Joe Naab

Beautiful. One of my favorite songs from musical theater. Very hard to sing.

That was incredible! Great engineering, too.

Kevin, the site just went up. I've never sold a course. That's how I know you didn't buy one! It's brand new. Look at the social media pages. They're empty. The first youtube videos went up two weeks ago. I'm not sure what you're talking about. My course is so new and unpromoted, that only a few people have signed up for even the free course, and I know who they are. You may have signed up, but you didn't watch the videos, because I've just checked the viewing history of the videos, and I'm certain that you didn't see any of them. Maybe you watched the introduction video, but I can tell for certain from the data that you didn't watch a single course video.

Sorry, Robert. I did think, in the context of all the posts, that you were directing your comments at me. My bad. Your feedback was spot on and great. I'm thinking I may record a different song to post here to "clear the palette", so to speak, and to give you guys a taste of something else.

Kevin, I do very much appreciate your feedback, and, yes, I'm already taking a step back to reassess. I reassess all the time. However, I do ask you to be honest. I know for certain that you didn't sign up for my free course before you made your first post, under any name. There were no signups between posting the song and your post. I'm not even promoting the site anywhere as it's still in early development. I also know that you didn't take the paid course. Also, my site is still in beta and I've only posted about 10% of the content I plan to shoot over the coming year. And, remember, I was under the radar here until you posted publicly that I had a course. No one here would know of my project if you hadn't brought it up in this thread. Kevin, I had to come back to edit this. You actually said you bought my course. Why would say that when you didn't?

I wanted to add one more post here to respond to these other great comments, especially from Youcansinganything and MDEW, and so that I don't bury your inboxes. I'm an amateur singer who works very hard at it now and dreams of having an amazing voice within a couple years. I still make lots of mistakes across the board. That's why I came here and paid to share and receive feedback. If I were already awesome, I wouldn't be here! 25 years ago I studied SLS in L.A. weekly for 18 months and barely improved. I worked insanely hard at it. I grew discouraged and stopped studying, though always sang at home for the next 25 years while building a different profession. A few years ago I recommitted to vocal studies and began to find all kinds of great things that worked on my voice the way I needed it to. So I stopped everything in life and immersed myself into it. It's been miraculous. I'm literally better each day than the day before. And instead of my rate of improvement slowing over time, it's now accelerating because of how I've customized my own training practice. My mission in life now is to create an amazing training program as if I could send it back in time to my younger self so he could fulfill his dream much sooner in life. Since I can't do that, I'm targeting young people, beginners, 13-25 years old, who want to sing strong-voiced pop/rock/theater, with an emphasis on developing their own, unique signature sound and expression. I'm more than happy to, as Youcansinganything wrote above, refer them to great private instruction when the situation calls for it. I'm already planning to refer any Seattle students to Robert, for example. And though I'm still horribly insecure about my singing voice, I'm not the slightest bit concerned about my ability to teach vocal training. I'm good at it and getting better quickly. And in reading Robert's list of criteria to be considered an "expert coach", I realized that this is impossible to achieve, without first being a non-expert coach, right? It's logical. I'm a non-expert coach. I can almost already check off items 2, 3, 4, 5 and 7 (jury is out on 7!). And to get to #1 and #6, you have to start somewhere, right? And I don't think you need thousands of students, maybe hundreds would suffice, and I'm not sure if I'll ever do private lessons or performance coaching. I'd love to hold workshops one day, but I learned from my executive coaching experience that I don't like to have a lot of appointments blocked out in my weekly schedule. An "all day Saturday" thing twice a month would suit me best. We'll see. And, finally, I'm here to make new friends with people who love to sing and to teach others how to train their voices. All of you have been great. Thanks again.

Thank you so much. I wanted to add that I didn't know how serious some take the submissions here. I'm here as a student wanting to get better. Obviously, I'm limited to using published karoake tracks, so my style may have to clash with what I have at my disposal. It was really posted for the purpose of what you wrote, for some feedback on choices, tone/timbre, and for any glaring abnomolies that I might be blind to. I truly can sing this song so many different ways, including more like the original. But I'm not an impersonator nor do I desire to sing in a tribute band. I deliberately train to alter the original performance as a way to refine my own voice and style and to decorate the bed track with the melodies, rhythm and mood that I'm "channeling", so to speak. This is what I love to do. I underestimated how upset it would make some people here.

Robert, some of your comments here leave me stratching my head more than Kevin's. You and I had a fun, animated, intelligent conversation about vocal training for 90 minutes by phone last month when I was disclosing my new professional project to you before buying your course, so you could have the opportunity to ask me not to buy it! I did this because of how much I respect you guys who have been on the front line for decades. You're awesome. I'm loving your course. Give me a chance. You might discover that I'm awesome, too, just a little more green, but not the slightest bit unqualified to do what I do. I know my limits and I want to enter this field respectfully. And I'm from Seattle, and I'll be home in June, and we're going to be friends whether you like it or not! :-)

Hi Kevin, thanks again for your contribution. I hope Robert doesn't mind, but I'd like to post the portion that was deleted, because it didn't bother me at all, and it's now part of the discussion, so it's relevant. And I very much appreciate and respect your concern. Kevin, here's where I'd like to begin, because you and Robert are not seeing the glaring flaw in your arguments, which is simply this: You don't know me! You don't know what I know about the voice and about vocal training, vocal health and vocal safety. You've never taken my course or probably even watched a tiny sample of how I teach. You don't know my business model, my experience as a student of the voice, how I train, how often I train, why I do the exercises I do and in the order I do them. You don't even know why I chose to price my products the way I do. You know nothing about me. Can we at least agree on that much? So how in the world can either of you make judgements as to the quality and value of what I'm offering and how I go about it? Can't you see how silly this sounds? You're projecting your experiences with other people and other offerings onto me. You're committing the logical fallacies of false assumption and hasty generalization. It's not fair and it doesn't make any sense. And as awesomely funny as the phrase, "Made in China Knockoff" is, how could you possibly know this? I don't want to elaborate too much, but I have extensive experience in the fields of coaching and teaching, albeit with other subject matter. I'm a successful entrepreneur and coach entrepreneurs. I succeed at what I do because I care so much about doing it right. I've immersed myself in many of the best online courses out there and have read copious amounts of articles and books. I train 2-4 hours per day, 5-7 days per week. I spent 2014 taking two semesters of opera training from two of the best coaches and opera singers in all of Brazil. Each of them said I learned and improved at a rate they had never seen before. Their students are some of the best singers in the region. And, get this, I'm lining them up to eventually offer online skype lessons to my future students. They love what I know and what I'm teaching. They love me! They think it will be the perfect complimentary tool for what they are doing. They are presently professional singers with gorgeous voices. They perform lead roles in theater and opera at the best venues in South America, and one of them internationally. They are extraordinary teachers. I'm lining others up, too, but this is all new and they won't be needed for some time, still. All I'm asking, as I respect you and Robert and what you've accomplished, is to give me a chance, withhold judgement until you know me and my approach to teaching. It will take a year or more to slowly grow an audience and build out my content. All will get even better over that time. It's slow going because I have other work to do (that pays) and I do all the development myself,-video, audio, graphics, fonts, web design, articles, membership & LMS & payment plugins, marketing, advertising, social media, blah blah blah. It's a major undertaking for me and I'm happy to do it because this is my love in life and I feel that the world of singers and voice actors need another man like me. I don't know what else to say.

Once again, thank you so much for taking the time to post. I've received so much value from this first submission. You are a mind-reader of sorts, and you give me so much to think about. I've been afraid to provoke, so I keep it to myself, because I don't know how to sing any other way. I've felt like there's been a cool, "signature sound", buried under heaps of bad technique that's now rapidly revealing itself because of the workouts I do. I think I'd rather push boundaries and buttons, of course with better and better technique that comes in time with good training. The verb that came to mind reading your post is, "to polarize", which can be a good thing.

Looks fixed. It only started today. I logged out and in just now. Thanks.

Looks like it only kept one of them and then automatically opened up this comment entry box without any quotes. Hopefully, it will go away after I post this. I had cleared cached, quit the browser, etc. to no avail. Okay, adding this via edit: seems to be back to normal. A little forum software glitch. All better. And when I wrote "add to this post" above, I meant when I clicked into the "reply to this topic" field at the bottom.

Hi Robert, What's happening is that, even when I'm not quoting, but simply choose to add to post, I see dozens of quotes in the text box. When I click "submit", they seem to all go away. If I click on "quote", the same thing happens. For example, I didn't click "quote" for this reply, only the "add to post", and there are 16 nested quotes above where I'm typing right now. I'll click submit now, not sure if they'll stay or disappear.

That's such a great story! Down here (Florianópolis), it's the rock cover bands that draw the biggest crowds. The audiences gets into it, even when the singers are so-so, which is common, as long as the band plays tight as a whole. And they aren't at all turned off when the singer is a male late-40's, early 50's, which is another one of my insecurities.

I'm suddenly having issues replying with quotes... You've made my day. Thanks again so much. Only a few people have ever heard me sing, even though I do work very hard on my voice now. I'm finding I need some encouragement to give me a nudge to get out there and you're providing it. I have some friends in a popular local cover band who love to play music from Seattle (I'm from Seattle). Brazilians recognize the grunge classics, but wouldn't recognize Queensryche. They'd let me sing a set with them and I've yet to share a sample of my voice with them as I'm waiting until it's "just right". Brazilians are a very forgiving audience and they love rock.