The most important hallmark of VOCAL FREEDOM is that the singer is not letting the REAL PERSON INSIDE take second place to anything else– not to worries and anxiety, not to other people’s expectations, not to peer pressure, not to anything.
At the Bel Canto House School of Singing I use the mechanism of telling the story of a song to lead students into their own VOCAL FREEDOM as singers. This was not a difficult concept for the students who first came to me when I established the School in Dublin. Irish people do not need to be told what great and gifted storytellers they've always been. In fact most of them are probably too busy spinning yarns to even stop and consider just how well they can tell stories!
Telling the story allows a singer’s own mind to take control of the voice in a completely natural and unaffected way. It allows you as the singer to free your thoughts from worries and anxiety and self-consciousness and to simply be yourself. To achieve VOCAL FREEDOM, you need only to take the shackles off of your mind. Once you do this, everything else is possible.
2 comments:
THE JOY OF DISCOVERING FRANK MERRIMAN
I am a student of the renound Bel Canto School of Singing, Dublin, Ireland. I consider myself blessed to have discovered an amazing man, Frank Merriman, my teacher and director of the Bel Canto School and his assistant Edwin Williamson, who both gained vocal freedom through the Bel Canto study many years ago and continue to bring joy and pleasure to their students through the Bel Canto style of teaching with great success. When I first met Frank at my assessment, I was impressed by his knowledge, love and passion for the real art of singing through storytelling and his love and respect for all the great composers and how successful Frank and Edwin are through their own Bel Canto study and how truly dedicated they are to Bel Canto House.
As a new student I am blown away with the quality of singing from the more experienced students at the school and how each voice has its own uniqueness, while telling a story through song. I thoroughly enjoy may singing study and the simplicity of its teaching. I feel privileged and honoured to be a student of Frank Merriman and will be forever grateful to him for his teaching, guidance and knowledge and the joy of singing he brought into my life.
Through Frank and Edwin's direction, I look forward to achieving vocal freedom and bring my singing to a higher level.
Thank you both for awakening such beauty that was lying dormant within me for all those wasted years.
I wish everyone realised they are born with a voice and the rest is mindset and not deprive themselves of the greatest buzz in the world...SINGING!
Mary Harford
Dublin
Dear Mary-
Thank you so much for your kind words, and Edwin joins me in gratitude for all you have said here. Indeed we in turn are honored to have such a lovely person as yourself in the school, and I want you to remember always that your own unique gifts enrich all those around you. I hope you will continue to come to this site and share your observations and insights from your ongoing experiences with the joys of singing.
-Frank
Post a Comment