November 06, 2022

#88. My Interview with Vocal Intuition: Advocating for CCM Singing Voice Pedagogy

47 minutes

Recently, I was invited to be a guest on a Facebook Live event with Anne Leatherland, who is a voice educator, business coach and the founder of Vocal Intuition based in the United Kingdom. During this interview, I was asked to speak about the process of researching and writing my book “Singing Contemporary Commercial Music Styles: A Pedagogical Framework”, as well as my own professional CCM journey which led me to an academic career path. In this episode, I decided to share this interview as I believe it is time for CCM to be respected and valued equally to classical music and no longer be treated as its poor relation, especially in academia.

This interview offers quite a rare insight into my 45 years of CCM industry experience, how I fell in love with this music as a young child, my award-winning career as a pop/rock vocalist, my serendipitous transition from performance career to teaching CCM styles, and my shock introduction into higher education as a mature aged post-graduate student. It was here that I realised that the music I had built a whole career upon, was not legitimised from an academic or pedagogical standpoint. This shock revelation launched my research into CCM singing voice pedagogy, write a book based on the results of that research and has inspired me to become an advocate for this music.

In this episode, I speak candidly about the status quo in higher education, and that it is time to listen to not only the needs of our students, but also the demands of music markets, music consumers, and music industry personnel as a voice community. I would love to hear from you if any parts of this interview resonated with you. A big thanks goes to Anne for having me as a guest and allowing me to speak on this topic.

In this episode
06:05 — Marisa’s Humble Beginnings
11:57 — Was Classical Singing a Thing?
17:31 — An Advocate for the CCM Community
24:42 — Music’s Supply and Demand
29:05 — Authenticity: The Most Important Ingredient
32:48 — The Special CCM Pedagogy
35:48 — Not Just Knowledge. Set It Up Your Voice!
37:23 — Warming Up to a Different Language
39:26 — Dismantling Their Articulated Backgrounds

Find Vocal Intuition Online