Denes Striny's international singing career brought him to the major opera houses of the world in leading roles. At the same time, he was evolving his vocal technique in a quest to find his full vocal potential. This book documents his struggles and successes with himself, teachers, coaches, and other singers. Striny, while maintaining his singing career, also had a full studio of singers studying with him in New York City.In this his first book, Striny confronts and explains the u...

This book supplies detailed explanations for young singers, teachers, and professional singers with "troubled" voices. Striny's previous book, Head First, discussed this process but without specific instructions to accomplish the task. This completely original process was conceived by Striny to correct major problems in his voice that had been caused by two separate voice teachers. The content of the process and the suggested duration of time duplicate exactly what his self-study ...

The classic instructional—and inspirational—guide for amateur pianists, filled with humor, encouragement, and advice from modern masters: “Excellent.” —The New York TimesLongtime New Yorker writer and passionate piano player Charles Cooke offers concrete routines for improving your piano performance, whether you’re experienced, starting out, or starting over.A pleasant and constant cheerleader, Cooke asks readers to practice every day, sug...

In The Naked Voice, W. Stephen Smith invites all singers to improve their vocal technique through his renowned and time-tested wholistic method. Focusing not only on the most important technical, but also on the often overlooked psychological and spiritual elements of learning to sing, his book allows readers to develop their own full and individual identities as singers. With philosophies and techniques drawn from a lifetime of teaching voice, Smith demonstrates how one can reveal the tru...

Counterpoint is an approach to musical composition based on the union of independent and interdependent melodies. Counterpoint and How to Use It in Your Music is a step-by-step course in counterpoint, and shows you how to apply it in your own music, whether you write contemporary pop songs or pieces for orchestral or traditional instruments.     "I love to learn from it. A mavelous master piece. I learned a lot from each lesson. I had to tran...

In this well documented and highly readable book, James Stark provides a history of vocal pedagogy from the beginning of the bel canto tradition of solo singing in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries to the present. Using a nineteenth-century treatise by Manuel Garcia as his point of reference, Stark analyses the many sources that discuss singing techniques and selects a number of primary vocal 'problems' for detailed investigation. He also presents data from a seri...

While many texts and courses on the art of singing offer comprehensive overviews of technique and performance, few have time to delve into the specific questions they spawn. Solutions for Singers explores these unanswered questions, filling in gaps that professional performers, students of singing, and voice teachers have long sought to close. Fielding over 200 questions, distinguished teacher and performer Richard Miller tackles problems raised during hundreds of his master class...

Training Soprano Voices provides a complete and reliable system for training each type of soprano voice. Designed as a practical program for singers, teachers, and voice professionals, it couples historic vocal pedagogy with the latest research on the singing voice, emphasizing the special nature of the soprano voice and the proper physiological functioning for vocal proficiency. Renowned singing teacher Richard Miller supplies a detailed description for each of the nine categorie...

Rob Kapilow has been helping audiences hear more in great music for almost twenty years with his What Makes It Great? series on NPR, at Lincoln Center, and in concert halls throughout the US and Canada. In this book, he gives you a set of tools you can use when listening to any piece of music in order to hear its “plot”—its story told in notes. The musical examples are available free for download to help you hear the ideas presented. Whether you are an experienced concertgoer or a...

The Mind's Ear offers a unique approach to stimulating the musical imagination and inspiring creativity, as well as providing detailed exercises aimed at improving the ability to read and imagine music in silence, in the "mind's ear." Modeling his exercises on those used in theater games and acting classes, and drawing upon years of experience with improvisation and composition, Bruce Adolphe has written a compelling, valuable, and practical guide to musical creativity that can be...

For most of my life I've wanted to be a top rate tenor. As a young man it was my dream to be singing in the great opera houses of the world. I always believed it was my destiny and that I had it in me to achieve my dream. But obviously my dream didn't eventuate. However, I still believe it would have been possible to achieve that goal if I had known as much about singing when I was younger as I do now. At seventy-five it's a bit impractical to expect that I can still make it to the top, bu...

Singing and the Etheric Tone introduces a practical, joyful approach to singing that draws its strength and inspiration from Gracia Ricardo's work with Rudolf Steiner. Chapter 1 deals with the tone, the onset of the tone, the humming approach, and the relations between vowels, consonants, words, and phrases. Chapter 2 goes into the voice, how to build a voice and extend its range. Chapter 3 develops the idea of blending the vocal registers, the placement of the voice, embellishments, resonanc...