making sure that they have
longevity when touring, so it definitely was a
game changer meeting you. Something you
introduced me to was just the tightness in my
throat and in my jaw. I would tense up to reach the
node and then I would widen the vowel and be trying so hard [LAUGHTER],
drenched in sweat. When I met you, it was just a world
of difference. That mixed voice that you were able to attain
through your own music, especially on some of
these high choruses, where you realize when
you're singing live, you're singing with currency
in balance instead of singing with volume and having
to scream at everybody. But it's [OVERLAPPING] how
you are able to withstand the career and go night
after night after night. Yes. That was the big
thing was the longevity and that's always been
a huge goal of mine. With your experience and
your crazy client list, the thing I've
noticed is there is a longevity to the people
that work with you. There are touring
musicians currently, and that is something
really important to me. What's the music
that you create and how do you create it?
What is your process? Well, I grew up listening
to a lot of Motown music, a lot of Aretha
Franklin, Otis Redding, Etta James and so I feel like that has really made its way into my writing process and
just the music I'm drawn to. I also love Alabama Shakes. So I would say that
I fit in this world of alternative and pop. Those gives you the fundamentals because I always go back to my clients that
loved the classics. I find that artists that
have that foundation, usually typically are
just better writers and better musicians as a whole. I think also with anyone
you listen to growing up, it does find its way
into your spirit. I think my favorite thing about those types
of artists too, was also their writing style. It felt so direct and
there was no hiding. There's no hiding. There's no hiding. That's a big one. I love that. What do you love
most about singing? Well, I'm sure you
can relate to this, but I just feel the most alive, the most present in my
body that I can be. I think on a daily basis when we see people and
they say I'm fine. Who knows if you're
feeling fine? There's something about
being on stage and performing and actually
even living room. I've done a lot of living room performances where
I've just been alone. Even doing that, it does
something for my soul. It makes me feel very present. We were talking about
that earlier in the class where it's
very cathartic. Yes. Why do people sing? Because maybe they
are too afraid to go to a therapy and
uncover something. They don't want to spend
days, weeks, hours, months, years on, but they can
get it out in a song. Yes. It's really interesting
because that's a very common place
for a singer. I don't know enough about
chakras. I really don't. But I think there is something
with the throat chakra, the third eye, the heart. There's something that
we're igniting when we are singing that I feel like taps into those things.
I could be wrong. Happiness, a memory, a thought of a song remembering where
you were as a child. Yes. All of that for me
personally, as an artist, as a person that used to
perform all the time, but sings now every
day with my students, so I love that. How did you get into
the music industry? I have always been doing music. I don't know when the industry section
of it really came in, but I was performing for many years just at
anything I could. You name it, I probably
have performed at. I was just remembering
that there day I performed at a all male open mic night. Awesome. For some reason. [LAUGHTER] Believe it or not,
it actually was a successful night because
I stood out a bit. Of coarse. But when I graduated
high school, I was living in
Hong Kong and came to LA and I would say that's when my journey
officially started. We talked in this class about this being a
love-hate relationship. What do you love about
being a recording artist? My favorite part and the thing
I love so much about being a recording artist is I love building a choir with
my voice. [LAUGHTER] I love that. The stacking? Are we talking about stacking? Yes. That's something very fun. For people that don't
know what stacking is. Yes. It's basically creating every harmony you can think of, even ones that you
think will sound terrible you try and find
a way for it to fit. Then when you take a step
back from the recording, you have this full choir. In that process you can
have other people that are there join and do a gang vocal. Then you can sometimes do different versions
of your own voice. But I think my favorite
part about being a recording artist is
that I get the ability to put my words into songs
and have those live on. Maybe one day I can
play them for my cats. [LAUGHTER] It's a cool thing. What struggles would
you say you've encountered being an artist? Well, I came up before
the MeToo movement, so I feel like I really have
a taste of both worlds. I think there's still so
many things that need to be fixed in that
realm of equality, even something like having
more female engineers and just more job opportunities for women on tour and
women in festivals. It's still not
where it should be. But I really feel like there is progress being made
on that front. But I think the
part that has been most difficult has
been being taken advantage of with people
that I've worked with or having situations where someone wants to take away
your creative rights. A lot of the intricacies
that come with that. At one point I think
the dream of all of this became bigger than
my voice in the room. That's definitely something that I've shifted and changed. But I'm curious if
it is something that maybe even people in other industries can relate
to as well. [OVERLAPPING] I think they can. I think that
being a woman in business, anybody can relate to that. Where do you fit and where
are the equal rights? Where do I get to keep my intellectual
property and not have somebody steal it or
take it away from me or not get paid as much? There's all those factors. If somebody in this
class is watching and they want to know how to
get started or what to do, how would you guide them? Well, I first think your bedroom is the place
that you need to be. You can right there, you can even record. You can get garage band on
your phone and start writing. That's where you can find what feels good
when you're singing. You can find out more about, what do you want your bigger
purpose in this world to be? Because I think that
leads to longevity too. For me my bigger purpose
is I want people to hear my music and feel
less alone by hearing it. That's really the driving force. If I was tired on tour,
it doesn't matter. I have a bigger
goal than all this. It's bigger than you? Yes. It's always bigger than you. I think starting in your
bedroom, that is everything. Then from there, venture out and do these weird open mics. [LAUGHTER] Then
another huge thing that I really enjoyed was
writing with friends. It took away pressure. It was just part of
our hanging out. I think making it part
of your weekly routine. Make it a special thing that
you're consistently doing. I loved that. I want
to know what's going on with you now and
for the future. Can we talk a little bit about what music you have coming out. Yes. What you're doing right now. Yes. I just released
two new songs. One is called High Water, and one is called
Art of Survival. I'm hoping to release
even more music, but that definitely represents what happened these
past few years, where I've been, where
I'm trying to go. I hope that people feel my
soul when they listen to it. I love that. Well, we look
forward to hearing all of it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You're going to
help me sing them live. I'm going to help
you sing them live. [LAUGHTER] Don't
worry, I got you. [inaudible]. Gosh. Bishop, thank you so much for
joining us. This was big. It's a big treat for anybody
watching this class. It has been a treat for me and we really appreciate
your time today. Thank you. I love you. I love you too. You're the best. Truly the best. Thank you so much for having me. [MUSIC]
12. Final Thoughts: [MUSIC] You've
reached the end of this class and I
really hope that I did my job and gave you the
basics of what you need just to be a singer and if
you want to go further, actually become an artist. I really want you to continue working on your
singing practice. The more you do it the
more you'll love it. I really want to give
you some words of encouragement and
let you know that no matter what you're
doing in life, don't ever let somebody tell
you you can't do something. I've always been so surprised by clients that didn't
think they were good and they ended up
recording and writing and so please continue
on with the skills, the tools, the practicing, and don't stop because that's
your creative process. There's only one you, there's only one voice
that sounds like you and it's very special
and we want to hear it. No matter where you
are in this process, if you're still
struggling or if you've found a song that you love
and you think is pretty good, just go ahead and record it and upload it to our project
gallery so that we can listen to it and look
at it and all share as a community and give
you some feedback. We've come to the end but I
loved having you with me. So thank you so much for
joining us today in my studio.
Valerie Morehouse, Celebrity Vocal Coach
