Tutor Heather Keens joined Vocal Process for the Practical Phonetics course in March, with additional followup sessions in April for the Integrated Voice^TM participants.

Jenevora Williams' research on The Developing Voice is ongoing, and in April she brought new insights back with her from her sojourn in the US.

And David Carey joined Gillyanne in May for With One Voice. David and his wife Rebecca Clark Carey have recently published an excellent book on working with spoken voice - The Vocal Arts Workbook. The workbook comes with a DVD showing actors going through the exercises discussed in the text. Gillyanne's work is referenced in the book, and Singing and the Actor is listed as a recommended text.

Integrated Voice^TM Module Two

We're happy to announce that we will be running Integrated Voice^TM Module Two this year, starting in October. Email Allison for more details and a prospectus.
 

Stack 'em high!

Gillyanne visited the Preston Barbershop Harmony Singers once again for a day's coaching. And the reference in the title is to the Barbershop technique of stacking harmonics to produce expanded sound, making a small choral group sound like a big one. If your chorus or Special Interest Group would like input from Vocal Process, just email Allison or phone us for more details.

RSAMD

Two trips to Glasgow enabled us to coach on two separate training courses. The MA in Musical Theatre at the RSAMD has 21 students on the course, which makes for a busy three days of private coaching and masterclasses. Gillyanne and Jeremy teach back to back, so the students get a high-intensity shot of complementary skills. In this session Gillyanne gave the students a three-hour intensive on the art of teaching Musical Theatre techniques. Many thanks to the students of Knightswood College for volunteering to be guinea pigs.

Motherwell College

And our long association with Gillian Archibald at Motherwell College continues. Gillyanne and Jeremy have been visiting for many years giving masterclasses in Singing and the Actor and Successful Singing Auditions techniques. The Successful Singing Auditions day was extremely well received, and there was one notable event that happened three days after the workshop: "Had to let you know that K with all the confidence issues has only gone and landed her first professional job in panto. Successful Auditions does work!"
Successful Singing Auditions is happening in London on Sunday June 29th (see below).

Central School of Speech and Drama

Gillyanne has also been working for many years on the world-famous MAVS course at CSSD. This May she went in to do a day's training with the MAVS students:

Gillyanne writes:
"We start the session with an exercise in perception, self-awareness and analysis:  listening to recordings of distinctive sounds, then exploring them in our own voices, both spoken and sung, to re-create the sounds we could hear. We then discuss what might be happening in the vocal mechanism to make those sounds. I use sung examples because it is easier to identify vocal quality in sustained sounds, but everybody has to practice speaking in the voice of the singer and then apply it as closely as possible to their own fundamental speaking pitch.

The three key questions I ask are ‘what is happening in the voice [vocal fold level]; in the breath [how much/little/how supported] and in the body [physicality and muscular support]? Lots of interesting things come up from this exercise and I use it to identify learning targets for the rest of the session. I am particularly fond of this exercise because it enables me to find out quite quickly how people listen and respond to different types of sound and the language they use to describe the sounds.

I throw in some diagnostics along the way, such as making space in the larynx using the silent laugh, positive use of glottal onsets to eliminate breathy voice and use of glide or simultaneous onset as a way into finding ‘suspension of the breath’ before sound.

In the afternoon session we explore different vocal set-ups: modal and breathy modal; differentiating between breathy modal and falsetto; speaking with thinner vocal folds and how this might be used for particular effects; exploring the resonance boost that comes with twang and identifying the difference between twang and ‘hyper-nasality’. 

All of these modes are used in text to express different meanings or characterisations, and give the MAVS students much food for thought."

Coming up

Events worth visiting

What is a session singer?

Jeremy posed exactly that question to renowned session singer and teacher Kim Chandler. The resulting hour-long interview is so extensive and detailed that he still hasn't finished transcribing it! Kim covers the ten must-have skills for a good session singer, and fills us in on what happens in a recording studio, including lifting the lid on one particularly interesting (and hidden) aspect of the job.

The first part of Kim's interview is on the Vocal Process website. Here's a taster for you to enjoy.

Kim: Session singing is basically the main path for a singer in the music industry that’s not artist-based. So when you go into the commercial scene, there are two main paths you can go on. The vast majority of people, thank goodness, go the artist path, because if we didn’t have the artists then there’d be no creativity; there’d be no new material. So we need most singers to go into the industry to be artists. However, you’ve got this other strange 'beast' called the 'session singer' - a hired hand who comes in to enhance what artists do.


As an artist you have a 'signature' sound that you are known for, you’re in a particular stylistic box, and that’s where you stay, that’s how people read you, that’s how the marketing is done, that’s where you build your audience from. A session singer is the polar opposite to that because specialism in one particular style is tantamount to starvation! In order to be employable you have to have a whole range of skills and a whole range of styles that you cover in order to keep enough work coming through the door to live off it.

Jeremy: OK, so let’s say you’ve got a session with an artist, is your job then to match what they do?

Kim: It depends. This is the thing – it changes per artist, there is so much variability it’s kind of mad. But that’s actually what I really love about it – I never really know what’s going to be expected of me next.

Jeremy: And you’re not going to find out until you actually get there...

Kim: Yes, that’s right. So adaptability, flexibility, versatility, all of those things pretty much sum up what the session singer has to be able to do. You have to be able to adapt to whatever the situation is that you find yourself in. So sometimes you’ll find yourself there to actually provide a contrast to the artist so that you are not necessarily trying to match them exactly because that’s not the brief. And other times it is to actually lead the artist and they copy you. What’s called 'ghost vocals' which is a secretive area of session singing!

Jeremy: Should you be telling me this?

Kim: It is one of those weird parts of the session world where you may have to sign non-disclosure agreements etc. Ghost-vocalling is where you have perhaps a new artist, an inexperienced artist, so they bring in an experienced, seasoned session singer to put the vocal down first so that then the budding artist has someone experienced to be able to effectively copy or at least be inspired by the way that it has been sung. The person who has written the song may be male, the artist may be female, the poor producer or writer can’t actually sing the song for the artist to be able to capture what they’re asking for because they can't sing, so they bring in a session singer and say “Could you sing this for us please?”. So that's how it can be working with artists. You’ve literally got the full gamut from the artist copying you, all the way through to something that works with the artist, that enhances the artist, but is actually quite distinctly different. So that there is a collaborative vocal event that’s going on that’s not just you trying to sound like the artist. Because in that respect the artist is best off doing their own backing vocals if they want someone that sounds like them.

Jeremy: Good point.

Kim: And that’s just the session work that deals with artists, session work also encompasses radio jingles, tv jingles, adverts, film music, demo-ing songs for songwriters, where a songwriter with a publishing deal… there’s lots and lots of male songwriters, way more male songwriters than female songwriters for some bizarre reason. I think that’s starting to change, but nonetheless the vast majority of songwriters are male at the moment - and often writing for female artists. So then they need session singers to sing the song in the first place for them to be able to shop the song out to potential artists. So often I’m brought in as the first person interpreting the material, which is an interesting experience in itself because depending on the level of experience of the songwriter, sometimes the songwriter has written it in completely the wrong key for the female voice, and then when you shift it to the right key for the female voice it actually changes the whole musical setting. So then they’ve got to go back and change the track.

Jeremy: So it can be a collaboration?

Kim: Not a collaboration as such because what I’m not interested in doing is getting involved in the song-writing process, because I am a hired hand. I mean, some people do, there are session singers that do actually want to be involved in the collaborative process and get points and become part of the whole thing. I made an independent, personal decision to not get involved in that side of things and to keep it all very clean and tidy. But what I’m saying is certain songwriters have no idea in some respects how the female voice works, even though they’re attempting to write for it. If they’re on the inexperienced end of song writing, quite a few things have to change for me to be able to interpret the song for the first time, if that makes sense.

Jeremy: Yes

Kim: Because they’re not female, that’s why they’re hiring someone who is! It can really be an educational process for the songwriter to work with a female singer and work out how it works best for the female voice. You can’t just write in any old key in any old range and hope that it’s going to sound good, even with a professional singer. You can’t just sing any old thing and make it sound good. It’s got to sit in the right place for your voice.

Jeremy: I want to go back to something. What skills do you think a session singer needs to have?

You can read Kim's first five skills on the Vocal Process website by clicking here

You can also visit Kim's own website for audio and video demos of the backing vocalist in action. And Kim is the vocalist/percussionist in the house band for Sky One's primetime music gameshow, "Don't Forget the Lyrics" on Sundays at 7pm.

And finally