What happens in our singing lessons, 1-1s & Masterclasses? What we teach & why we teach it

You've probably seen our books, you've listened to the podcasts, but you may not know what we really do in our 1-1 lessons and masterclasses.
We're Dr Gillyanne Kayes and Jeremy Fisher, and we own and run VocalProcess. We'll be sharing with you some examples of what we do in our 1-1 singing and coaching sessions, and why we do it.

0:00 Building new brain pathways
2:28 Talking about our singing lessons
3:54 Being client led & power imbalance
4:40 The extremes and Guru Gone Mad
8:15 The purpose of vocal mechanics is self-discovery
10:19 Exercises to raise self-awareness in a student
12:25 Comparison to embed new vocal techniques
17:00 Target practice for singers
20:36 Belting not shouting
23:31 Masterclasses & power imbalance - a horror story
28:42 Waving your magic wand
29:37 Watch us live in London
33.35 Watch our prerecorded masterclasses and judge us
35.45 Join in one of our live masterclasses online?

Here's the link for our 1-1 coaching Calendar for Gillyanne or Jeremy https://drgillyannekayesjeremyfisherinspirationsession.as.me/schedule.php

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And here's the link to the free preview of the Mastering Musical Theatre masterclass
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For real 1-1 attention on your own voice, book a voice coaching session in the singing studio with Jeremy or Gillyanne
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The 12 Hours to Better Singing Teaching course online, with voice coaching techniques, vocal articulation exercises and a LOT more for the up-to-date singing teacher is here https://vocal-process-hub.teachable.com/p/12-hours-to-better-singing-teaching

For the best self-guided learning, check out the Vocal Process Learning Lounge - 22 years of vocal coaching resources (over 600 videos) for less than the price of one private singing lesson. Click  on the link and choose a Level
https://vocalprocess.co.uk/learning-lounge/

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Transcript

What happens in our singing lessons, 1-1s and Masterclasses?

[00:00:00] Really what you're talking about is ways of introducing a new pathway. Yes. So sometimes what we have to do is it's almost interrupt that um, that process, in that we interrupt that pathway. Mm-hmm. I often say to my um, clients, it's like, know, you've set satnav and off you go and it goes in a particular way and it will go that way unless you give it a steer to go in another direction.

[00:00:25] By the way, these brain pathways don't disappear. They don't, you can't obliterate them. You can't change a brain pathway. What you can do is build a new one that is more efficient or more direct, or gives you the result that you want. That old pathway is still there. Yeah. The fact that the, my singer could swap between two or three different versions says that that pathway is still there.

[00:00:43] They're all there. So it's really very interesting and the result was, Amazing because we, they were super pleased, weren't they? Thrilled? Thrilled to bits. It's actually, I'm gonna tell you the phrase that she said was, where have you been? Where have you been all my life. Oh, yes. Which is brilliant because she could do the thing that she wanted to do.

[00:01:04] Now, that's not my Choice. It's not my taste, it's not my decision. That wasn't my anything. I asked her at the beginning of the session, what do you want to achieve? And she said, I want to achieve this specific thing. And so everything I then did was basically geared towards getting her to achieve that thing because it was clearly achievable.

[00:01:22] But the other thing was experimenting with routes to get there so that I said I'm hearing this. Let's change that bit. Okay. Does that work better? Yes, it does. Okay. We'll keep that. I also hear this. Let's change it to that. Does that work better? No, it doesn't. Okay. Ditch that one. That's fine.

[00:01:40] Keep the one that you started with. Let's add to it. So it's very interesting, the whole business of. This is where the diagnosis comes in is what does your singer want to do? Can you diagnose the route and the gradient to get them there. This is a voice, a podcast with Dr. Gillyanne Kayes and Jeremy Fisher.

[00:02:18] Hello and welcome to season seven, episode nine of This is a Voice. 

[00:02:23] The podcast where we get Vocal about voice. 

[00:02:25] I'm Jeremy Fisher. 

[00:02:26] And I'm Dr. Gillyanne Kayes. 

[00:02:28] And today we are talking about lessons, one-to-one lessons. Now you've probably seen books, you've seen the podcast obviously because you're here, you've heard the podcast.

[00:02:37] But you may not know what we really do in our one-to-one sessions. 

[00:02:41] And actually one of the reasons why we wanted to do this week, is that we've just been watching case histories from our Cohort 22-23 accreditation group. Yes. And seeing how they are rolling in the lessons. because if you're going to teach teachers, you actually really need to dig into the nitty gritty of what is a lesson, what you know, what goes on there.

[00:03:06] The question for me really is probably the question for you too is do we actually walk the talk? So when you're teaching teachers, it's very easy to spout, but do we actually do what we say we do? So we thought we would share with you what we do in lessons, the sort of things that happen, the sort of type of lessons that we do, what we offer.

[00:03:24] Yeah. Summer is here. And we've spent a lot of time developing our website, getting a whole load of ducks in a row. Yes. And we are able at last, to open up our teaching studio a little bit more because it's been hard for people to get sessions from us.

[00:03:41] It has, yes. We've been booked out for a long time. And in fact, it wasn't just doing the website, it was putting all the courses up as well. Mm-hmm. So we really have been working hard behind the scenes, but now the studios are open again. So let's talk, the interesting thing for me is, The whole power balance of teacher, student and how that works.

[00:04:01] Yes. Can I just say something here? A little shout up for Kari Ragan and colleagues who've written a number of articles about evidence-based practice. Kari says there's an inherent power imbalance in a singing lesson, and it is true. We have that potential to really wield that power in, a potentially negative way.

[00:04:23] And it's something that's been talked about a lot at the moment, isn't it, Jeremy? Yeah. About singer agency being client led. This is actually not new information, being client led dates back to. Work in 2012 that came out of the Bologna report. 

[00:04:39] And we've been doing it for ages, but I, what I want to do is to look at the extremes, because often this is the way I work.

[00:04:44] I look at the extremes and go, what are the extremes? And where do we fit? Is it somewhere in the middle or is it towards one of the extremes? So extreme number one is the guru method, which is the student says nothing, does nothing. And the guru just tells them exactly what to do and they have to do it and repeat it.

[00:05:03] And I know the most extreme version is where the singer was not allowed to practice at all by themselves. They could only practice in front of the singing teacher. That is Guru gone mad. 

[00:05:17] Okay, you've definitely stated your opinion. 

[00:05:20] I certainly have. Okay. But basically no, no, you know what I think about that.

[00:05:24] So going to the other extreme is where the student leads absolutely everything and the teacher says nothing at all. So the teacher is just standing there. And I don't know that those singing lessons actually exist, but that is the most extreme version of the opposite. 

[00:05:39] Yeah. I want to go sort of into the in between places because that's what I'm like.

[00:05:45] Sometimes somebody will be coming to you for lessons because they just want to sing. Sing. Yes. And if you are comfortable with that and it fits with your values and your goals as a teacher, then your job at that moment is to hold the space for learning. Or exploration or pleasure or play for That student.

[00:06:06] For that client at that moment. 

[00:06:08] So really the question, but the fascinating thing for me about that particular thing that you've just said is, Anyone could do that. Literally anybody could bring people into the room and go, and now I'm providing you with a space to play or a space to sting or a space to enjoy yourself, whatever.

[00:06:25] The interesting thing for me is that singing teachers, Vocal coaches, people who have skill. And who've actually worked at their skill and who've trained and who've done lots of education themselves, they have things to give. The question is, when do you give them? At what level do you give them and who do you give them to?

[00:06:45] So I very much think that there is a place for experimentation and play and allowing the singer to just sing and find out what goes on so that they do introspective learning. Totally with that, and I do it a lot myself. However, I don't think that's the whole story. I think the whole point of view being good at what you do and passing that on is that you do have to instruct at some point, even if you say, here are three possible things that you could do, let's do them one at a time. And then you experiment and you find out which one works best for you and what do you think. Yeah. And can you still have to give those instructions?

[00:07:22] Yeah. Can I say guide and the instructions are part of guidance? Yes. Yeah. 

[00:07:29] I also, by the way, think it depends on what level your student is. If your student very experienced, and I mean I work with very experienced singers, actors, presenters, voice people, and often you just need to suggest a tweak and off they go.

[00:07:46] If you are working with somebody, that's their first singing lesson, and actually it doesn't matter what age they are, cause they could be 66 and having their first singing lesson, they could be seven and having their first singing lesson doesn't matter. If you're having your first singing lesson, there is going to be an element, more of an element of instruction in there.

[00:08:02] There's gonna be more, can you do this? Here's a sequence that I want you to play with, or however you word it. Mm-hmm. Anyway, onto what do we do in lessons? What do you do in lessons gillyanne?, 

[00:08:15] I can I give a little bit of a shout out for Melissa Cross. Who did a post recently about, the work that she does with extreme vocals.

[00:08:25] And I do love the way that Melissa words things. Yeah. And one of her video legends the other day was, the purpose of Vocal Mechanics is discovery. Self-discovery. Yeah. So we're teaching, if we're instructing Vocal mechanics, it's discovery and then putting it, putting it into playfulness, putting it into the context of the song, and I just love the way that's been worded.

[00:08:50] Me too. I'm going to say that a lesson is more than Vocal mechanics because sometimes this gets forgotten. The voice coaches listening and the Vocal coaches listening will know that straight away because there's a lot more to it. There's musicality, there's phrasing, there's shape, there's psychology, there's psychology, there's presentation, there's performance, there's all sorts of things in there.

[00:09:10] And. It's very interesting. If you are a singing teacher who deals with Vocal mechanics, sometimes the end result can get lost in there. 

[00:09:20] That's true. And by the way, that's absolutely not what we meant by giving a shout out for that lovely quote. 

[00:09:25] No, 

[00:09:25] not at all. I love that. 

[00:09:27] Jeremy, I wrote some notes down about this in terms of what goes on in a lesson.

[00:09:32] Yes. And first of all, Find out what the client wants or sometimes what the client thinks they want. Mm-hmm. Ask questions. Narrow it down. Yep. Sometimes you've got to hypothesize what's going on, you know, inside functionally to create the sound that they're making at the moment that they may wish to change, for example, or access to a note.

[00:09:58] You've gotta hypothesize, we know about Vocal function, but always really you are making that little leap. Is it that? Ask questions if needed. If you try something out and it doesn't work investigate before you do. You know, People are very fond of this word, diagnosis. We're quite fond of the word.

[00:10:17] We are, we're quite fond of that word. Yes. Yeah. 

[00:10:19] But you know, it is it's much more of a moveable feast than people think. Ask questions then. Raise awareness in the client. So maybe you decide, I'm gonna try this out. First of all, raise awareness of the behavior itself. Yeah. So that they know what it is that they're doing.

[00:10:40] They know what it is they sound like, they have an idea of of shape and so forth. 

[00:10:45] Can we just stop there? Because for some people that's extremely difficult because they have no self-awareness. One of the things that has been really fascinating working with the teachers that we're working with at the moment is exercises to help raise the student's self-awareness. Yeah. And, so much of it is repetition, some of it. So much of it is, can you sing that phrase? Uh, Now can you sing that phrase again? Do exactly the same thing. Mm-hmm. Sing that phrase again. Close your eyes. Go inside, sing it again. What do you feel?

[00:11:14] What do you hear? What are you aware of? What do you taste? There's all sorts of senses that you can use to start becoming aware. There's an very interesting one as well, which is also indirectly to do with nerves, which is can you sing? But can you listen to what's going on in the room around you?

[00:11:32] So you are singing, but you can hear the bird song outside or you are singing and you can hear the traffic. And it's something about changing your awareness of what's going on, which really helps raise it. 

[00:11:42] I like that. So we're investigating, we're raising awareness. Mm-hmm. And then maybe what we think would be useful would be to introduce a new way of doing things.

[00:11:54] And we can do that via exploration. We get feedback. You and I like we live in a world of comparisons. Oh, 

[00:12:00] please, let's do, let's do comparison. Yes. Yeah. 

[00:12:03] Do it one way. Do it another way. Explore. if we had a signature way of working, one aspect of it would be getting people to do it in another modality.

[00:12:14] In other words, not singing. Mm-hmm. Getting them to do it in a an emotional speaking voice or an intoning. Absolutely. Yeah. So that they begin to experience it in a different way.

[00:12:25] I just, I wanna go to comparison because I am so strong on this. I think it's one of the quickest ways for people to identify things.

[00:12:35] So you say, Do what you do, and now here's a different behavior. Do that now. Go back to what you did. Now go to the new behavior, now go back to what you did. And often people who have very little self-awareness will discover something doing that. And it's all about doing two different things and working out what the difference is.

[00:12:54] Can we just say here, we we're talking about self-awareness, we're not talking about self-awareness of the person we're talking about the level of perhaps sensory awareness mm-hmm. that an experienced vocalist, an experienced performer may have, and that a less experienced vocalist may not have that sensory awareness or may be super, super sensory and not know how to deal with those multiple sensations.

[00:13:22] Absolutely. Does that, I mean, you know, absolutely. It sounded a bit like this was a negative thing. No, it's not. It's, it's. We just need our own awareness of it as teachers. 

[00:13:31] It really helps you focus. I want to give an example. I was doing a session coaching session singing lesson with a classical mezzo.

[00:13:40] Doing 19th century coloratura. Lots and lots of runs, lots of high notes, lots of all sorts of things in that piece. Your happy place. Oh, I love working 19th century coloratura roles. Love it. If you don't, if you're not aware of what the word coloratura means, it basically means extended riffs. Okay. Yeah. But in the classical world. And it was really interesting because there was a particular thing that she wanted to target. So we experimented with two or three different resonance shapes and I said, swap between them, just go backwards and forwards between. And then we found one that worked and I said, Do what you used to do now.

[00:14:17] Do what you do now. Do what you used to do now, do what you do. And it was doing that. It embeds that mechanism so fast because when you go back to your own standard muscle memory, brain pathway, shape thing, you can recognize why it doesn't work. And that is a tremendous motivator for changing it.

[00:14:40] Tremendous. It's one of the strongest motivators I know. 

[00:14:44] I think you're absolutely right. And really what you're talking about is ways of introducing a new pathway. Yes. So sometimes what we have to do is it's almost interrupt that um, that process in that we interrupt that pathway. Mm-hmm. I often say to my um, clients, it's like, know, you've set satnav and off you go and it goes in a particular way and it will go that way unless you give it a steer to go in another direction.

[00:15:11] By the way, these brain pathways don't disappear. They don't, you can't obliterate them. You can't change a brain pathway. What you can do is build a new one that is more efficient or more direct, or gives you the result that you want. That old pathway is still there. Yeah. The fact that the, my singer could swap between two or three different versions says that that pathway is still there.

[00:15:29] They're all there. So it's really very interesting and the result was, Amazing because we, they were super pleased, weren't they? Thrilled? Thrilled to bits. It's actually, I'm gonna tell you the phrase that she said was, where have you been? Where have you been all my life. Oh, yes. Which is brilliant because she could do the thing that she wanted to do.

[00:15:50] Now, that's not my Choice. It's not my taste, it's not my decision. That wasn't my anything. I asked her at the beginning of the session, what do you want to achieve? And she said, I want to achieve this specific thing. And so everything I then did was basically geared towards getting her to achieve that thing because it was clearly achievable.

[00:16:08] But the other thing was experimenting with routes to get there so that I said I'm hearing this. Let's change that bit. Okay. Does that work better? Yes, it does. Okay. We'll keep that. I also hear this. Let's change it to that. Does that work better? No, it doesn't. Okay. Ditch that one. That's fine.

[00:16:26] Keep the one that you started with. Let's add to it. So it's very interesting, the whole business of. This is where the diagnosis comes in is what does your singer want to do? Can you diagnose. The route and the gradient to get them there. Sorry, I'm off on a, I'm off on a thing now. Gradient. 

[00:16:45] No, that's fine. That's fine. 

[00:16:46] Can we talk about gradient? 

[00:16:47] Yeah. Diagnose as in work out what's going on? Yes. Investigate. Yes. Just you've said some really useful stuff here and I just want to pull it out there so people can hear. Yeah. We're talking about interrupting, changing the pathway, changing the behavior, if you like by inviting people to try something different, then what you're doing is repeating.

[00:17:11] Yes, absolutely. 

[00:17:11] And then you are embedding within the song context in the context of this particular lesson. Yes. But of course, the great thing to do then is to generalize that new skill, generalize that behavior by saying. Let's look at these three other pieces where there's coloratura can we apply the same thing?

[00:17:29] And that's a wonderful bit of target practice for your clients if they are learning a new skill. 

[00:17:37] It was one of the things that, that I did, and it's not, there's so many ways of doing this. The first way is to take the phrase that they've been working on and say that skill that you've just learned, go back earlier into the aria and do a different phrase, but with that skill.

[00:17:51] Take the same composer and a different aria from that composer and do that the same thing in that skill. But there's more to it than that. One of the things that I was doing in terms of sequencing was to look at the music and the pattern and the shape of the phrasing and the shape of the runs, and I created an exercise which was targeting sustained high notes followed by coloratura. So the sustained high note was, if you like, it was one of the issues that she wanted to deal with. But it's important that you don't just hit a sustained note and go, there you go. It's fixed. It has to be in a context. And the sustained note in this particular bit of the aria, you go a scale up.

[00:18:32] Hit the sustained note and then do another scale down. And we had to do that. We had to put it into context. So I brought her down a minor third, and I said, let's do a scale, which is basically an octave run up, pause on the top node, and then do. Go upper tone and come back down again. 

[00:18:49] Ah, the magic minor third. Love it. 

[00:18:51] So it, the exercise sounded like this. Ah,

[00:19:00] that. It's just that, which is a very straightforward classical melisma thing, but we then did it up a semitone. And we did it upper semitone and we didn't put the pause on the top note and we put went upper semitone. We put the pause on the top note, but ran faster. So you are playing around with that run.

[00:19:20] You're playing around with that shape. Then you put it back into the context of the song, but without the lyrics because we needed to find out if the lyrics were causing problems. Then you did the lyrics just on one note or on a little. 1, 2, 3. 1, 2, 3, 2, 1. Run riff. And then we started putting it back together again.

[00:19:39] It was really interesting discovering the things that were working and the things that were getting in the way. And the more you do that type of breakdown, the quicker it is to get rid of the things that are getting in the way and keep the things that are working. 

[00:19:52] So when you are working with a client or a student on a piece of material, on a song Yep.

[00:19:59] Sometimes you have to do a lot of unpicking. Yes. What's going on? Yeah. You're very good at unpicking. It's one of things. 

[00:20:06] I love it. I love doing that. I love working out precisely what the problem is. And sometimes I'll have to ask questions or I'll ask people, can you just sing this now? Can you sing it without the words?

[00:20:16] Can you change the vowel on it? Can we, can you know all of that thing? Can we put the lyrics on one note? There's all sorts of things that you do to discover where the problem is. Fun. That was a fun one. And interestingly, the following session, two sessions in a row, this one was on 19th century classical coloratura stuff.

[00:20:36] The next session was, how do I belt but not shout. And this was in rock. It was such an interesting session that we, where we got to was all sorts of snarling and I don't do distortion. I'm sorry. I don't know how to do it. So if you're interested in distortion, we know lots of experts who will help you there.

[00:20:56] But we were interested in changing resonating shape to make things easier. To make it sound louder without being louder. She played a little track of one of her clients and I went, oh, yes, I hear the, I hear the problem. He wants to sound like it's really hard work, but the problem is, it is really hard work.

[00:21:17] So we had to change and I was showing, I was taking it through her, through in her voice, how to sing that type of material with a particular resonating shape. Not working very hard, but still having that dramatic impact. Really fascinating. 

[00:21:31] And I think I want to say here, this is quite typical of inexperienced singers. They'll hear the sound output of a more experienced singer and Particularly if there's something like perceived effort there and they'll think they have to make that effort. 

[00:21:46] It's I've been on this for years. Mm-hmm. The diff I've written, I've written about it, I've done stuff about it. The difference between perceived effort and real effort is so big and it's so important. So if as a singer you want to make people think that you are working really hard, but you are doing eight shows a week, or you're in the recording studio for a week. That is not a good idea. You don't have a voice left at the end of it. So what you do is you work out how to do it easily and then you put certain style features in to make it sound like you're working harder.

[00:22:20] It actually shocked the teacher that I was working with to say, when you sing that phrase and you go up to that top note, can you make it flat? And she went, what do you mean? Can you make it flat? I wanna go on the note. And I said, no, make it flat. Sing it flat. Because in that context, in that phrase, in that style, that top note, if it's slightly flat, sounds like it work, you are working harder and that's what we want. And she did it and she went, oh my God. It's a game changer. 

[00:22:48] I think this is very interesting and It could even be a whole other podcast content, which is the different types of effort perception that we need between the genres. Yes.

[00:23:00] Because if you're a classical singer listening to this, you're going to think, but everything should sound effortless. 

[00:23:04] Absolutely. It should. Absolutely it should. You wanna sound effortless. Yeah. You wanna sound like it's easy, you want to sound like you're just falling off the notes.

[00:23:12] It's just so easy. And of course it isn't. There's a lot going on, but in the classical world, you do not wanna sound like you're working hard. In the rock world, you wanna sound like you're working hard. 

[00:23:23] Absolutely. And then there are different goals in different types of musical theater, singing and pop singing and so forth.

[00:23:30] Yes. Ooh, interesting. Jeremy, should we talk Masterclass? Let's talk masterclass. Cause now isn't a masterclass a very interesting situation because you are again, potentially in a a situation of power imbalance. I can tell you that I, when I was a young singer going to masterclass, you know, with a leading teacher and being absolutely deflated by somebody famous, it was horrible.

[00:24:07] And that can really, really knock your confidence. And in this instance, I don't think it was because that particular person wanted to do a massive ego trip. I think it, they were very geared towards you are not very good, you are not very experienced, et cetera, et cetera. So I was left very much with the feeling that I wasn't good enough.

[00:24:30] And 

[00:24:31] you've just described a massive ego. Yeah. Okay. 

[00:24:33] Have I, alright. I was trying 

[00:24:35] to be kind. No, don't be kind, be real. And that that's a massive ego. 

[00:24:39] Other singers that she liked to work with were much better than me. Actually they were a lot more advanced than me, but it was quite clear she did not have time for me.

[00:24:50] I mean, If you are in a masterclass where there's more than one singer, And they're there to work with you as the masterclass guru people. I think it really behooves you as the person doing the masterclass to be very, very sensitive to that. The stupid, I didn't know I was gonna say that and come out with that, but. 

[00:25:10] The, the stupid thing is that if you, it all depends on your viewpoint of your own role in the masterclass.

[00:25:16] If you are there. To support the singer and to help the singer and to get the singer to improve something. Then shouting at them, swearing at them, pulling them down, destroying their egos is not a way that would ever work for me. 

[00:25:31] And the thing is, it can be frustrating because sometimes you don't know who's gonna come in.

[00:25:37] Oh yes. Yeah, and we've absolutely, we've had that when we've been working abroad and you think, oh, crikey, what am I going to do now? Yeah. How am I going to. First of all, naturally, you want to make a difference because the word master is there in the title of the event. Okay? So of course you want to show your mastery, you have to do your best to put your ego aside at that moment and find out what you can do with that singer in that situation that makes a difference. 

[00:26:14] You also, I think, and this is really important, you have 15 minutes. You don't even have what would be considered a standard lesson time. Some lessons are 20 minutes, some are half an hour, some are an hour, but you have 15 minutes in front of an audience.

[00:26:27] Now being in front of an audience will actually slow the process of learning down. Yeah. So in fact, in reality, you probably have seven or eight minutes if that. Because of the speed that everything happens because of people's nerves, because of the audience reactions. There's all sorts of things that go on in a master class.

[00:26:43] So you have less time than you think. And this is honestly, this is where the choose one thing and focus on it thing is absolutely vital. It is no good trying to get somebody in a masterclass to a performance level in seven minutes 

[00:27:01] if they're not ready

[00:27:02] if they're not ready to do it. 

[00:27:03] I think what I want to say here about, you're going to, you need to find one thing that will make a difference, and that's not to show your skills.

[00:27:12] It's for the singer to leave feeling that they have been supported and uplifted in that situation. And it could be that your job with this particular singer in the room is just to allow them to feel more comfortable singing in front of an audience. That might be all it is. Or it might be that your job, depending on the situation, is to give them a little bit more empowerment, as in what is it that you want to do.

[00:27:42] And to think about that. That's really nice. And Jeremy's quite rightly said choose one thing. 

[00:27:48] Choose wisely. 

[00:27:49] Yeah, choose wisely. But if you don't find the right key, don't be afraid as a masterclass leader to stand up and say, do you know what? I think we should try something else out. um, thank you very much for exploring in the way that I asked you to. I'd like to take you in a different direction. Is that okay? 

[00:28:13] There's something that's very important in a masterclass, I think, and it's even more important in the class than it is in a lesson, which is to say as the masterclass person, because you are the person in power. I made a mistake. Yeah. Not, you didn't follow my instructions, we're gonna have to do something else, because that doesn't even have to be said.

[00:28:33] It can be implied. If you say, I think I've taken you down the wrong route. I've got a different idea. Let's go here. There is something about care. And obviously we are very aware of care of a singing student. Some people aren't. Some people just go, I am here to show you that you can't do what you think you can do.

[00:28:54] And now I do the magic word. I wave my wa magic wand. And now you can do it. I always think at the end of that class, but can the singer actually repeat it? But hey, that is a possibility. You go in as a God. And you wave your magic wand. This is a very, very weird, very weird simile. 

[00:29:15] I now want a picture of a godlike figure 

[00:29:18] waving, 

[00:29:19] waving a magic wand.

[00:29:19] Wand. Yes. And then the singer goes, oh look, I can sing in your presence. I can sing everything. That's absolutely fine. And then, That you walk away and then they can't do it. 

[00:29:29] Do you know what, something that's just occurred to me and this 

[00:29:34] that went very weird. 

[00:29:35] This of course. You are weird. This of course is because we're about to do our first public Masterclass in the UK for a while. 

[00:29:42] For a while

[00:29:43] at Global Connections. 

[00:29:45] Yes. Shout out to Global Connections. Absolutely. This is a joint venture between AOTOS, the Association of Teachers of Singing in the UK, NATS, the National Association of Teachers of Singing in America and EVTA, the European Voice Teachers Association.

[00:29:59] Yeah, and can I say also assisted by the British Voice Association

[00:30:02] British Voice Association, bva, 

[00:30:03] Of which I'm a very long term member. Yes. I was just thinking there's the potential for a singer to be overawed by having two people lead the masterclass. This is, and how do we handle that? Because.

[00:30:18] Good point.

[00:30:18] I think generally they have a really good time with us. 

[00:30:21] Good point. Yes. Normally when you do a masterclass, it's one person and one singer, and he, you've got the two to one relationship. Because they get both of us. And uh, I am not the sort of person to sit at the piano and say nothing.

[00:30:33] Sorry. Don't do that. Nope. Stopped doing that a long time ago. So how do they cope with both of us? Part of it is the relationship that we have means that, first of all, we can do shortcuts. We can do shortcuts speak, we can do short, we do mentally the diagnosis that we teach other people to do, and we actually have got used to doing it together.

[00:30:55] So we do real shorthand now. That we can say one word and we know what each other is, is Yeah. Heading for, 

[00:31:02] we call this the brain dump. Yeah. And what we do is we're mentally sifting. And actually in this particular event that's something that we're going to share with the with the audience.

[00:31:14] Probably after we've worked with the singer.

[00:31:16] It's gonna be fun sharing the brain dumps. So the other thing that we do, because we've worked together for so long Yeah. Is that if somebody, if one of us has an idea about where they want to go and the other one goes, okay, I see that. Then the other one will step back and allow that process to happen and then step in when they think either the process is finished or this another place that we can go with the process.

[00:31:38] And then when that happens, the other one steps back. So we, yeah. Almost never argue on stage. Might argue off stage, but we almost never argue on stage because we know that the other person has an idea and a process that they want to go through. 

[00:31:57] That's interesting because there's that dynamic as well that we've had to learn to handle in public.

[00:32:02] Absolutely. I would say that we are each other's best secret weapon. Yes, actually, I think that's fair. That is one of the things that makes our work as Masterclass leaders really powerful. Also, I mean, we have slightly different skillsets. You can hear from listening to Jeremy talk about giving a one-to-one lesson, working on 19th Century coloratura, how much of the musician, the collaborative pianist and the musical director he brings with him to the table, and that understanding of musical performance. Whereas I'm much more the technician, the diagnostician. Yeah. And I tend to bring that to the table and I think 

[00:32:44] Absolutely. And there are circumstances where I go, I know that Gillyanne can do this far faster and far better and far deeper than I can, so over to you.

[00:32:52] And occasionally, he'll bring something out of the box absolutely out in left, outta left. And I go, what? Yes. You really wanna do that? Yes. And then what's happened? He's found a way of doing exactly what it was I wanted to do. Yeah. And it's shortcut it's a rich process for us, isn't it?

[00:33:08] So part of this is where can you see us do this? And the Global connections. One is, we so rarely do Live Masterclasses in the UK. Yeah, we do far more in Europe and Australia and around the world, but we do very rarely in the uk. So this is one of our rare appearances in the uk. It is June 4th.

[00:33:29] Yes. Sunday, June 4th. Voces8 studio in St. Paul's in London. 

[00:33:34] And we hope you've signed up. We hope you've signed up. I gather it's full, sold out, however, fear not. Yeah. If you want to see us work with singers yes. In a masterclass, yes, there are a couple of options. First of all, we have Mastering Musical Theatre in the Deep Dive.

[00:33:51] I'm going to release a free preview of us doing one of the masterclass sessions in the Deep Dive. So I will put the link in the show notes underneath. 

[00:34:01] Deep D ive is in our Learning 

[00:34:02] Lounge Learning Lounge level two Deep Dive. Mastering musical Theatre. Go and have a look at that because that's free to access.

[00:34:10] And then also if you, by the way, if you like the free preview sign up it's monthly. You can stop after a month. And for that month, you get now well over 600 videos of us teaching of master classes. 

[00:34:23] Oh, the Deep Dive is the biz. 

[00:34:25] Huge. The second one is the newest course online, 12 Hours To Better Singing Teaching. 

[00:34:32] Yes. 

[00:34:33] And Unit 5, which is two hours worth of that 12 Hours is basically us doing what we've just been talking about. Mm-hmm. Which is we see a student, we work with them and then with all the teachers who are there, this is a prerecorded course, we explain why we did something. We ask questions of them, we find out what they would've done, what their focus is.

[00:34:56] It's a really fascinating breakdown Yeah. Of how different singing teachers work. 

[00:35:00] We invite the teachers to do a brain dump based on what they've been learning over the previous unit. Yeah. And then we work with the student via Zoom. And as Jeremy said, what we do afterwards is we share our practice.

[00:35:16] Why did we do what we did? What would they have done differently, et cetera, et cetera. It's a very rich process and we're working with, um, one male singer on Maria, Maria from West Side Story. the other singers singing in German. And this is a female singer and it's, uh, Journey to the Past 

[00:35:33] Journey to the Past from Anastasia the cartoon.

[00:35:36] So if you want to see what we do you know, head to that course. So good summer is here now, and you've got time to do that studying. 

[00:35:44] Now there's one more thing, and we're going to check this out with you because we had so many people apply to work in the masterclass that we're doing in June that we are looking at doing online masterclass with these singers.

[00:35:59] And these singers are either professionals or they are finally year students, or they've from drama training colleges. Or they have left and they're now in the business. And so we've had this idea to do an online masterclass where we work with these singers. And then we invite people who are watching to make comments, to say what they would do, and we find out how all of that works. And the question is, would you be interested in watching that? 

[00:36:26] So it's a kind, it's a version of our pedagogy practicum, yeah. That we do on the accreditation training. But using singers in a masterclass situation. As a lesson if you like, it's a sample lesson that you are seeing.

[00:36:40] Yes. As we work with the student and then discussing and brainstorming what was going on. I think it's gonna be such fun, Jeremy. 

[00:36:48] And all of this will be done online because we are now, I mean, we've been doing online master classes for 12 years, 12 or 13 years now. But since the pandemic, it's been so streamlined.

[00:36:58] So what we're looking at is doing it online and you can drop in. Or we will record it and you can watch it afterwards. Let us know if you would be interested in this, because if you are, we'll set it up. Absolutely. 

[00:37:09] Now we're gonna set it up. Anyway, 

[00:37:11] I think that's a really interesting place to pause.

[00:37:14] We have so much more to talk about, including career mentoring and Vocal habilitation, and different types of lessons that we do. 

[00:37:21] That's gonna have to be episode 10 

[00:37:22] Now we're gonna save that for episode 10, so we will see you for episode 10. Bye.

[00:37:29] This is a voice, a podcast with Dr. Gillyanne Kayes and Jeremy Fisher. This Is A Voice.