The High Performance Singer

How to Become a Great Singer when Auditory Learning is Not Your Style

(How to Become the Best Backup Singer Ever) My name is Kristin, and I am addicted to harmony. As a singer, I intend for this statement to be interpreted musically. But as I find daily, as I go in Music, so I go in Life. So, let’s start, as is my wont, with a story on a seemingly unrelated topic… I have a student who works with a Myers-Briggs life coach. This ideology reaches far beyond the personality assessment that you took at work, or that adorable quiz that pops up on

On any given morning, I may be in my yoga class at the Y, awkwardly arranging myself into some nice, juicy, seated asana in celebration of having arduously completed my standing poses. With a sense of relief, I close my eyes to settle in. Without fail, my wonderfully aware teacher immediately hollers out, “Eyes open! This is a householder’s practice!” I sigh, open my eyes, and pay attention. He is referring to the concept of the “Householder” in Buddhism, the term that distin

This is a bad year for the flu - and I'm sure that's not news to you. As a vocalist, you need to be extra careful with preventive care - you can't cancel a gig just because you're sick. I've had to perform long gigs while sick more times than I wish. It's not fun, and you risk losing your voice because of it. (I have injured my voice because of singing a 4-hour pop/rock gig while sick. It took about 9 months for my voice to heal.) But when you have a gig commitment, you h

Singing Emergency? The A Cappella Prescription Three weeks ago, I was sitting in a hotel room in Florida, languidly lounging with a cup of coffee and some well-earned Facebook time before needing to rouse myself to get ready for my friend’s wedding at 11 am. At 9:17, I received a text from the bride. “Soundman has a flat tire. Get warmed up.” Pop quiz, hot shots: what do you do? In case you’ve never met a frantic bride on her wedding morning, who has just been handed the

Question: What do Florence Foster Jenkins, Virtue Epistemology, and a Major League Baseball game have in common? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. And yet…? These three completely unrelated items came together this week in a meaningful way in the dark and murky corners of my hypomanic mind, as I was considering a question that nags at some of my students: How good is good enough to sing? Like, out loud? For actual people? (Spoiler alert: My answer is Yes.) Allow me to set the

Well, that’s got to be a typo. Kristin is clearly on the hooch. She obviously intended to write an article on Breathing for Singing, but she got the title of her own blog wrong. Did I? Oh, did I? One day, I had a first lesson with a new student. I was having him vocalize on raspberries, an exercise most of my students claim that I employ as a special sort of sadistic torture against them. While I admit that I do in fact find their discomfort to be one of the exercise’s many

One evening recently, I received a text from one of my students. It went along the lines of, “There’s something that’s been really upsetting me lately. Could we spend some time at my lesson discussing it?” Being a Philadelphian by birth and temperament, my mind instantly conjured up the worst possible scenarios that could involve a male college student. Had he been hitting the keg parties too hard? Was he in over his head with some love interest? Had he committed some sort o

One day this past summer, I was sitting in a recording studio, there to consult on vocal technique for my student Jacob as he laid down tracks for his new EP. I was honored to be included in these sessions by his producer Cory, who brings some serious musical chops and pedigree to the table, so I was keeping my head down until I was needed – and eventually I was. Jacob was working on the verse of one his originals, and was singing a phrase that hovered in a pretty low range f

by Kristin Henry I was recently engaged in the annual joyful task of preparing my band’s tax forms – whoever decided to hand the financial responsibilities over to me was clearly a lunatic – and as I proudly penned a whopping “$1,000.00” on line 7 (Nonemployee compensation) of my own 1099-MISC, the person I was with did a double take. “That’s what you made with the band last year?” he asked. “Yeah, that’s 10 gigs at $100 each.” I was happy. It was up a little from the prev

I received an email a couple days ago from a drummer in the UK. He had emailed because he watched a video I made a few years ago about how to get over stage fright. He wanted to buy my Zen of the Stage DVDs but was having trouble with the purchase process. "I just watched a clip of you talking about stage fright on YouTube. I have been struggling for some time now and your YouTube clip really spoke to me. I have tried counselling and hypnotherapy and although they were bo

EVERYBODY KNOWS 1. Most tweets go unread. Just because you tweet, don’t expect your followers to see it. Few view their feed comprehensively. They check in and check out. Catching only bits and pieces. Even forgetting your fake and dormant followers, which are voluminous, far fewer than fifty percent of your followers see one of your tweets. Actually, I’d be stunned if 10-15% of your active followers see one of your tweets. .................. MUCH MORE here. Check him out:..

Here are notes from Ronan Chris Murphy's seminar "Production Tricks for Maximum Impact." These are quick and dirty, maybe I'll expand and clean them up a bit later. But just wanted to get them out. First, credit where credit's due - Here are two links to learn more about him, and contact him if you want him to do some work: https://ronansrecordingshow.com/ and https://www.venetowest.com/rcm/ OK, here goes. He did note that these things don't apply to avant garde jazz or ch

OK. Yes. It's been FOREVER since my last newsletter. First reason: I asked a question in the last newsletter that I had to ponder myself a lot over the last few weeks. It took me a while to be able to answer my own question, even though honestly, I've been thinking about it for years. Second reason: Been very busy getting my band ready for our next gig, with a new lineup. (That gig is this Friday, if you're in Colorado's Front Range.) To remind you - or if you just sign

Hello Friends, My name is Christian Sanders. I am the newest addition to the team at Performance High. I would consider myself an opera singer, and I love to incorporate classical techniques used by opera singers to help inform popular music, jazz, and musical theatre singers. I think every singer, no matter what music they want to sing, should have some sort of classical training to make sure that they are singing in a healthy way that will allow them to sing for a long time

Do you think you have an accent? Probably not. You are so used to the way you and the people around you speak, that you don't think you do. It's people from the Midwest / the East Coast / Spain / Brazil / Africa / you name it that have the accent. Check out this amazing video of Amy Walker doing 21 accents in two minutes. When her Seattle accent came up, I thought, wait, that one's not an accent, that's just "normal" speaking! But of course that's just because her Seatt

Wondering about differences in technique between classical and popular singing? Here's a specific real-life example. I'm a pop singer by nature. Yes, I still take voice lessons. In fact, among others, I take lessons from some of the other teachers at Performance High, Kristin Henry She is a more classically oriented teacher than I am (although, to be fair, she kills at funk and R&B too). In my lessons, we are working on the epic closing song for my debut set with Adrien

Sometimes people get confused about the difference between nasal resonance and singing with a nasal tone. You DO want some nasal resonance. Your sinuses are some of your vocal resonators. But you DON'T want to sound like you're singing through your nose. Here's a very quick tip to tell if you're singing through your nose: Hold your nose closed with your fingers, and then sing. If you sound mostly the same (except for consonants D, N, and M), then you are fine. If you soun

I worked all last month with an artist preparing for an industry showcase in L.A. At the end of the month, we did a dress rehearsal on a large stage, running the whole set straight through a few times. There were still some "mistakes" which kind of freaked him out at first, because he was afraid of doing things "wrong" - as in differently from what we had planned. But I made him understand it was ok to throw out the plan and just trust himself, now that he had gotten down