It seems that every decade Brett Manning sets vocal training on its creative ears in ways that forever change the world. Known globally as an innovator of technique, his best selling systematic vocal training program, Singing Success, introduced the world to a thorough method to cover and strengthen the whole voice. And now he’s introducing what he calls an exhaustive program that focuses on one niche of the voice.
“I have singers say, get me into my mix that will give me a career,” Brett said, adding that his new Mastering Mix program will make high notes epic, give substance to the head voice, and freedom to the chest voice, while providing an evenness to the entire range..
Brett exudes perpetual creative energy with ideas constantly pressing on his heart, mind, and spirit for the sake of finding ways to help singers achieve greatness beyond their wildest dreams. “Ideas for this program have come piecemeal for years, filling up on notepads, writing on napkins, tapping into my laptop, and even speaking into a voice recorder,” he said of the script that was nearly 10 years in the writing and roughly one year of recording.
The bottom line for Brett Manning is that it is disrespectful to do nothing with the blessing of creativity. His commitment to create Mastering Mix is further evidence of his respect for the creative soul.
Brett took frustrations that singers using traditional exercises go through for developing mix. He realized that the common frustration was that the results achieved through the exercises could never be fully realized and applied outside of those exercises. In other words, applying the mix to a song was one of the most common frustrations in his pedagogical experience. Brett knew he had to do something to get reproducible results from mix voice exercises.
“I found myself hacking away at the keyboard every day in the studio, begging for inspiration added to perspiration to be able to get singers to do what they need to do,” Brett said.
Mastering Mix helps a singer build bridges over those breaking areas in the voice. “Singers like Hayley Williams, Chris Keller, Billy Duvall, Kelly King have no trepidation about pesky midrange breaking areas of voice- the mix,” Brett said. “That break from chest voice to falsetto becomes a bridge from chest to head voice. The mix ends up more solid than that road traveled to get to the bridge.”
Mastering Mix is a quality program on every level
As Brett was putting the program and its exercises together he literally took time to draw in the volume of every piano note and its length and duration. The results of this meticulous attention to detail creates a musicality of scales that is not robotic but instead offers a sensation of breathing into the scales “The singer feels the music while warming up and working out the voice. No one can come close to this,” Brett said, further pointing out the uniqueness of his Mastering Mix program.
Brett credits his wife, the artist Elle, with helping bring the program to life. “She provides the missing pieces that complete me and can effectively communicate things to people who don’t know what I know. She’s a co-teacher and student,” Brett said, speaking of her ability to help clarify and build bridges of understanding. Mastering Mix has mind-boggling potential because of the multiple qualities of mix that exist.
From Vince Gill to Travis Tritt, from Stevie Wonder to Steve Tyler, from Alainis Morrissette to Hayley Williams, and from Dolly Parton to Faith Hill. The depth and breadth of mix is staggering. Varieties of mix that are explored in the 12-cd program includes light, hard, chest, head, deep, thin, nasal, non-nasal, edgy and textured.
“An eight year-old can perform these exercises,” Brett said noting that they will satisfy the most clinical university vocal instructor while satisfying the individual who simply just wants to sound better and be able to understand what they’re doing. The program includes a breakdown of each of the 12 discs as each CD is systematically defined. “Singers will be buzzing like kids headed to Disneyland. It really is a vocal paradise,” Brett said.
Yes, You Still Need Singing Success
Mastering Mix assumes the foundational knowledge from Brett’s first Singing Success program. “It can be used by those who have not used the first program, but it should be used in tandem with first program,” Brett said.
There are three components to mix; three components to connecting chest voice to head voice to bridging the mix. To accomplish this, the exercises incorporate laughing, crying, stuttering, whining, and even talking in sleepy, groggy, morning wake-up voice. But the real difference is that the program is completely systematized so that the work is done for the singer.
“Mastering Mix will definitely challenge singers. This program isn’t easy, but it makes singing easy,” Brett said. After hearing Brett Manning perform full voice during a special concert at the end of lesson-packed day of teaching, it is clear the man knows what he’s talking about but he walks it with the will to do whatever he pleases to do vocally.
Though he claims to not be a great singer, he also proudly proclaims that he makes singers great. He is thankful for the blessing of making countless singers achieve full vocal potential.
While waiting for the release of Mastering Mix, you can do quite a bit to make sure your voice is ready when it finally arrives. Prepare yourself now by studying the Singing Success program every day you can. Also grab our amazing Top 7 products to focus on specific areas of the voice like the super-high mix,
