I want to go over my take on the world of learning how to sing and vocal training methods, my summary of what I’ve found to be true, and then my approach for a solution.
The world of vocal training and vocal education is too subjective, opinionated, and confusing.
And that sucks.
It’s filled with highly technical, overlapping, overly significant terms and theories that are more confusing than helpful. I’m not going to list any of them because I would be contributing to the confusion. And I’m a firm believer that you have to understand the words of something in order to understand the overall concept. So why would I throw a bunch of crap at you that I am not willing or prepared to explain. Nope. Not gonna do it. But that’s not even the basic underlying problem.
When you want to learn how to sing, I mean really learn how to sing, where do you start? Who is right? What are the ACTUAL basics? Why is one coaches opinion better than an others? Why doesn’t one thing that does work, work for everyone?
I mean I’m listening to some of these vocal coaches and looking at their vocal exercises and thinking ‘Dude! What about the guy who CAN’T SING YET!! You just skipped over 80% of the population!!’
I’m talking about the guy who can barely carry a tune in a bucket! How is he supposed to open up his whatchamacallit and sing from his doohickey to really belt out the high notes when he can’t even sing a figgin’ note!
Look. I’ll admit it. I came out of the box programmed for singing. I was one of the lucky ones I guess. I am far from perfect, but I know what I know. And I decided the best way to approach teaching other how to sing is to teach how I myself approach singing.
My first memory of singing is harmonizing with my mother’s vacuum cleaner when I was 2. From there I proceeded to sing more and more with my fist stage performance at 4 years old and my last one a couple of nights ago. I get it. I got it from the start. I’m not going to go into all my creds here. If you want you can check out my bio page or just ask me.
What I became interested in early on in my career more than singing and performing was teaching others how to sing and perform. That flying high feeling of performing was better than anything I have ever felt, and wanted others to feel it as well.
See, I truly feel that changing the world one song and one performance at a time is a real possibility. So why not have more singers and performers?
When I help somebody sing or sing better, it is actually greater than the feeling I get from singing. There’s something about helping others that is selfishly more gratifying than being…well…selfish. Weird catch 22 huh?
But my plan failed.
When I first started trying to help others sing, my native ability to sing became the barrier to teaching others.
Because most of the time, they had already started studying on their own and we just didn’t speak the same language. They had already bought into so much unneeded crap and vague words that digging through all of that false or ambiguous ‘information’ just to establish a common ground took more time than teaching them how to sing! And when I did, it just wasn’t enough.
And I couldn’t efficiently help the ‘tone deaf’ student.
I found that there were no truly simple basics that didn’t have a bunch of unnecessary filler.
There was no undercut to go to that was simple, practical, and easy to understand. There was nothing out there that I could take apart and hand the parts to the student for them to learn. The parts were as confusing as the whole and when looked at closely were baseless and thin with no substance.
So I came up with a New Plan. I took myself apart.
I looked deep into my own ability and broke apart what I use to build every song I ever perform, physically and mentally, into tangible, teachable, basic core components. I looked at how I look at music and notes and sound and vocals and sat down and described in detail what I saw.
Then I took all of that and put together the 6 Elements of Singing. It is in the 6 core elements that everything about singing can be found to fit in and/or be built on.
And it is from these 6 Elements of Singing that I hope to build an army of happy singers that will one day change the world.
So, Welcome to vocal basic training.
When I was in the military I learned what the goal of basic training is all about. The goal wasn’t to get me into shape and discipline me. The goal of basic training is to strip a person down literally, mentally, and fundamentally of all their preconceived ideas, prejudices, pride, and purpose, and then rebuild a soldier.
If you want a soldier, that’s how you build one. From the ground up.
Luckily I grew out of most of it, but kept the good parts.
The basic courses of SFS are about building a singer. And in order to do that, we need to strip you down.
So what you need to do is leave all of your preconceived ideas, beliefs, and training at the door.
When you are ready, and if you still want to, you can pick them up when you leave. Because this course introduces you to the rock solid fundamentals from which you can develop your singing abilities to their ultimate potential. A solid foundation of the elemental fundamentals is what EVERY singer needs.
In fact EVERY singer employs the 6 Basic Elements of Singing whether they are aware of it or not. It is those 6 Elements of singing that make up every song by every singer ever sung. No joke. So that’s why you need to leave your other junk at the door.
These courses are NOT a shortcut. They are NOT for the impatient or the ‘fast food’ minded. If you are looking for a single ‘magic bullet’ solution to learn how to sing, keep looking. And good luck in the process. There aren’t any.
But if you are looking for a thorough breakdown of what singing REALLY is and how to be able to sing ANYTHING you want to sing, Singing From Scratch is for you.
In the end, not only will you be able to sing, you will understand singing in fundamental way and see it in light that most people never even knew existed.
So, when you’re ready, check out the online courses and let’s start training!
