Halfway through March 2025 I was walloped by the flu and lost my voice. This was followed by bronchitis and six weeks of coughing, followed by several colds. The result: I was dealing with big vocal problems for over eight weeks. I had a couple of important shows coming up in May for which I’d begun to rehearse when the flu hit me.

I’m a long-time voice coach who has frequently dealt with problems like this with my students and with my own voice. But I hadn’t had vocal problems of this duration a...

     Sorry for my delay posting this: here is information about singing and the Covid-19 virus from last spring. Unfortunately most of this info is still very relevant:
 
     I hope you are all safe and healthy during these scary times. I’m including a lot of advice here for how to keep singing safely as we make our way through the Covid-19 pandemic.

     The bad news for singers: we continue to learn more about the virus daily, but ...

   It has been a rough year for many singers during the pandemic. I hope you have stayed healthy and have found ways to keep singing. I’ve been very impressed by my students this year. Some have really used their extra stay-at-home time to double-down on practicing. Some have been working on sets of songs in preparation for when we’re all free to go to concerts again. Some have been live-streaming to stay in touch with their fans. And one go-getter student gigged steadily from the summ...

A talented young singer who studies with me sent me some questions for a homework assignment. Here are my answers:

Question 1: What would advice would you give your younger self about pursuing music?
1] Practice, practice, and then practice some more. 2] Study music business as well as music. 3] Start a database of everyone you meet: fans, musicians, music business people, anyone remotely connected to you and your music. You will be amazed ten years later who ends up helping you. I got my fi...

    Chances are if you’ve gone to a vocal coach you’ve been told that you had tension in your throat that was affecting your voice. That’s what I was told at my first voice lesson, and that’s what I frequently tell singers when I first work with them. Throat tension is a common problem for singers that can affect tone, pitch, range, and endurance. There are many things you can do on your own or with a coach to ease the tension and free up your voice. But sometimes those methods ar...

    I made a new friend last year, and I gushed a little when I met her and learned that she was a singer I’d been listening to for years on my iTunes playlist. She plain and simple has a gorgeous voice. But when I met her she’d been having some vocal problems, and she learned at the Vanderbilt Voice Clinic that her chronic hoarseness was from muscular tension. Plus, she’d been compensating to get a vocal sound out for some time, exacerbating the problem. (Vocal compensating is wh...

     It’s very easy to tense up the tongue, jaw, and/or throat when you’re fine-tuning your pitch accuracy: you may end up with better intonation but also a pinched tone, and possibly vocal fatigue. Here’s a method that can help: 



1] Work with Hearfones so you can hear yourself as well as the track or instrument to which you are tuning. A mic and headphones will work, too. More info on Hearfones is on their site, but they are usually cheaper at Amazon.


2] Massage the sides of ...

More Tips on Performing

    This last August I played several shows in California. Some of my friends are touring singer-songwriters who regularly do shows, but I’m not one of them; sometimes many months can go by in-between shows. Occasional performers like me can be more prone to stage fright. One show was in my hometown of Berkeley and looked to have friends in the audience I’d known as far back as first grade. I knew I’d be nervous, and I hadn’t performed in a year, and that m...

When I was living in Santa Cruz during college there was a fabulous afro-cuban dance class downtown, with live drummers. Over a hundred people would show up for an hour of hip-swaying, butt-shaking tribal dance. I’m not a trained dancer and I could never get the moves down, but since I love to dance it was still loads of fun. Going to a Zumba class at my local Nashville gym once or twice a week is as close as I can get now to recreating those Santa Cruz days. The music isn’t live, but the dance ...

Anyone who has every tried to get anywhere in the music business knows that getting a record deal or having your song cut is like winning the lottery--it’s next to impossible. So it’s wonderful to see someone who is talented and deserving actually get somewhere in this occasionally heartless biz.
    I met Kelleigh Bannen a few years ago in Barbara Cloyd’s Pitch to Publishers songwriting workshop. I liked her immediately--she was very pretty and friendly, and appeared to have a brain....