This career could be a huge hit on our own emotional health. We have to take our own emotional health into consideration and sometimes we may need to administer emotional first aid. Check out this video to find out how and why. 

Sometimes finding the PERFECT audition song can be difficult. Travis does so well at finding you the songs that not everyone will be singing. We find it apart of our job to research and study and find these songs that are hidden gems to give to you! 
As a female, there are more women auditioning then parts available usually. Finding the right song can be that one step ahead. Here are a few fun quirky audition songs that you could use! Thank you to Performer Stuff for creating this list! 
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Here at Anderson Vocal studio we are thankful for you!! We now want to know what you're thankful for! Comment below with your things your thankful for!! 

Isn't this quote so true. Especially as we start to get into the Christmas season we are moved by the melodies and words found in the Christmas songs. Join Anderson Vocal studio and start working on your Holiday songs today!! 

The only way to improve is to PRACTICE!! We have so many resources on andersonvocal.com to help you practice easily! We want to see you all improve and grow in your talents of singing, acting, piano as well as your talents of performing! Let us know how we can help support your journey! If you have suggestions of what else we could add to our site to help you practice, Shoot us a message! 

As you have probably heard, Travis has stressed warm ups to our students. We wanted to give you an article that will help support you as you learn about why Warming up is so important! Check it out! 

Acting has been around since humans existed on this planet. We use it to tell stories and communicate with our audience different emotions and experiences. How we tell that story can vary depending on the technique you use. Did you know there are lots of different acting methods? Read this article put out by performerstuff.com and learn a little bit about the main 8 different techniques they discuss!

8 Different Acting Techniques and the Celebrities Who Use Them
Written by Ashleigh Gardner
July 13, 2016
Are you curious about acting techniques but don’t know where to start? The list below compiles basics on our world’s most popular and well-known acting teachers, the celebrities who follow their methods, and a list of acting books for further reading. Dive in! And find which method suits you best.

Stanislavski’s System
The father of acting techniques, Stanislavski approached acting through an emotional recall method, encouraging students to use past experiences to fuel their character’s reactions and emotions. He then shied away from this “inside out” approach to use the “magic if” — when the actor places themselves in an imaginary circumstance and decides how their character would react.
Students: Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud
Further Reading: An Actor Prepares, Building a Character, Creating a Role

Michael Chekhov
Chekhov studied under Stanislavski at the First Studio of the Moscow Art Theatre and had a nervous breakdown when he employed Stanislavski’s method of emotional recall. He practiced a physical and imagination-based system of achieving character through physicalizing a character’s need through an external gesture. Then, the gesture is unlearned through rehearsal and rather performed internally.
Students of this technique: Marilyn Monroe, Johnny Depp, Clint Eastwood, Anthony Hopkins, Helen Hunt, and Jack Nicholson
Further Reading: On the Technique of Acting

Lee Strasberg’s Method
Strasberg took Stanislavski’s use of “emotional recall” and ran with it. He believed that an actor achieves their most truthful performance when they apply a memory from their own life to their character’s emotions. Tools Strasberg used to teach his students were the coffee cup exercise (having a student drink a cup of coffee and then have them truthfully repeat the event only through pantomime) and the animal exercise (having a student study an animal that resembles the emotional traits of their character and then embody that animal in performance exercise).
Students of this technique: Scarlett Johansson, Dustin Hoffman, Angelina Jolie, and Steve Buscemi
Further Reading: Acting: A Handbook of the Stanislavski Method, A Dream of Passion

Stella Adler
Adler pushed her students to make choices for their characters that are different from the choices they would make themselves. She encouraged outside research and heavily focused on the use of sensory imagination to fuel an actor’s performances. Her main message? “In your choices lies your talent.”
Students of this technique: Robert DeNiro, Benecio Del Toro, Mark Ruffalo, and Melanie Griffith
Further Reading: The Art of Acting, The Technique of Acting, Stella Adler on Ibsen, Strindberg, and Chekhov

Meisner Technique
Sanford Meisner believed that acting is reacting. He disagreed with Stanislavski and Strasberg’s use of emotional recall and believed, rather, that an actor should live truthfully under imaginary circumstances. A strong proponent of an actor’s instinct, Meisner developed the Repetition Exercise in which two actors repeat a phrase back and forth to one another to encourage listening and instinctual reactions.
Students of this technique: Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin, Robert Duvall, Grace Kelly, Gregory Peck, and Diane Keaton
Further Reading: Sanford Meisner on Acting

Practical Aesthetics
Developed by David Mamet and actor William H. Macy, this technique focuses on a four-step breakdown of a scene that helps the actor understand their character’s motivations and circumstances: The “Literal”, the basic description of what is happening; The “Want”, what the actor’s character wants another character to do; The “Essential Action”, a description of what the actor, not the character, wants in the scene; and The “As If”, which relates the Essential Action to the actor’s own life experience. Another way to remember it is GOAT (Goal, Obstacle, Tactics, and Expectation), developed by Robert Cohen.
Students of this technique: Felicity Huffman, Rose Byrne, Jessica Alba, and Clark Gregg.
Further Reading: A Practical Handbook for the Actor

Uta Hagen
The actor who originated the role of “Martha” in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Uta Hagen advocated for naturalistic acting. She taught that an actor should put their own memories and psyche to work in finding their character. What will result is a character that is truthful, natural, and instinctual. She spoke against using any form of acting technique that used a rigid set of rules to achieve a character.
Students of this technique: Matthew Broderick, Sigourney Weaver, Jack Lemmon, Al Pacino, Liza Minnelli, and Jon Stewart.
Further Reading: Respect for Acting, A Challenge for the Actor

Viola Spolin
A pioneer and the mother of American improvisation, Spolin designed her improv games to give the actors something to focus on during the exercise — a problem or an end point. By adhering to these tasks, actors can learn to be less self-conscious and more in the moment about their decisions and actions, inspired by creativity and the other actors around them.
Students of this technique: Alan Arkin, Fred Willard, Dan Aykroyd, and Gilda Radner
Further Reading: Improvisation for the Theater

Hello!! Wanted to share this article by the New York Times Magazine. It shares ways to be able to sing in tune! It gives some good techniques to work on your pitch and may be a good exercise to add to your daily routine! This article also explains that most anyone can learn to sing in tune! My favorite quote you can find at the end, “Singing,” Nichols says, “leads to more singing.”

I love the explanation that Mo Gawdat give us on happiness. Remembering that Happiness is different then Fun. Happiness is what we think about the situation we are in. Take 2 min and watch this video and give yourself a good check on how you are thinking about Happiness.

Many people think that they are a useless cause when it comes to their ability to sing. But in fact, they are wrong! There is an article that was put out by the IVA (Institute of Vocal Advancement ) about everyone's ability to sing! Check it out!

"Do you have a pair of vocal folds that can produce sound? Can you tell the difference between a higher note and a lower note? Good news! You and about 98.5% of the population absolutely can be taught how to sing.
And the rest? Well, according to a recent Canadian study, about 1.5% of the population suffer from a condition called “congenital amusia”. They have real difficulty discriminating between different pitches, tone, and sometimes rhythm.


So if you were to play a well-known melody – say, the tune to “Happy Birthday” – and you played a few wrong notes, most people would identify the errors straight away. However, someone with congenital amusia might not notice anything wrong at all.


Natural talent aside, most of us can be taught to sing

Several years ago I had a request for private vocal lessons from a woman who just wanted to sing one song for her husband’s birthday in six months time.

What I noticed was that she was unable to accurately pitch match. She came to lessons each week and maintained her practice with incredible diligence. What she lacked in natural ability, she made up for in heart and work ethic. Within six months, she was not only matching pitch, but she was singing one and a half octave patterns slowly through her entire range (for example, from low C to A in the next octave up).


More importantly if she sang a note incorrectly, she could discern and correct it herself. She performed the song for her family and it was a happy outcome for all involved.
Her experience shows that hard work pays off, but that’s not the only factor. Work by German researchers found that that it is not just how much you practice that counts, but rather how quickly you identify and correct your error. This is what makes an OK singer into an expert performer. That said, without deliberate practice even the most talented singer will reach a plateau and get stuck.


How singing works
Understanding exactly how singing works is a surprisingly complex field of research. There is a rather significant leap from singing in the shower or being part of a community choir (although both are a great place start) to pursuing singing professionally.


Singing practice and training involves generating a sense of vocal freedom – this is what you’re seeing when you watch someone sing movingly, beautifully but seemingly without effort. For most singers, years of practice go into developing that kind of freedom.
As singing voice teacher Jeannette Lovetri writes:
It takes about 10 years to be a master singer. Ten years of study, investigation, involvement, experience, experiment, exploration, and development, and in some way, that’s when you start really being an artist.


We are all born with the key ingredients of a singing voice. The early gurgling and bubbling sounds we make as babies contain some of the key components of singing – a variety of pitches, dynamics, rhythms and phrases. But some of us may have a genetic advantage that can be enhanced by training.


A University of Melbourne study called Let’s Hear Twins Sing aims to discover what factors influence singing ability and to what extent genes play a role in pitch accuracy.

Physical skill and control
The act of singing looks simple but actually involves highly skilled control and coordination of muscles - and these muscles need to be both flexible and strong. True control comes from training.


A person needs to be able to control the air pressure in their lungs and use their abdominal muscles to push air through the trachea, where it meets the vocal folds, which start to vibrate. In a really good singer, vocal health, posture and alignment, breath management are matched with imagination, self-expression and creativity.


A really good contemporary professional pop singer isn’t just born that way. They also need an inquiring mind, dedication to understanding the physiology of the vocal instrument, the discipline and daily practice of warm-ups and a variety of exercises, a deep understanding of music harmony, ability to notate and transcribe music, some degree of improvisation and stagecraft skills.


Film stars learn to sing all the time for a role (usually surrounded by a team of vocal teachers and months of daily practice). The results aren’t always perfect, but that’s not necessarily what is important. Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, for example, has a small, breathy voice but it suits her role and enhances her character.


So if you’ve never sung professionally but want to try singing, I encourage you to give it a go! Chances are that you can be taught to sing – and even if you can’t, there are health benefits to trying.


Singing increases breathing control and lung capacity, it can improve heart health, and release the happy hormone oxytocin, elevate your mood and reduce pain, and may even increase your immunity. Even practising a new behaviour, like singing, can be good for the brain.


So enjoy singing. Find a singing teacher who loves singing and teaching, performs regularly and incorporates their knowledge of anatomy and physiology into their vocal teaching. Once you start, you’ll likely realise that singing can bring benefits for life.


Leigh Carriage, Lecturer in Music, Southern Cross University
This article was originally published on The Conversation and has been updated since its previous publication. "
You can see the full article here: https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2020/02/pretty-much-anyone-can-be-taught-how-to-sing/?fbclid=IwAR0zgpZ_9foBV5_BdRjezuR1ryFXNkcQohXpWoMNZ79i_aQBpducuKaj3pY