ELITE VOICE: The Academic Podcast on Singing

For 140 years, learning research has studied how a person acquires a skill. Its findings reshaped the training of doctors, pilots and language learners. Singing instruction they have barely reached.

In this half hour I work through six findings, each with place, year and source, and for each one I clarify three things: what was measured, what follows from it for developing a singing voice, and how it shows up in a learner's day-to-day practice. At the end they come together into a learning model that differs from the weekly singing lesson in almost every respect.

There will be little talk of singing itself. This is about the question that comes before every exercise and that singing lessons almost never ask: how a person learns.

▸ THE PROGRAM
Vocal Foundations, 25 days of academic vocal education. Full contents and terms:
https://elitevoice.io/products/online-singing-course-vocal-foundations

▸ THE SIX MEASURES
Daily instead of weekly.
Understanding before practising.
Retrieval instead of repetition.
One image instead of three instructions.
Feedback every day, until you can give it to yourself.
And all of it in your own language.

Against these six measures you can judge every singing lesson, every instructional video and every piece of advice you have ever been given.

▸ SOURCES
Marton, F. & Säljö, R. (1976): On Qualitative Differences in Learning. British Journal of Educational Psychology.
Ebbinghaus, H. (1885): Über das Gedächtnis. Leipzig. Replication: Murre, J. & Dros, J. (2015), PLoS ONE, University of Amsterdam.
Roediger, H. & Karpicke, J. (2006): Test-Enhanced Learning. Psychological Science.
Paivio, A. (1971): Imagery and Verbal Processes. Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Bloom, B. (1984): The 2 Sigma Problem. Educational Researcher.
Kestin, G. et al. (2025): Scientific Reports, Harvard University.
UNESCO (2016): If you don't understand, how can you learn? Global Education Monitoring Report, Paris.

▸ ABOUT ELITE VOICE
Vocal Foundations is an academic vocal education built on exactly the model described in this episode: 25 days in five sections, each day with an explanation, a self-diagnosis and an exercise built on a single image, in the learner's own language. Led by Prof. Dr. Fatıma Akyüzlüer, professor of music pedagogy, who has spent more than twenty years researching how a voice works and how it is trained.
https://elitevoice.io