The path to landing a recording contract or grabbing the lead in a Broadway musical is paved with often exhausting roadwork that requires discipline, determination and honing your craft. Once you find your voice you need to take it out looking for opportunities to grow in the light of an audience. Ideally you want an agent to do the legwork, management to handle bookings, and various support staff to make you look good, feel great and stay healthy.

In the meantime there are opportunities all around you to be seen and heard you just need to uncover them. According to national radio personality Devon O’Day singers should look for ways to engage their gifts through community service.

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A student recently asked me, “Is it necessary to use sex to sell my image in the entertainment industry?” Initially, I began to define ‘sex’ as being case specific. It is evident that sex holds an ever-present dominance in the entertainment industry and has for quite some time. However, the idea of what is acceptable and what is profane has been constantly evolving. I left it up to my student to explore this question, “Are you willing to, according to cultural tendencies, ‘exploit’ yourself and your own morality for the sake of popularity?”

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Question:

Can anyone learn to sing? Will singing lessons ruin my personal style? Can I learn to sing with the rough tone of a rock singer without losing my voice? How many lessons does it take to become a good singer? Will I get vocal nodes from singing rock music? How effective are phone lessons? What type of vocal therapy do you practice?
                   
Answer:

Wow. These are all great questions. Some great questions have great, majestic answers. And some answers are less life-altering. My favorite of these less life-altering answers is "it depends." At first it seems boring, but at second glance, those can be two very powerful words.

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From The Blog of Tom Jackson:

The former guitar player for Prince was telling me about their rehearsals. If you've seen any video of Prince or seen him live, he goes off on jams that appear completely spontaneous. Sometimes they're so off the wall, you wonder where they came up with the stuff they did! I asked him, how did you get from that place to this funky thing to this Pink Floyd thing to this breakdown, to this jammin' stuff -- and it all seems so spontaneous? And he said one word..."practice."

In practice they got an instinct, they were jamming, and they went down that road in practice. The idea came to them, they stopped, went back, fleshed it out, and rehearsed it to where it was really tight and they didntt have to think about it.

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Question:

I was wondering how do I make myself confident, one minute I feel like I've got it and I am good enough to make it into the music business, but the next I feel like I shouldn't waste my time. My mom is very up and down, but how do I stop listening to the people around me and use the talent god gave me? Thank you for your time, and I would love to hear from you.
                   
Answer:

Confidence. It's a big word, with a bittersweet aftertaste. How does it really work? Are there really singers who just have this freakishly unrealistic ability to get up on stage and NEVER feel inadequate

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Question:

Hello, we have a little bit of a problem here because our lead singer seems to think that smoking pot does not in any way affect his singing voice!!! Can you please let me know if this is true? We all have tried to tell him that it does affect your voice and that he needs to “can it” but he seems to constantly battle the question and says that we don't know his voice like he does, and that smoking does not affect his singing in any way....Will you please help me out with this and set this straight for me?
                   
Answer:

Without dealing with the political and moral implications at hand, I’ll attempt to give a concise, effectual answer pertaining to vocal health only. Unrelated side effects of ingesting cannabis or inhaling smoke or vapor derivatives are outside the scope of this Q&A.

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