Mark Bosnian - award-winning singer-songwriter

I played a gig today and after my performance I was standing at the back of the room chatting with some folks when my friend Linda walked up. “Hey, Mark, I have a question for you--why’d you use the word “free” in the title of your book? I’ve been wondering…..”

It’s funny she asked because just yesterday I was looking at an old file in my computer of possible titles for my book. For a whole year, as I was finishing up the writing, the book had a different title. At the last minute I decided it wasn’t right and spent weeks wrestling with one title after another. In the end it was simple–the answer came when I asked myself, “What have I been teaching people to do in my voice studio for the past 26 years? What is it that people want most?” Just about everyone tells me they want to feel confident when they sing or speak—they want to feel free.

This month we shine the light on a great singer--Haley Johnsen, who recently began working with Mark. An Oregon State grad who sang in college, Haley decide to try out for American Idol this season and impressed the judges enough to make it to Hollywood. With her, rich powerful voice she made it all the way to the semi-finals.

This month of March, 2012 we shine the light on a great singer--Nikki Horner. Nikki's been studying at Bosnian Vocal Studios since 2007 and has developed into a strong, expressive singer with great range and power.

If you watch American Idol, The Voice, Glee, The Sing-Off, America’s Got Talent, The X Factor or any other reality show that features singing, and you say to yourself, ”I can do that!” you’re in the minority. Most people feel pretty intense fear when they think of singing, especially in front of others. “No way!” is more likely to come out of their mouths.

Popular grammy-winning singer-songwriter John Mayer recently had to cancel all of his performances and the release of his upcoming album due to vocal problems. He has what is called a granuloma, a type of growth, on his vocal cords. This type of problem often stems from lack of good vocal technique.

What I think is interesting here is not that this happened to a popular singer—I can’t tell you how many times famous national act singers have to cancel performances, parts of tours or entire tours due to “vocal fatigue”, laryngitis, exhaustion or other code words for voice problems. What’s surprising is how many of my voice students are shocked that a singer of this stature has voice problems at all.

Support is the most important principle in singing. Without it, everything else in the development of your voice is like painting a used car and calling it new. The major issues will still be present; they’ll just be covered up with a pretty veneer. I sang professionally for 10 years with absolutely no concept of support and it was very difficult for me to maintain my voice during that time. I got hoarse often, had serious trouble singing high notes; if I sang a song loudly and aggressively, I couldn’t come right back and sing one cleanly and gently. I often spent my days worrying about whether my voice would work that night. It wasn’t a lot of fun to have so little control over my voice but I believed that that was what singers had to go through.

If it’s not measurable, it’s not valuable

I’ve often had students attempt to describe what they hear in a recording of their own voice. “That’s awful,” “It sounds terrible,” or “I don’t like it” may be the first words out of their mouths. When I ask someone to elaborate, most of the time they use the same types of phrases to repeat the same theme. The problem with this approach is that nothing measurable is being described and it is extremely difficult to change a vocal performance when you can’t measure it. So how do you measure what you’re singing?

Cooling down after a vocal performance is just as important as warming up. Because we are dealing with muscles, they must be warmed up before being exerted and cooled down afterwards to help prevent stiffening. The main reasons to warm-up and stretch out muscles are: 1) to prevent injury, 2) to be able to work longer before tiring, and 3) to increase range of motion. Too many singers do too little warm up before singing and then are disappointed in the results.

Too many singers do too little warm up before singing and then are disappointed in the results. Merely singing a couple of scales or running through a song lightly on the way to a performance is not an efficient way to warm up.

When moving from a high note to a low note, very often singers experience the low note becoming noisy, breathy, out of tune, or unstable.  This may seem strange in that you would probably agree that singing a low note should be easier than singing a high note. Why the trouble?  Here is what can often happen.

I got a call early yesterday from radio station KPAM in Portland, OR wanting to know if I could be interviewed live on the Bob Miller morning show to talk about how Christina Aguilera screwed up the National Anthem at the Super Bowl. I agreed, and during the 20 minutes before they called me back, I jumped on the Internet to review her performance. As I listened to it again, I couldn’t really see or hear what the fuss was. And, oh, what a fuss there was!