So I want to talk to you today about one of the most common breakdowns I see in my studio, and it happens almost exclusively on the big musical theater belt songs. I'm talking about the soaring high notes in songs like "Defying Gravity" from Wicked, "Let It Go" from Frozen, "How Far I'll Go" from Moana, "Part of Your World" from The Little Mermaid, "She Used to Be Mine" from Waitress, "Almost There" from The Princess and the Frog — all of those moments where the music swells, your character is supposed to land this enormous emotional note, and absolutely soar.

What are Bobby McFerrin’s Circlesongs? What is a Community Sing?

Basically, it’s a crossover of the broader concepts of community singing (pre-composed/arranged songs with or without harmony with or without accompaniment sung in large groups of amateurs) and improvisational group singing.

So if you wanted to learn CircleSongs, you could transcribe or learn his parts by ear. However the spirit of the events is for each song to be different and unique to the audience in each performance.

The right question isn't who's closest. The right question is who's right for you.

If you're in the Valley and you searched "online vocal coach in Phoenix," you're already a step ahead of most people — because you didn't just search "vocal coach near me." You're thinking about fit, not just proximity. And as someone who has lived, taught, sung, and directed right here in Phoenix for a long time, I want to tell you why that instinct is exactly right.

Choir auditions are one of the most accessible and one of the most misunderstood audition formats in vocal music. Singers walk in thinking they're being evaluated on the prettiness of their voice. They are not. Choir directors are evaluating something more specific, more practical, and more revealing about the singer in front of them. Understanding what they're actually looking for is the single biggest lever a choral singer can pull at audition time.

Choir singing is one of the most technically demanding vocal disciplines and one of the least understood. Soloists who can deliver an aria flawlessly often cannot blend cleanly in a choral section. The technical demands of ensemble singing are not lower than solo singing; they are different. The vocal habits that produce a great solo voice frequently undermine ensemble cohesion, and the singers who excel at both are the ones who consciously train the choral-specific technical layer.

Understanding pitch is foundational to everything else you'll do as a singer or musician. Before you can develop range, control your voice across registers, or sing harmonies with other people, you need to grasp what pitch actually is and how the three basic categories of pitch (high, medium, and low) function in music.

I want to start this one with a question I ask new students sometimes, usually when they're beating themselves up over a recital tape, an audition video, a recording session that didn't go the way they hoped. They'll say, I just wanted it to be perfect, and it wasn't. And I'll ask them — okay. Let's say it had been. Let's say every note was tuned, every consonant was crisp, every breath was exactly where you planned it, every emotional beat landed right on the dotted line. Picture that performance in your head. Now tell me what it's missing.

If you're a trained singer or musical theater performer who's eyeing the kids' party circuit — princess parties, superhero appearances, mascot work, library reading events, anything where you're showing up in costume to entertain a roomful of seven-year-olds — I need to save you from a mistake I see talented performers make over and over again.

Audition anxiety is a specific animal. It is not the same as general stage fright. It is not the same as performance nerves. The audition room creates a particular cluster of pressures that the regular performing environment does not, and the performers who book consistently are the ones who have learned to work inside that pressure rather than against it.