Washington Vocal Consortium

 Called “an historic first” by The Washington Post, The Washington Vocal Consortium is the only on-going Voice Teaching Team in the United States. They have been perfecting the art of team voice-teaching over the past 20 years.  By constantly challenging, refining and distilling their individual teaching methods, the members of the Consortium are prepared to give your singers the most up-to-date and effective methods for improving vocal sound. And they do this with a spirit of play and humor that makes even the most intimidated chorister come away with a feeling of discovery and accomplishment.

Team Voice Teaching is:

• A dynamic, interactive method of teaching vocal technique to groups of singers, whether they are a cohesive choir or in a workshop consisting of individuals. 
• A highly enjoyable and entertaining manner of working with people of different interests and abilities. It works with beginners as well as professional singers! 
• An efficient and effective way to offer individual attention to many singers within a group. 
• A reliable tool for dispensing and integrating the wealth of vocal pedagogical information available today.

This is the second part of a two-part post on how Auto Tune and various computer-generated effects are shaping the way we hear. 

1.  If a singer was born after 1980, chances are good that they have grown up spending more time listening to technologically-enhanced recordings and watching polished music videos that actually singing.

This means that often their whole singing concept has been shaped by listening to and imitating Perfect Recordings rather than the unparalleled experience of actually daily singing and being part of live music–making as a participant or listener.  Almost always, the singers have little physical connection to their singing, although their hearts are in it

2.  The Perfect Recording syndrome affects classical singers, too.  Before personal recording devices became common, you listened to great singers to become inspired, for emotional release, to develop a tonal ideal and learn repertoire.  Now singers regularly listen to their voices recorded on devices that were never meant to capture the complete acoustics of singing–think old audio cassette recorders, digital cameras and simple computer mikes and this aural feedback becomes part of a singer’s vocal identity.  These are often the singers who have lost the simple joy of singing

3.  An equal challenge is the singer who hears herself as if she is the Perfect Recording.  Anyone can record themselves and put it on the Internet.  I can not tell you the number of singers I have tried to listen to on MySpace Music or YouTube where the singing was dismal.  They are the singers who expect that their producers and sound engineers can fix anything and everything.  (See Jim Frazier’s quote in the first post.)  They are often the ones who hear from their boyfriend, Senator Whoever, ‘wow you are as good as the recording!’  And they are the ones who are surprised to find out that turning talent into a craft takes effort

These are just some of the things I’ve observed about how the evolution of the recording industry has effected people’s concepts of live singing.   We just have to remember that they are two different art forms, and that what we listen to affects our whole being.