by Gary Powell
Professor Glenn Richter asked me to pose a question or two for your contemplation. Below you will find several from which to choose. I will look forward to plunging the depths with you next Wednesday, October 20, 2010.
Gary Powell, Composer/Producer
Music, Production, Identity, and Mentoring in Austin, Texas
The post-mortem of Gary’s teaching engagements.
by Gary Powell
Professor Glenn Richter asked me to pose a question or two for your contemplation. Below you will find several from which to choose. I will look forward to plunging the depths with you next Wednesday, October 20, 2010.
by Gary Powell
Professor Glenn Richter asked me to pose a question or two for your contemplation. Below you will find several from which to choose. I will look forward to plunging the depths with you next Wednesday, October 20, 2010.
What if we lived in a world of “no wrong notes?” Before finding our own creative identity, we can either feel completely free or maybe even horribly oppressed. Either mindset can be a great motivator for substantive contribution to self and then to a larger audience and ultimately community. Beyond developing talent, this is what I aim to release in singers.
What if we lived in a world of “no wrong notes?” Before finding our own creative identity, we can either feel completely free or maybe even horribly oppressed. Either mindset can be a great motivator for substantive contribution to self and then to a larger audience and ultimately community. Beyond developing talent, this is what I aim to release in singers.
by Gary Powell
Nurturing cooperative relationships with university music schools is important to me. Without these schools the musical landscape will continue to flatten. The student musician brings a diversity of musical interests to their classical training with genuine relevance to them both personally and generationally. The popular and commercial musical arts have largely been viewed as outside the purview of ivory-tower conservatories. In October, 2009, I tried to make a bridge between these two camps in a four day vocal workshop hosted by Sam Houston State University. The workshop is designed to introduce to student singers the skills needed to work as a session singer in a professional recording studio.
by Gary Powell
Every singer, regardless of where they are in their recording careers, needs an outside ear of someone they trust who is a competent coach in the recording studio. As a vocal coach, helping to sculpt a vocal performance of a talented singer is one of the most exciting musical events in the studio.
After getting a feel for what the voice might be able to do, I listen for pitch accuracy, tone, weight, phrasing, color, air and any missed opportunities across all of the singer’s performance choices and gestures. That may be even the right order for my listening hierarchy. It all happens sort of at the same time though, so it’s hard to know which comes first for me.