It's never too late to sing...

... or to release your first CD.

There are a lot of stories in the news at the moment about singing being good for you, and something you can carry with you throughout your life. Well, thanks to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette website, you can hear a living example of that idea.

Last year an 86 year old Gospel singer released her first CD. And you can now hear the incomparable Essie Hill singing, talking about her life, and rapping on two songs from her CD Essie Hill Sings Stories of the Gospel.

Born in Georgia, she started singing 81 years ago at the age of 7, and has been a member of the same church in Pittsburgh for 60 years. When you listen to her talking and singing now, you KNOW that this stick-thin singer is authentic. And what a powerhouse voice - belting up to Ds, and she's in her eighties! Most of the songs Essie sings have never been recorded or even listed for copyright, so this is a rare treat.

Catch the story while it's still live at http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06135/690179-42.stm

Come on all you octagenarians, get yourselves into a recording studio and show the young ones how it's done!

Visit http://www.vocalprocess.co.uk for the latest downloads:
the Vocal Process eZINE (free electronic magazine)
86 things you never hear a singer say (free ebook)
Looking at a Voice (endoscopy video download)

My flipping voice on the latest video ebook

Have you ever wondered what is actually happening when your voice flips or cracks?

Now some singers like it and use it as an expressive tool, but mostly it happens when we least expect it. Well, a few days ago I put up the second in the Looking at a Voice endoscopy video ebook series onto the Vocal Process website. This time the video ebook is called Modal to Falsetto - Making the Change, and it shows exactly what happens.

I love this topic! The whole cracking voice thing? It's so much fun to do. On this video I still have the endoscopy camera up my nose, and I'm holding a straight note then cracking into falsetto onto the same note. You get to see my vocal folds change their position and the way they move.

The really exciting thing about this video is that in addition to the normal endoscopy camera, we then changed it to a stroboscopy camera and repeated the exercise. Now a strobe camera acts like strobe lighting - by taking lots of single images (the flashes) in quick succession, you can appear to slow down movement. So although my vocal folds are actually vibrating at more than 200 times per second, the stroboscopic camera shows them as if they were moving in slow motion.

You really get to see how the vocal folds change their movement in falsetto. For those of you who aren't au fait with vocal fold movement, it changes from a nice, gentle undulating wiggle (modal or speech quality) to flapping wildly in the breeze (falsetto). I've seen the look on people's faces when they see this, and it's really worth the effort of singing with a camera up your nose!

Modal to Falsetto - Making the Change is the first of the specialist endoscopy video ebooks, and I've got a whole raft of them in the pipeline. Check this one out on the Vocal Process website and let me know what you think.

Visit http://www.vocalprocess.co.uk for the latest downloads:
the Vocal Process eZINE (free electronic magazine)
86 things you never hear a singer say (free ebook)
Looking at a Voice (endoscopy video download)