This Is A Voice

Who we are and what we do (including surviving Lockdown)

July 01, 2020 Jeremy Fisher and Dr Gillyanne Kayes Season 1 Episode 1
This Is A Voice
Who we are and what we do (including surviving Lockdown)
Show Notes Transcript

In our first podcast episode, vocal experts and bestselling authors Dr Gillyanne Kayes (Singing teacher) and Jeremy Fisher (Vocal coach) chat about all things voice. AMA!

How we started, writing the book This Is A Voice for the Wellcome Trust, surviving the cancellation of all our international courses during Lockdown, creating the Online Singing Teacher Training (and selling out three times).

Every episode will include AMA (Ask Me Anything), and we have a whole musical box tin of questions for you.
This episode the questions are:
1. Teaching the opposite gender and demonstration - how do we manage that?
2. Accompanying skills - how important are they for a singing teacher and can I apply for jobs in colleges without them?
3. Ask students to sing the whole song first or work on fragments first in a singing lesson?

This podcast is sponsored by CANU Publishing, the publishers of Jeremy's new book "Why Do I Need A Vocal Coach? Stories, tips and hacks from the studio of a voice expert"
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B084QDLT7C

Online Singing Teacher Training is now called 12 Hours to Better Singing Teaching and is available 24/7 here https://vocal-process-hub.teachable.com/p/12-hours-to-better-singing-teaching 

Jingle specially written for us by Connagh Tonkinson
Oohs and ahhs voiced by members of the company

Announcer :

This is a podcast with Dr. Gillyanne Kayes and Jeremy Fisher.

Jeremy Fisher :

Hello, and welcome to our first podcast. This is Vocal Process. I'm Jeremy Fisher.

Gillyanne Kayes :

And I'm... Gillyanne Kayes.

Jeremy Fisher :

you're not very sure about that.

Gillyanne Kayes :

Dr. Gillyanne. So there's a good reason why that the overall title of this podcast is this is a voice. This is a voice. Because back in 2015, do you not think it was Yeah, the welcome foundation approached us and asked us to write a book on the voice that was going to be linked with their exhibition.

Jeremy :

Okay, let's be let's be clear on this. What they actually asked us to write was the Classical chapter on in the book, which was an interesting dichotomy, really for us because we are known not for classical singing, but for musical theatre and contemporary singing. So I went, we did

Gillyanne Kayes :

We did both train as classical musicians

Jeremy :

we did both train as classical musicians

Gillyanne Kayes :

around when we were training, back in Ye Olde Days

Jeremy :

and I still coach opera singers myself. But it was interesting that I went down to the meeting and heard what the book was going to be about, and basically pitched on the spot for the entire book, because what they wanted to cover was classical singing, contemporary singing, which we insisted on spoken voice, mimicry, ventriloquism and beatboxing. And I just went, I'd love to write about all of those. And the idea was that we were going to write exercises. It was started as 60 exercises, and then it went to 99 exercises, and in the end, we wrote about 150 of them, and they they then discover the book was too long. So they had to cut a whole load out.

Gillyanne Kayes :

and I cannot tell you how annoyed I was with my husband. Jeremy, by the way is my husband. Not only are we a working team, but we're also a husband and wife, team, a life team. I can't tell you how annoyed I was when he came home and said, oh, we're doing a whole lot. And he read me the list. And I went, but we don't know anything about beatboxing. I don't know anything about beatboxing. What are you thinking of?

Jeremy :

And I went, no, it's fine. It'll be fine. Don't worry. I'll do the beatboxing, ventriloquism and mimicry chapters, and it will work on the others together.

Gillyanne Kayes :

And it turned out the beatboxing turned out to be one of the most interesting chapters, isn't it? Because it's right on the edge of what people can do with their voices. And there's links with breath work. And there's links with understanding of phonation you know, how we voice sound, and also with phonetics and linguistics? My goodness.

Jeremy :

Consonants! I mean, what's so fascinating about beatboxing is it's consonant extreme, basically. And it was fascinating finding a link between all of those different voice uses because as far as we know, they've never been put together in one book. And the link that we came up with, sort of by trial and error really was consonant use, because different things require different consonant use. And the beatboxing was so extreme, it's right out there. And also the idea that you have four different air supplies, which again, you don't normally do in pretty much anything else. So that was fascinating. If you need to know more, read the book. This Is A Voice published by Profile Books.

Gillyanne Kayes :

So that's how the book came to came into being and it's why we use this as our generic title because what could be better than This Is A Voice which encompasses everything vocal. Yeah. Everything voice. Yes. Okay. So what we were planning to talk about today was how we have managed with the whole lockdown situation because we realise it's pretty much three months in the UK...

Jeremy :

just over

Gillyanne Kayes :

...that we Brits have been in lockdown in in various versions. There's a little bit of easing in England and in Wales now, where we are. And it's been a challenging time. We connect with a lot of people in the voice community, a lot of singing teachers, and vocal coaches and musical theatre MDs. And it's been a really, really tough time for people, all you choral trainers as well. And it's been fascinating to see how people deal with that.

Jeremy :

I think, our personal situation was that we were due to go to Finland, Sweden, Australia and America in the three months, between March and the very end of May, June. Yeah. And all of that went completely out the window. We'd already spent I think nearly 12,000 pounds on booking flights and hotels and car hire and all sorts of things like that. So that also went and we sat there for about two weeks going, well, we're not we're not going to actually do anything because we don't know what to do. But because we were due to go to Australia and do our singing teachers retreat over there, it was actually Lisa Perks. Hi, Lisa, who encouraged us with the idea of putting it online. Now, we've been doing online training for at least 10 years.

Gillyanne Kayes :

Well, if you think back to longer first webinars,

Jeremy :

well, the first the first Voicebox Video that I made for online downloading was 2005.

Gillyanne Kayes :

I think I gave my first Skype lesson round about 2008.

Jeremy :

So we've been doing it a long time, but we haven't actually put this course online or anything like it really

Gillyanne Kayes :

and not for such a large group because we tend to work with with either one to ones in the online delivery, or with a group of about six people. So suddenly having 25 people in the room was amazing. And we still are very thankful to our Ozzy colleagues, who had been expecting us to go to Melbourne. And had in fact asked us to do not only one three-day intensive on singing teacher training, but had requested and advanced because this was Australia The Return. And they pretty much begged us to put the courses online. And so we did,

Jeremy :

we looked at it and we went well, we've got between 18 and 21 hours of face to face. A lot of intense content, what can we do, how much of it can be transferred? And what's the format and actually, we ended up doing because that was the other thing is that we normally we do 11 hour days and there is no way we were going to do 11 hour days on zoom.

Gillyanne Kayes :

I should explain that the 11 hour days of what happened if you come to our place and do a vocal retreat because of course, you get fed as well. That's kind of chill out time and all the rest of it. And they arevvery long days.

Jeremy :

They're very intense. And we weren't going to do that online. So we ended up doing, offering a course that was two hours a day, five days a week for two weeks, which is 20 hours in total. And we also decided that we were going to do it at a time that worked for us as well as work for as many people as possible. So rather than doing our standard ones, which is sort of afternoons and early evening, we went what would happen if we actually started the course at 10am. And we finished at midday, and we looked around the world and when Who's that going to work for and I have to apologise to the west coast of America because Sorry, guys, it doesn't work for you.

Gillyanne Kayes :

What time is it?

Jeremy :

I think it is. I think it's 4am.

Gillyanne Kayes :

That's not so good. Not so good. I know Americans early risers,

Jeremy :

I think in New York, it was 5am and that was a possibility. But for Australia, it was 7pm for two hours and for New Zealand It was 9pm for two hours. And then we looked around at all the other places that we have clients and we went okay, works in Dubai, works in Germany, works in Denmark, works in Sweden, works in Russia, works in Malaysia, and we started looking at all the times and going Actually, this is probably the best time.

Gillyanne Kayes :

Yeah, absolutely. And the interesting thing is that Jeremy's said it's two hours a day. So what you're looking at is the first week, essentially really cutting your coat according to the cloth in terms of course content. Yes. And the first time we delivered the course we thought, oh my lord, we have actually ditched about half of the course content, how is it going to work

Unknown Speaker :

Doh, you can't say ditched! We didn't ditch it, we refined it!

Gillyanne Kayes :

Absolutely, we refined it. But you don't jettison it or anything like that. You know what's so interesting? The thing we discovered is less is more.

Jeremy :

I think it was so fascinating because because we're moving now to a completely different format. It's a different way of presenting.

Gillyanne Kayes :

And it's a different way of learning for the learners.

Jeremy :

Yes. So we started, we went on zoom, because we've been using zoom for years, but we hadn't ever used the breakout rooms. And we started using the breakout rooms on the first course. And that was amazing. Because it was so lovely for people to be able to talk with each other. We had maybe five or six people per breakout room, and we had a moderator there just to make sure that nobody went off on one.

Gillyanne Kayes :

All the discussion was led and curated.

Jeremy :

And people loved it. And so we would do something, we teach something, we would discuss something. And then they go into the breakout rooms, try it out, practice it, it was really fascinating how well that worked. And then the other thing is that we have the chat box live the entire time so that people could ask questions in real time while we were doing something or explaining something or discussing something and we could answer immediately, and that was hugely Popular, IS hugely popular.

Gillyanne Kayes :

Yeah. And I do feel that as a collaborative teaching team, we are at an advantage in this kind of delivery for two reasons. First of all, we're in the room together. So there is an interpersonal dynamic going on there, that enables people to feel that, that sense of reality instead of that distancing that we have, when we work with zoom, which is something that you know, psychologists and trainers, as well as those receiving a training have been talking about, they're talking about being zoomed out.

Jeremy :

And you'll get from this that we interrupt each other and pick up each others' sentences and stuff like that.

Gillyanne Kayes :

And we never argue

Jeremy :

Never, ever argue, not once.

Gillyanne Kayes :

So that's the first thing. And the second thing is that if you have somebody else in there, fielding the comments, and checking them, maybe while the other person is talking and delivering visuals or whatever mode you're using for your training, It means then the other person can pick up on that and say, oh, Leslie said this, this is a really interesting point. Let's pick that up. And I just made the learning a much richer experience.

Jeremy :

And by the way, anybody who wants to do this, I do recommend having two screens. Because it is so good to have everything that you want set up on a separate screen so that you can completely focus on who is on screen.

Gillyanne Kayes :

You mean, if you're delivering

Jeremy :

If I'm if you're delivering, absolutely

Gillyanne Kayes :

I think the other thing because this came out from the feedback from the first run of the course, is that if you're attending a zoom meeting, you need to think ahead as to how it's going to be the best way for you to make notes. Because if it's not all being recorded, and then uploaded for a time period for you to view, which we don't, which we don't do, and I know some people do, and that's fine. There's a reason why we don't do it. I'll tell you in a minute actually. But you need some way of being able to reliably note things down as you go along? So have a think about that before you attend a zoom meeting. Otherwise, you're gonna go out, you know, with a kind of the electric shock hair thing. It's a load of information coming at you. And you won't know what you really learned. I'm just going to pick up on why we don't upload the recording, and kind of make it available to other people post hoc. Well, we don't do that because in order for singing teachers to share their practice, they have to be prepared to be vulnerable. And you don't want that shared with all and sundry. Yeah, that kind of thing isn't on sometimes the way we give each other feedback, you know, in a modern world is totally not appropriate. Yes, I know what I want to say about this particular experience. And I think we will do it again, which is that for the duration of each week of training and a little bit before and for a whole whole fortnight afterwards, we run a Facebook group. And that Facebook group is specifically for the people attending the training. The discussion moderators are also there moderating comments, fielding questions, and it gives people a chance to upload questions to maybe record a sound file of, Hey, I tried this out.

Jeremy :

We've had some amazing stuff on the Facebook group. We've had people uploading commercial recordings like you know, you go to a YouTube channel and go, Oh, what's this person doing? Are they doing what we discussed in the... in the class today? They've had, they've done recordings of themselves trying sounds out that they have never made before and everybody is chipping in and we engender a positive situation. So we are constantly getting people doing positive, uplifting, and basically people don't leave negative feedback in our groups

Gillyanne Kayes :

No, they don't seem to, it's feedback that is of use. And I honestly think that the reason why we don't get negativity is the way that we lead the course.

Jeremy :

That's been really fascinating. And this is this new thing that we're toying with at the moment, which is peer to peer learning. And we're doing structured peer learning, which is a new venture for us. And it is proving to be really useful.

Gillyanne Kayes :

I think, you know, really, in a way the the thing that you can take home from this with regard to being in lockdown and the way that our lives have changed so much, is that because we turned around and put something together in order to deal with a situation we owe, we now have a different way of working. It's changed the way we work, not simply because we're delivering online but it's changed the way we deliver training. And that's been fascinating.

Jeremy :

Is it bad to say I love Lockdown?

Unknown Speaker :

No, it's not because I know you're and introvert

Jeremy :

I love locked in. I'm an extrovert introvert, and I love having all of this time at home. And I love not having to talk to people. And I love not having to be out there. I do go out and I enjoy it. But my idea of Heaven is having a book to read and sit in the garden. And we've actually had a lot more time to do that. And it's been really fascinating during this course, because we, as a couple are so used to teaching 8, 9, 10, 11 hours a day packing the content in, packing the value in. And what we've discovered on particularly on this course, is that people first of all can't take that amount of information online because you have a whole load of new things that you having to deal with, including trying to pick up subtle cues that are actually they're out of sync with what you're hearing. This is one of the things that there's been just been a research paper published on, out of sync zoom and why it's so exhausting, just fascinating. So we can't do the number of hours that we normally do. And it actually it's worked really well for us. Because normally what happens is we do 21 hours over two and a half days. And then we do nothing for three days, because we can't. And now we're going that was that two hours, here's another hour of follow up that we're doing and what should we do this afternoon?

Gillyanne Kayes :

So it's been a massive rethink and a growth process. And we'd love to know from those of you listening, what your own growth process has been during this time, yes, let us know. Let us know.

Jeremy :

And we have Oh yeah, we know we have a thing that we're going to be doing, which is we have to play this. And so that's a little biscuit tin that we've got, which in fact is your father's biscuit

Gillyanne Kayes :

was my dad's biscuit tin. Just the six or seven months before he left us. And he did love his Jacob's crackers. And there they were in

Jeremy :

Jacobs if you're listening and we'll have sponsorship.

Gillyanne Kayes :

Yes, please. So what goes in this tin are questions that come out of the in person courses we run and we thought it would be fun to start answering some of them as part of each podcast.

Jeremy :

Yeah, we've been collecting. First of all, when people come on the courses and they're face to face with us at our place. We have that tin on the table and people can drop questions in and we answer them at the end of each day. But we've also been collecting questions online. We've been doing it on the courses, we've had chat boxes, we've been doing all sorts of things. So we have the tin here. And it has quite a lot of questions in it and we thought it would be great for us to do ama Ask me anything.

Gillyanne Kayes :

I'm going to have our hydration moment.

Jeremy :

So I'm going to pick out the first one which says "Teaching the opposite gender and demonstration." What do we think about teaching the opposite gender? Should we shouldn't we? How do we manage it? What's going on? Gillyanne?

Gillyanne Kayes :

Okay, I remember very clearly when I first started working with the adult male voice, and not quite knowing what I was doing, and probably teaching them to negotiate their range in a similar way to women. So that's one of the first things you need to be aware of. If you're an adult female, and you're working with a cis adult cis male, then he will have his vocal gear changes in a different proportion of his range to you, the female and to cut to the chase if you think about chest register or chest mechanism. Generally speaking, an adult male can take his voice through a much larger part of his pitch range in chest voice than most Females

Jeremy :

I would say two octaves without blinking

Gillyanne Kayes :

I was thinking two octaves, and that is very different for female voice.

Jeremy :

And you got to remember also that the vast majority of male voice writing is designed to be sung in chest voice and there are a couple of exception styles. The barbershop tenor sings mostly in falsetto and the r&b guy sings mostly in falsetto although he will pop in and out.

Gillyanne Kayes :

Now with Jeremy mentioning the F word here, that's quite interesting. As a female, I mean, obviously, hopefully, you will have listened to lots of male singers. But you may not be aware that what is often termed as a head voice in the upper part of a man's range is not the same as what a female uses in her head voice generally. So be careful how you demonstrate because you may find particularly with the less experienced singers, that the guy will imitate in falsetto because that's what he's hearing in your voice. Sometimes they'll imitate at your pitch, and sometimes they'll try and imitate an octave lower but still in falsetto, I mean, there are two things that I tend to do now, when I'm working with a male voice in terms of modelling. If I want to model how he should sound in his upper range, so he's not, for instance, pushing too hard with his chest voice. I will do it in a light chest voice in my range, and I will demonstrate doing something heavy and overworked and then kind of backing off and doing something lighter. What I won't do is use my female head voice and he is much more likely to pick up then what it is he needs to do.

Jeremy :

You mentioned the H word, which is head voice and there's so much confusion about head voice.

Gillyanne Kayes :

Let's not go there. That should be a whole podcast on it's own

Jeremy :

If you want us to do a podcast on head voice and Heaven help you if you do, please do let us know.

Gillyanne Kayes :

Yeah, head and chest voice. Yeah. And the other thing that I do is I adjust my resonance. So that if I feel that the way I'm modelling sounds too lightweight, I mean, you can hear that I haven't got a heavy dark voice, even in my speaking voice. So I might model something a bit more like this to make it sound a bit more manly. And that will probably also because auditorally he's going to relate to that. And then he will be able to find it in his own voice.

Jeremy :

Essentially, we're talking about people tapping into the timbre rather than the pitch. So as a bass, I work with people who are almost all higher than me. So I will sometimes do it at my pitch and I'll let them know that I'm going to do it at a different pitch. And then if they want to imitate me at that pitch, that's fine. I will just say to them now go a little higher, go a little higher. Stop.

Gillyanne Kayes :

Tell us your best advice as a cis male working with a cis female. What do you do?

Jeremy :

Yeah, funnily enough I do not sing in falsetto. I know that there are a lot of men who have a very good falsetto and are quite happy and comfortable up in that range, but I tend not to partly because, again, we're still talking timbre, so even a girl who is listening to you, singing in her own range will still hear your timbre and will try and copy it. So I tend to sing it an octave lower but I sing it lighter, I will do the opposite. No, I'll do the same. You do it darker when you're singing for men and I will do it lighter when I'm singing for women. Because again, you are... people are hearing feeling or trying out the timbre in their own mind

Gillyanne Kayes :

because people people are our natural mimics that's one of the ways we learn. So lighter, brighter, thinner,

Unknown Speaker :

lighter, brighter, thinner. Which is how I always wanted to be.

Gillyanne Kayes :

I've got it I've got to share with you something which is that sometimes a newish client will come to me Maybe he's had a few lessons and I listened to how they use a voice say, for example, that it's a female singer. And I'm pretty sure when I'm listening to her that she's worked with a male teacher, who has simply demonstrated at her all the time. And I am nearly always right.

Jeremy :

And it's interesting because they will be using the resonating shapes that he is using, using it in their own voice. So you hear a shape that isn't, ooh, we're on to authenticity, you hear a shape that isn't authentic?

Gillyanne Kayes :

Well, not only that, I sometimes hear a voice being used in a way that doesn't work for that individual voice in terms of weight, because a male voice tends to have more weight than a female voice. Cool. There's another podcast

Jeremy :

was coming up right. There we go. Good question. That was one question. That's, that's what Unfortunately, that's what happened. Let's do two more. Okay, let's do the next one.

Gillyanne Kayes :

I'm loving this all these ideas we're getting just from talking. Yeah, that's what we do

Jeremy :

"Accompanying skills. How important are they for a singing teacher is applying for further education Vocal Coaching positions without impeccable piano skills possible?"

Gillyanne Kayes :

Really interesting question

Jeremy :

Sorry I just knocked your microphone. Really interesting question because we are sort of talking the difference between the singing teacher and the vocal coach. And I know that we're going to cover that in a lot more detail in another podcast. We're promising you all these podcasts. We've got the whole lot laid out.

Gillyanne Kayes :

Yeah. There was a really interesting discussion about this in our Facebook group, and quite a few years ago now, where somebody said, Do I need to be... Do I need keyboard skills in order to be a good singing teacher? And there was quite a division of thought on that because some people felt that you had to be able to read music and understand what you were looking at in terms of the score and accompany your students in order to do a good job. And other people said no, I was working with backing tracks. Some people said, Actually, I really don't play piano very well. Others said, I, you know, have basic piano skills so I can cue my students in for exercises, but I don't accompany the songs. And I think that's a really interesting discussion.

Jeremy :

I have to say I wrote a book on this with Anne Leatherland called "How to accompany your students even even if you're terrible at the piano". And there are certain conventions that you can use. I mean, essentially, if you learn four chords, you can play about 500 different pop songs. And also the backing tracks are just so good at the moment and there are so many of them that as long as you know how to cue up something I would probably go with that. I think the real problem is how well you can split your focus. And that depends on how... how comfortable you are with your piano skills. I am very comfortable playing anything at all. And I am able to split my focus but then I have worked for 37 years as a professional pianist, so I ought to be able to do that. I think if you are not very comfortable with your piano skills, and you end up focusing too much on what it is that you're playing, First of all, you're probably doing something that's too complicated, so simplify. And secondly, that's not your job. Your job is to focus on the singer. Your job is actual vocal technique. And I think that in a way that question is two questions, which is do I need piano skills to teach singing? Answer No. And do any piano skills to go to something like a drama college and teach singing their answer almost certainly, because they aren't really looking for singing teachers. They are looking for vocal coaches who teach singing. And that's a different thing. Vocal coaches need to play. I am going to go there.

Gillyanne Kayes :

I'm eyeing Jeremy up

Unknown Speaker :

I'm getting the eye from Gillyanne

Unknown Speaker :

The evil eye. First of all, he's absolutely right. That is that is accepted practice that they will want you to be able to play piano. If you're teaching singing, particularly in musical theatre colleges or in further education. I think one of the reasons for that is they simply don't have the budget to pay for a rep coach. Now, if you go to a music Conservatoire that is very different. My singing teacher when I was learning singing back in the 1970s, where I was working with a very good singing teacher. She could play enough to she didn't really accompany exercises. She taught you the pattern. And then she gave you one note or maybe it was a chord. She did not do songs, she did not play songs. You brought your accompanist into the lesson. And she also ran master classes weekly master classes where you could take your rep, she was a good singing teacher. That's the Conservatoire tradition. Most further education colleges simply don't have that budget and they don't have the rep coach. They don't have the pianists in there.

Jeremy :

There's also a thing about what repertoire your teaching. I mean, we will go into this a lot more in a separate podcast, but there is... if the repertoire you're teaching is musically complex. So if you've got something like a Richard Strauss lied, which is complicated to play and actually complicated harmonically as well, you're going to need some level of skill to work that out, even to train somebody to sing it. If you're doing Lady Gaga song, apologies to Lady Gaga but not musically that complicated. You can busk your way through that. Or you can hit one chord every every bar, or you can get a backing track.

Gillyanne Kayes :

But you'd better know the style.

Jeremy :

Yes, much more important

Gillyanne Kayes :

Because if you don't know the style, I mean, if we're going to use the analogy of Richard Straus, if you're used to teaching Richard Strauss and suddenly you have to teach Lady Gaga, you might really not do that well. I think what I'd like to say going back to the first part of the question is, for me, it doesn't matter whether you can play piano or not as it happens, I can. And I say that in the presence of my husband, I can. It matters how good a musician you are. Now you can be a musician without actually being able to read music. But if you don't understand melody, if you can't track melodies, and you can't track pitch, if you can't track and process a rhythmic pattern. And if you can't understand the the environment, the harmony and all of the stuff that's going on in the backing of the the music track, then my opinion, don't teach singing.

Jeremy :

Yeah, I'll be a little blunt because I sometimes AM. If you don't understand music and you're teaching singing, you aren't teaching singing, you're teaching noise making. It's very different thing.

Gillyanne Kayes :

Yeah. And that's our position.

Jeremy :

That's our position. So that's the end of that one.

Gillyanne Kayes :

Right. Last question.

Jeremy :

Last question. "Do you ask your client to sing the whole song first or work on fragments of it from the beginning?" This is very interesting because we actually talked about this on the course on the singing teachers, Online Singing Teacher Training. This is a very interesting one. And we because we asked people to submit videos of them have them teaching we see every range of this

Unknown Speaker :

we see what you do, people, we see you

Jeremy :

And I think it's really interesting. I have a take on this. You've got to remember that I come from a musician, vocal coach background, even though I know do singing technique as well. And my take is, let's sing the song, I need to know where you are today. If you don't sing anything, and you even, interestingly, if you don't sing anything, you don't even know what the song is going to be in, you go into warm ups, then you're really going blind. My ideal would be to get somebody to sing at least a verse or a chorus, just to get them into the mood, to get them into the room, and to find out where they are and what they're doing that today rather than trying to teach from memory.

Gillyanne Kayes :

Yeah, do you know I mean, we don't know yet what kind of an audience we're getting for this podcast. But what I will say to you, those of you who are singers, and who are looking For good vocal coaches and teachers, if you don't get to sing your song in the lesson, or you're consistently being stopped after a few bars and you never get through your song. I don't think your teachers really serving you

Jeremy :

You're not you're not being served, no.

Gillyanne Kayes :

I will say from my perspective that it kind of depends. If the client has already learned the song, and it's something they want to work on, I will generally hear them sing the whole song through to hear where they are with it. Sometimes a client comes in and says, actually, I'm having a problem with this part. And I might listen to that part. And then I might go back because often where there's a problem, it's something that happened eight bars earlier.

Jeremy :

It's not necessarily where the problem is. It's 8 bars before, I agree.

Gillyanne Kayes :

It's something that you set up. Yeah. I think there is nothing more frustrating For a singer than to be stopped after one bar over and over again.

Jeremy :

Yes, if you like it's not contextual. And I think it's really fascinating. I know people who will do three bars for half an hour, because they haven't got quite the right sound and I'm going that's not contextual. This is you've got this sort of image or ordered auditory image of a sound that you must be making. And it's, it's in a context, you've coming, you're coming out of something, you're going into something else, you need to at least sing the entire phrase, if not the three phrases around it, to find out energetically what you're supposed to be doing at that point, no matter what style you're in,

Gillyanne Kayes :

So singing teachers, I know you want to nitpick, I love to nitpick. But do bear in mind what the experience is like for your client for your student and why they're there. They are there to sing songs, you know, they want to learn to sing music. Yes, that's the point of technique, which is getting that vocalist up and running so that they can sing music.

Jeremy :

That's another podcast. What is the point of technique?

Unknown Speaker :

Yeah. So stop it.

Gillyanne Kayes :

So, if there are things you want to nitpick, just choose one thing to work on, which I'm sure Jeremy will want to expand on in a moment, choose one thing to work on and just note the others down. You know, a great way to motivate your client to come for further lessons is to tell them at the end, what they've just achieved, what they've done. And then let them know what further work you can do with them on that song.

Jeremy :

I'm good with that. We go into that a lot more on the singing teacher online training.

Gillyanne Kayes :

So I think we've answered enough questions. Goodness me that was a lot of mileage out to three pieces of paper. I'm really thrilled, I have to say

Jeremy :

I just wanted to take this moment to thank our sponsor, and our sponsor today. Our sponsor today is Canu Publishing, which is spelled C A N U so looks like can you but pronounced canny because it's a Welsh word. And it's a Welsh word meaning to utter, to say, to speak, to sing, to proselytise, to train. It has all sorts of meanings.

Gillyanne Kayes :

It's perfect for This Is A Voice , isn't it?

Jeremy :

And the sponsor Canu Publishing is an arm of Vocal Process, it's the publishing arm and we now have three books published by Canu Publishing and they are all Amazon number one bestsellers.

Gillyanne Kayes :

Now, I want you to remind us when the next run of the Online Singing Teacher Training is please Jeremy

Jeremy :

July 3rd 2020.

Gillyanne Kayes :

Yeah. And where can they find it, does this come in the credits?

Jeremy :

It can do. Yes, it will come in the show notes. Okay. www vocal store. Hang on

Unknown Speaker :

rewind

Jeremy :

www.store.Vocalprocess.co.uk.

Gillyanne Kayes :

Yeah, just google Online Singing Teacher Training Vocal Process, they probably will they find it?

Jeremy :

Possibly.

Gillyanne Kayes :

Okay.

Jeremy :

You might find all sorts of things!

Gillyanne Kayes :

We'd better check that out people Okay, well, good. That was a blast

Jeremy :

That was a blast, and we'll see you next time. Bye.

Gillyanne Kayes :

Bye

Jeremy :

This Is A Voice, a podcast with Dr. Gillyanne Kayes and Jeremy Fisher