Mark Henricks Experience with Guy Monroe
I came to Guy Monroe's doorstep not because I had a problem with my voice — although I did — or because I had a dream of singing — although I did. I wasn't there because professional singers had urged me to look into working with a vocal coach — although they had. It was really all those things and more that led me to come to my first session with Guy a week ago.
I was already singing occasionally at shows I booked for myself around town, sometimes even for money. I knew I wasn't a great vocalist, but I figured as a singer-songwriter, that was okay. Still, several people had already — diplomatically — suggested to me that singing wasn't the best part of my act. And when the Nashville pros at a songwriting symposium I attended enthusiastically endorsed the idea of every singer having a voice trainer, I decided to look into it. I figured an hour or two rehearsing scales and practicing my breathing wouldn't hurt me.
Boy, was I wrong.
I wasn't wrong about the impact of getting guidance from an experienced teacher of vocal technique. I was very wrong, though, about what that help would look like. From the second I walked into Guy's studio, I knew I was in for an experience totally unlike what I thought a singing lesson would be.
The first clue was the towering rack of recording equipment and sound processing gear that loomed to one side. The recording booth with high-end microphone and headphones also surprised me. What was all this doing in a voice training classrom? I expected to be learning how to hit a note square and project my voice to the back of the room. But, here, even though there was a piano sitting in front of a sunny window, it was clear that do-re-mi was going to take a back seat to something else.
I don't want to give away all of Guy's secrets, or at least the tiny handful that I managed to learn in that first session, but broadly speaking it seemed that what he was going to teach me was to use my voice to reach people, to engage their attention, to win their trust and to affect their emotions. I wasn't expecting that. How could singing on pitch do that?
It can't, is what Guy made clear. Using examples of famous pop singers from Johnny Cash to Elton John, he showed how the way these superstars produced their singing voices was what made them record-selling giants. He had an uncanny ability to imitate singers from James Taylor to Steve Perry, while showing me exactly what he was doing to give his voice the same depth, power and — most importantly — ability to seem true, heartfelt and sincere.
Instead of twisting my arm to get me to hit the notes properly, he outlined the mechanics of producing a sound that carried emotion as well as musical information. We did a few pretty easy and enjoyable — if slightly awkward at first — exercises to help me generate sound that was unlike anything I'd heard coming from my pipes in the past.
He explained that, with today's amplification technology, the goal wasn't to sing loud. It was to sing with intimacy and conviction. And he led me through a few experiments on myself to see how I could, just by changing the way I was producing sounds, sing with much the same soul-grabbing character as the singers I admired.
Naturally, when the lesson was over I couldn't wait to try out what I'd learned. The first friend I hesitantly demonstrated my newfound skills to instantly declared that something was very different. It wasn't just that my voice sounded better, according to this critic. It wasn't just that I'd lost the lifeless, unaffecting sound I'd been producing. And it wasn't that I sounded more like the guys on the radio. It was all those, and more.
I can't say for sure that as a result of what Guy can teach me I'll be singing in bigger and better venues, in front of more numerous and appreciative listeners, and picking up more fans and bigger paychecks. But I can say without a doubt that I like the way I sing now better than I did before being exposed to just the first hour's worth of what Guy has to offer. I'll be coming back to his doorstep and recommending him to others, and I'm looking forward to learning what else I was wrong about when it comes to vocal coaching.
