Sculpturing an ordinary person into a vocalist… Is that possible? And if it is, what does it take to make it happen?

Teaching, producing and repairing voices for almost four decades, has brought an estimated 20.000 students of all kinds under my care. Some of them were complete beginners and wanted to do it just for fun.  Others were also beginners, but had a big ambition to become professional singers, however, sometimes; they did not show a very big talent to begin with. Obviously, I work with a lot of semi-professional and professional singers as well. 

But today, we will be talking about the beginners with possession of ‘not so obvious, at the glance’ talent. A lot of them have big dreams.

Are they realistic?

From my point of view, they very much so could be. When I start working with them, it’s a clean slate i.e., they do not have the pre-conceived ideas or very bad habits for that matter, but just willingness and lovingness to realise their dream of becoming a singer. Sometimes, I prefer that to a big, so to speak, talent, as these, so called, ‘talented people’, not necessarily have the right attitude, sometimes being quite stuck up and with a lot of vocal baggage on their hands.

I call it a ‘pre-Madonna complex’, which sometimes is very much so in the way of the actual vocal development which needs to be executed with absolute focus and precision. When I take the complete beginner, I momentarily put him/her on the right track of understanding of methodology and pedagogy. I don’t need to delete “much virus” from their, so to speak, “human computers”. 

What I need to do is to instill into their psyche the precise method of visualisation of the sound traveling proportionally to their body sizes, (height, weight and center), and then, with the body language work, access their voices and make their voices work in the fullest capacity possible and with the minimum strain or pain on their vocal  anatomy. Some cases, however, are much more complicated than the above described. With some of my clients, I have to, literally, deal with their childhood and their up-bringing. Some parents have been too strict and would not allow the child to talk back, or to cry when the child was hurt or upset.

That scarred not only their emotions, but their throat, thyroid and vocal anatomy per say. Obviously now, we first need to engage into putting the prospective singer in balance. We need them to try to overcome their emotional misbalance, as everything the human being is physically experiencing, usually is emotionally induced, and then the problem manufactures itself into the physical body. So, now we have to engage into the natural herbs and remedies to heal the vocal anatomy. Finally, the “instrument” is prepared to be played on.

The actual “player” needs to learn how to extract the maximum capacity of their newly “refurbished instrument”. Once that happens, the future singer/performer is now sculptured and polished into a decent singer, and needless to say, ready to take upon the Universe… when the SKY IS THE LIMIT.