Hello to Vocalisters who are wondering about how Randy B. teaches and if he teaches like he writes here on Vocalist. I hope Randy won't mind if I tell on him (I didn't ask), but I've been reading his posts here for 2 or 3 years and have been very curious about how he actually teaches as well as some of you must be. I'm also curious about actually seeing/hearing Dr. Lloyd teach as well and many others, but I'll continue my story. My 17 year old daughter and I , who is one of my students also, drove from Washington State to Ohio to take(my daughter) to the high school summer classical singers workshop at Oberlin Conservatory. It occurred to me that since we were driving right by Chicago that perhaps we could pay Randy for an hour lesson and maybe learn something as well as satisfy my curiosity about his teaching style. Randy is a very cool dude! He has lava lamps! He does not teach like a techno-phobe at all, he's intuitive, focused, empathic and ....well, like a voice teacher. He sort of reminded me of me and the way I teach at times. He's got the greatest sense of humor and even though Nora is focusing her singing on classical music all the vocalize exercises that he did with her totally improved some problem spots on one of the songs I asked him to listen to. Because he has the scientific knowledge of the vocal apparatus and his ear is so very well tuned to problems, he immediately finds the perfect vocalize that will coax the mechanism into behaving naturally. Nora and I shared the lesson time. I didn't tell Randy that I had recently had my vocal cords "scoped" by a dr. out here in Washington.. (I saw the swelling for myself on video and how the folds moved together while I made sounds). I wanted to see if he could "hear" and diagnose the problem without me telling him anything up front. He heard it immediately and showed me vocal exercises that could help. I believe if he didn't know exactly how everything works on a technical level, he would not have been very effective in trying to teach me something since I've lived with my swollen folds for a long time and teach a lot of people myself. After we came home to Washington I had a few lessons with a woman who has recently earned her music PhD at University of Washington and whose students I've heard over the years. (who sing very well). She did her doctoral thesis on vocal pedagogy and mirrored so much of what Randy said to me and my daughter. Randy's vocal exercises, which I think are part of the speech level singing techniques, are very very effective but not at all the usual type of exercises one might sing in a typical classical voice lesson... at least not one's I'd ever had. (except I'd known about lip trills before.) My students who I've introduced these to since my summer trip and who can get past the "weirdness" of doing lots of lip trills and creaky doors and making "dumb" sounds, see immediate improvement. My students are singing better than ever. I even hired Randy to give my daughter a voice lesson over the speaker phone just a few weeks ago, for some ideas to help her with a cadenza in a Mozart concert aria. Amazing! We are having lots and lots of fun with our new techniques and I’m slowly (very slowly) using more scientific verbiage when I talk about the vocal mechanism with my students. I didn't feel intimidated at all by Randy, even though I haven't done even a quarter of the studying he's done or a lot of other Vocalisters. He seemed much more intuitive than I'd imagined he might be from reading the posts, many I admit to deleting without reading because I couldn't grasp all the technical descriptions. Can you imagine the fun it would be to have the funds and the time to drive around the country and take lessons with each other? I think it would be such a kick! Anyway, I'm glad Randy is as accessible as he is because I've learned a lot and I'd encourage any of you who think you've got someone on Vocalist "figured out" to probably think again, as Randy just wrote. Email posts are not very multi-dimensional. Deanna www.Edgewoodvoicestudio.com
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