Adam Lambert  – Mad World

Adam does it again.  I’ve never though of the original version as a great “vocalist” song, but Adam turns it into a one-of-a kind vocal performance. Once again he uses his vocal range and dynamics not to show off, but to express truthfully. 

http://www.americanidol.com/videos/season_8/performances/adam_lambert_mad_world

Allison Iraheta – I Can’t Make You Love Me

Allison had me before she opened her mouth.  When she looks down and up again she is already completely into the emotion context of the song (And it’s not because she looks down – I don’t care where she looks). From when she sings the first line (turn down the lights) until the end I truly believe here.  I really empathize with her when she sings “I can’t make you love me if you don’t”.

http://www.americanidol.com/videos/season_8/performances/allison_iraheta_i_cant_make_you_love_me

Anoop Desai  – True Colors

This was my favorite performance form Anoop.  Last week he just went for attitude rather than truthful expression.  I still don’t understand why he hasn’t chosen a song that is more fun where he can use his natural charisma. The problem with Anoop is that although he has a beautiful voice he doesn’t fully grasp what he is singing about.  In this song he is singing to a person who is down and sad. Why does that mean that he needs to be down and sad?  In fact, if you were to inspire a friend to make them feel better because you see their true colors, would you sit on a stool and look like the world is coming to an end?

http://www.americanidol.com/videos/season_8/performances/anoop_desai_true_colors

Danny Gokey – Stand By Me

I am surprised Danny chose the mic stand again this week.  Last week he admitted it was out of his comfort zone and he became noticeably self-conscious with his fiddling around with the microphone – or the “I-don’t-know-what-to-do-with-my-hands” syndrome.  This week it is much better. However, not surprisingly, the song and his performance goes to a whole new level when he steps away from the stand.  Had he done I earlier this whole song would have been sensational.  It was still great though.

http://www.americanidol.com/videos/season_8/performances/danny_gokey_stand_by_me

Kris Allen – All She Wants To Do Is Dance

I’m liking Kris more and more. He’s cool. He’s Fun. He’s quirky. He’s charming. He let’s his charm and likeability come through in his songs – exactly what I wished for Anoop. I can see why he has many fans.

http://www.americanidol.com/videos/season_8/performances/kris_allen_all_she_wants_to_do_is_dance

Lil Rounds – What's Love Got To Do With It

When they announced she was singing Tina Turner’s ‘What’s Love Got To Do With It”, I said to myself “please don’t come out looking like Tina Turner”. This is becoming uncomfortable to watch. Four weeks in a row she has turned into a karaoke rendition of the original artist.  I don’t know who the real Lil Rounds is and I don’t become as emotionally involved in her song as I would like.  It’s a bummer, because she sure has a great voice. This I also why it’s great for singers to take acting classes. I mean real acting classes where the training is about learning to be truthful, spontaneous and vulnerable in the moment – i.e to stop acting.

http://www.americanidol.com/videos/season_8/performances/lil_rounds_whats_love_got_to_do_with_it

Matt Giraud – Part Time Lover

One of Matt’s best performances.  The best thing with Matt is that he is unpredictable.  Sometimes it hasn’t worked, but sometimes it’s great.  It very much comes down to song choice for him.  I’m excited to see what he does next.

http://www.americanidol.com/videos/season_8/performances/matt_giraud_part_time_lover

Scott Macintyre – The Search Is Over

Not so sure about the guitar. The problem here is that the song becomes a little “shouty”. It’s a tendency Scott has that compresses the sound rather than makes it rich, warm and powerful. If he would discover how easy it is to get more power with far less effort, he would become far more dynamic and passionate in his expression.

http://www.americanidol.com/videos/season_8/performances/scott_macintyre_the_search_is_over
 

I know. It’s one of those things we always say, isn’t it? However, what if, one year from now, you really felt that 2009 was a one-of-a kind extraordinary year for you?

I’d like to share with you a little different slant on traditional goal setting. (As you know, most New Year’s resolutions are forgotten after a couple of months (or weeks) and there is a reason for that – we’ll talk about that later.) So what about goal setting?…

Well, as you may have heard, or been taught, goal setting is more effective if the goals are specific, have time limits and are measurable.

However, follow along here and let’s see what we discover…

Fast forward a year. Imagine it’s the end of 2009. What would you like to come out of you when you sing? How would you like to sound? How would you like to feel when you sing? What kind of pain would you like to be released? What kind of effect would you like be able to have on an audience when you sing?

What kind of confidence would you like to experience when performing? What kind of power and authority would you like to have when you express, present and communicate? What feeling of accomplishment would you like to experience – knowing you can now do something that you couldn’t do before… knowing you have grown and learned from a challenge?

As you realize, it would be absolutely impossible to accurately measure these experiences. This is non-measurable growth – yet very real.  The non-measurable growth is a prerequisite for measurable growth – such as income, pounds on a scale and so forth.

Now, here’s the real interesting question:  What is going to stop you?

In a moment of pumped-up confidence we might exclaim “Nothing! Nothing is going to stop me!”

But the real truth is that there is plenty that is going to hinder you. You will face a tremendous amount of resistance. What kind? And more importantly; what do you do when it happens?

What do you do if you were out walking and suddenly faced three feet of snow?  Trod through and get deeper and deeper into it?  No. You go back, get your skies and glide on top of the snow.

What do you do when you’re caught in a riptide?  Swim like maniac against it?  No. You back off and swim around it. 

What do you do when you really need something from someone and meet resistance?  Push through with your agenda?  No. You back off and figure out how to solve the other person’s problem.

What do you do when you run out of money?  What do you do when the weight-loss plan hits a brick wall?  What do you do when you are rejected? What do you do when you can’t come up with any good ideas? What do you do on the day your voice doesn’t work?

The great athletes are not the ones who don’t get tired, but the ones who have trained themselves to perform well when – not if – the pain sets in. A marathon runner doesn’t hope that he won’t become tired. He knows he will meet enormous resistance – i.e. pain – and he prepares for it. (And the real strange thing is that he enjoys it and wants to do it again – crazy, isn’t it?)

Part of my job as a coach is to help the client move through to a new level. We all meet resistance. It’s part of daily life. When I coach people with specific voice dysfunctions, for example, there is chronic muscular resistance which obviously affects the psyche. How could it not? Not having a functioning voice is just not very fun.

Some people have so much mental resistance that they are constantly swimming against the riptide, getting nowhere. Naturally, the feeling of getting nowhere leads to more resistance. (Believe me, I’ve been there.) Much of my coaching is to help people release resistance and immediate get a greater sense of empowerment. This way, physical vocal power goes hand in hand with mental/psychological power.

Whether in private or via my home study singing course, my coaching is to enlighten the person on how to reduce resistance and gain more strength, power and freedom. Because of this, we experience significant and many times instant results. All the claims and success stories about the fast results are not marketing gimmicks.  It’s the reality. (I just got another phenomenal email today.)

So, what kind of resistance are you feeling right now?  What kind of resistance do you feel when thinking about your dreams?  What kind of resistance do you feel in your body when you think about what you really want to experience a year from now?

It all starts with an awareness of the now, which leads to mental preparation – mental preparation to fulfill your dreams and make 2009 your best year ever.

Your thoughts?

You see I haven’t meditated much recently. I’ve also experienced a lot of turmoil lately. Stuff has been going on that has taken a toll on my psyche and body – things I’d rather be without.  So I realized I needed to meditate.

If you haven’t meditated before, or you have been away from it for some time, you will find the attempt to silence your mind quite futile. In fact, your mind will seemingly be racing more than ever – you are simply becoming more aware of it.

And it came to me why I want to get back to meditate regularly again. It came to me exactly where in my body I was storing this stress – the turmoil. Then after a while, after merely becoming aware, I was suddenly able to do something about it. I could release the inner tension and I felt like a new person.

And it came to me how unbelievably thankful I am that I have sought to develop these inner skills and an unstoppable belief of the magic within us.

And it came to me why I had always sought to develop these skills.  See, granted, I have never experienced really bad stuff, and for that I am also really thankful.  But as thankful as I am for all the great things in my life, I realized that I’m really thankful for all the bad things. 

I’m immensely thankful for my back injury that could have killed my dream of being an athlete but instead turned me into one… for losing my voice that could have ended my singing and coaching career but turned me into a better singer and coach than I could possibly have been otherwise…  for losing my health that gave me a stronger body and mind … for being humiliated… for feeling shy and awkward… for feeling pain… for feeling scared… for losing over and over… for failing… and failing again… and failing again… that turned me into…

As I wrote about in the soccer game article, you cannot win if you cannot lose. And I am immensely thankful for all the turmoil that has provided challenges in my life.

Wishing for problems to disappear just doesn’t serve us.  We certainly don’t want to store problems away and pretend they don’t exist. If so, rest assured they will manifest in your body a couple of years later. They will always be holding you back.

Instead, we elevate to a new level where these “problems” were indeed the necessary stepping stones. We get to the point where there is no way we could have gotten here without the help of these “problems”.  

Numerous clients come to me because they have voice problems and want to get their voice back.  But do you really want to get your old voice back?  What if we leave the old voice in the gutter and build a new one – a new physical and inner voice that you would never have discovered unless you had lost the old one?

Many want to overcome their shyness and lack of confidence. What if this shyness and lack of confidence is exactly the ingredients that make you the interesting artist you can be – an artist you could never have become if you hadn’t had these experiences?

There is absolutely no way we can grow if we don’t do what we have never done before.

Yes, every step of growth means doing something you have never done before. It means doing something you don’t know how to do yet – whether it is to grow a business, heal a body, excel in a skill, face a confrontation, or improve a relationship – yes even the relationship with yourself.

If I can’t face this turmoil – these problems – how can I expect to elevate to a new level of ability? Come to think of it, I don’t want this turmoil to “disappear”.  Hey, I don’t want a life without problems.  I want the problems! Come on, bring ‘em on! 

Yes, I am immensely thankful for all my challenges and failures.  Does that make me a failure or a winner?

How about you?  What are you thankful for?

It may seem like I have lost my mind since conventional wisdom says you should never mess with a winning formula. And it is true, people from all over the world – from Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Europe (including Sweden, England, Finland, France, Israel and more) as well as people from all over the USA and Canada – have raved about the results they have gotten from the course. And this is in despite of the fact that the marketing for this course has been minimal. (Nothing beats word of mouth.)

So why on earth would I discontinue it?

For the last decades I have been pondering how to make these strategies to free the voice – strategies that have been unknown to most – available and useful for anybody. I know from my own experience how life-transforming it can be to experience a newfound sense of freedom to sing – whether you regularly sing in front of thousands of people or just want to feel good with friends. My task is to develop a system so beneficial that anyone can experience this sense of empowerment of being a great singer.

The short story is this: As happy as I am that the course has been so helpful for so many, something better, even greater is in the works. Frankly, what is soon to be launched is a voice training system so powerful, so revolutionary, that it is completely unmatched by anything you have ever seen. I know these are big words, but the words don’t come from me, they come from the results of other people – beginners to pros. Here are just a few of the many emails I’ve received recently:

"First of all, I would like to say a big thank you for your product. From lesson 1 alone I learnt so much about my voice. I come from having 3 singing teachers, multiple online products including…. (product name left out as courtesy to colleagues)… and honest to God I have never learnt as much as I have from those 50 minutes of instruction!"   Daniel Yuen – Canada

"I have been singing for the past 9 years and took voice lessons from 3 different teachers before. But nothing can compare to what Per’s 6 week on-line lessons have taught me. I always felt learning to sing is far to hard and complicated. But then, the truth now becomes that I have never felt learning to sing can be so effortless and simple. It’s truly God’s blessing to have Per. Awesome!!!   Mike Lee, Worship Leader – Malaysia

"I feel like I’ve been liberated to explore my own abilities. I’ve found that singing is very therapeutic. It releases stress and calms me down. This course was definitely a life-enhancer for me. Thanks for everything, Per"   Albert Huerta

Anyway, forgive me if you were planning to hop on the course only to find it unavailable. Shortly, I will give you all the details on what is about to come and how you can benefit from being the first to know about it.  

If you read this and are not yet on the email list, make sure you enter your email in the box in the right sidebar so you don’t miss out.

2007 is coming to an end and we are about to set things in motion to make 2008 our best year ever. Right? You bet 2008 is going to be your best year ever. But in order to make that happen we need to reflect – reflect on the year that has been. Rather than listing things you have accomplished and or acquired, let’s look inwards and reflect on what you discovered this last year? What have you experienced? What have you learned? Many times we forget to reflect, or rather we don’t want to. The reason for that is simple…

Ask any person who you consider successful or who you admire for some reason, and you will hear that the success could never have been experiences without the many challenges, the many “failures” during the journey. The so-called “failures” are phenomenal as long as we embrace them. 

Resilience is perhaps the most important trait we can foster as human beings. Resilience is the ability to recover and bounce back – physically, mentally, spiritually. The better and faster we are able to bounce back… or let’s put it this way: The better and faster we are able to learn – the greater the likelihood of success.

So as you reflect, the tendency might be to list things that have not gone as great as they “could”.  Then realize that the mere recognition of the challenges that you have faced, the discovery of how you handled them, is invaluable information. Every learning experience and every discovery is a successful experience if you embrace them as such.

I hereby challenge you to follow through on an exercise; and that is to reflect on your successes – especially in relation to your voice (singing or speaking), performance and communication, but also life in general. In a couple of days I will challenge you to envision 2008 – your best year ever. However, you cannot do so effectively without first having reflected. 

I challenge you to formulate your experiences in writing and post them as a comment below. What have you discovered about your voice, your passion for singing, your desire to learn, your love for life?. Have you perhaps discovered, experienced, and learned something on our journey together – whether you’ve been a private student, participated in the online singing course, or been a newsletter subscriber? Is there something you know about your voice and/or about yourself that you didn’t know a year ago? What can you do, what do you know today that you didn’t know a year ago? Etc.. 

In my ongoing attempt to serve the singing community I will on this blog answer subscriber questions as often as my time allows. As a subscriber, please submit your question to the email address given to you as a subscriber benefit. For starters, here is one of the most common questions:

How can I learn to sing high notes without cracking or straining?

And here is my response:

I struggled for years myself until I discovered that it doesn’t have to be that hard. The pitch – the note – is determined by the speed of vibration – in this case the speed of the vocal cords (or vocal folds). The problem is that you have never learned how to develop the small muscles that stretch, thin and adduct (bring together) the vocal cords. In fact, few people know how to do this effectively, and even less know the strategies to develop these muscles quickly. So right now, when you attempt to sing a high note, you can’t help but add more force which means you engage other surrounding muscles instead.