The "bridge" is a term I had heard before finding Rock Singing Success. I had been told there is one bridge, also called a passaggio and that learning to navigate the passaggio well (think of Chris Isaak singing Wicked Game) is the key to being able to sing with tonal consistency from low notes to high notes and not have your voice crack while you're doing it. By tonal consistency, I just mean being able to sing throughout your range and not sound like one person in mode one and sound like somebody else in mode 2. Navigating the passagio meant being able to transition from mode one to mode two seamlessly. That may be valid information. I learned it even before I ever met my first vocal coach, so since it didn't come from him, its certainly possible that it's an accurate description of how what the "bridge" is: The thing that you use to move back and forth between modes one and two and not have your voice crack, or sound like two different singers. As far as I know, unless you want to count fry as "mode zero", there are just two modes. Mode one is what you typically use to speak, unless you're Mickey Mouse, and then there's mode two, which is also sometimes called head register. The voice breaks if you're not skilled in navigating the passaggio. I had gathered that you could think of the passaggio as the "bridge" that takes you from mode one into mode two. This was my understanding of "bridge" before I found RSS. R.S. found RSS. Imagine that! Good thing too, since the way I was being taught to create grit was pulverizing my larynx. "Just imagine you're lifting something heavy" - No thanks! If I were deliberately setting out to create as much unnecessary muscle tension as possible, then that would have been useful, but otherwise, no. There had to be a better way. "Just use the least amount of constriction necessary." - OK, I'm paraphrasing, but essentially that was what made RSS different from the way I was previously taught to create grit. My first coach encouraged me to constrict until no air at all was coming out and then just release tension ever so slightly until a little air can finally escape and we have "Grrrrrit"! And Reinke's Edema too!

I wonder how much difference there is in the way that rock vocals are taught compared to how pop vocals are. Sometimes the line between pop and rock can get blurry. The Eagles had plenty of songs that must have appealed to a pop audience...and a country audience. Life In The Fast Lane is one of their few songs that doesn't sound country or pop; it is definitively rock. Overall, they appealed to fans beyond a strictly rock audience. Look at the album sales they did in the mid-70s. Their Greatest Hits (1971-1975) is still the best selling album in the U.S. after all these years. It is certified 38 x Platinum. That mark may never be broken. Towards the end of that same year, they just happened to release Hotel California. Talk about a good year for a rock band! The only reason Hotel California didn't win the Grammy for record of the year is that it was up against Fleetwood Mac's Rumours album. It has sold over 40 million copies by appealing to a very mainstream audience and being a tremendous piece of art. It was one of those few times when an album's critical acclaim and it's commercial success both got as good as it gets. Fleetwood Mac blurred the line between genres just as well as The Eagles did. More recently, on the pop side of things, Miley Cyrus has become known for doing some amazing covers of songs that venture well outside of pop. She's considered a pop star but her raspy voice and audacious stage presence fit rock music extremely well. I happen to think Miley is actually better suited for rock than pop! All this makes me wonder: Is there that much of a difference between taking lessons for rock vocals and taking lessons for pop vocals? For a rock vocalist who has the rock music fundamentals down, would transitioning into pop present vocal challenges their rock background hadn't prepared them for? Just as a hypothetical example, since George Michael is widely considered one of the greatest pop vocalists there has been, what kinds of things would a hard rock or metal vocalist have to prepare for to venture outside of their comfort zone and make the kind of album that George Michael might have made?

My God, I hadn’t listened to this song in about fifteen years, but when I finally heard it again today, it brought back everything from the Maryland/D.C. music scene of the 90s. Asylum is the title track of the debut album by Unorthodox, released in 1992. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDBzwQE0HLA What other band had songs with arrangements like this? What band except Unorthodox could be so heavy and still play it so pretty? At 1:38 a breathtaking instrumental section begins. The atmosphere it creates...beautiful. You don’t write things like this without being something of a musical genius. Drummer Ronnie Kalimon does an outstanding job here. This would not have had nearly the same effect on the listeners without his stellar drumming. At 2:51 the music once again transcends to another level. This sound…this is what autumn in Maryland feels like. All conveyed with guitar, bass and drums. Then you add the charismatic vocals of Dale Flood and it takes you to that state of mind. “My child of love…the innocent one”

Has a song ever moved me to tears? Hell yeah! A number of songs have. I think guys tend to be hesitant to talk about this, since crying isn’t seen as manly and of course, I get it. I really do. As men, we're supposed to be tough. This isn’t crying from weakness though. This has nothing to do with how tough I am. This is crying as a result of being heavily emotionally moved by the beauty of a song! I’m a musician. I have to feel things strongly to do what I do. There have been times when if tears were blood, I'd have needed a transfusion as a result of being overwhelmed by the power and beauty of music. One beautiful lady’s music has caused me to spill quite a few tears. Her name is Tori Amos and I've been to five of her concerts. Tori Amos is a phenomenally talented singer, songwriter and piano player. She was the youngest person ever admitted into the Peabody Conservatory of Music. She was five years old. Peabody is for classical music. Around the age of twelve, Tori got expelled from Peabody for continually insisting on playing rock music. It showed she had the right attitude for the rock music world. Still, the seven years she studied there gave her a great musical background! I don’t think there are too many musicians who deliver the emotional intensity Tori Amos does. Many tears have been spilled listening to her songs. Her song Precious Things is a song so exquisite that it can have that effect. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kpk_ZjdGPnE&t=3s If you listen to the live performance of Precious Things that I've included, you’ll notice that at 5:25 into the video you will hear her being transformed by her music. She's abandoning all inhibitions to dare to be vulnerable enough, to leave herself so exposed as to let her audience see into her soul! Tori Amos is also one of the most passionate live performers I've ever seen. She gives her all in every concert. Once in a while, in a transcendent moment, she’ll even go beyond just “giving her all.” At those moments it’s almost like a religious experience. It's certainly a spiritual experience!

Fleetwood Mac in 1975 was a band that didn’t know the incredible ups and downs just laying in wait for them in the next two years. At the same time Fleetwood Mac’s popularity was exploding, all the romantic relationships of the people within the band were imploding. Simultaneous explosion and implosion created incredible art: their 1977 masterpiece Rumours. From that album, the #1 hit single Dreams is four minutes and 13 seconds of sonic bliss wrapped up inside of a story of loneliness and heartbreak. "Now here I go again I see the crystal vision I keep my visions to myself It's only me who wants to wrap around your dreams and Have you any dreams you'd like to sell? Dreams of loneliness Like a heartbeat, drives you mad In the stillness of remembering what you had And what you lost And what you had Ooh, what you lost" Did you ever have someone you loved enough to want to wrap your dreams around them? How would you handle having that relationship and losing it? It’s about remembering those things in solitude, in a silence so impenetrable that you can't hear anything except the sound of your own heartbeat slowly driving you mad. There is what you had and there is what you lost. What you had. And what you lost. You think back to when you were together and as often as the two of you had great times, right now all you can think about is how did something so good end up so bad? When the two of you were happy together, you heard the sound of your lover’s laughter on a daily basis. You were both so happy. Then the two of you stopped being happy and the silence became deafening. A wonderful thing had imploded. At the same time, the two of you were in a band that was exploding in popularity. You were becoming rock stars. This is what you had and what you lost. It was the price to pay for being in Fleetwood Mac and becoming two of the biggest rock stars on the planet. It was so much, so soon. Too much change for your relationship to withstand. Every night you’d go onstage together and smile as if nothing was wrong. The music was the only thing that was keeping the two of you together. You had decided that the music the band made was too important to let anything get in the way of it.