Brett Manning:
You spell reward not R-E-W-A-R-D. If you spell it R-I-S-K, that's better. How do you spell reward? R-I-S-K. That spells reward?

Michael Walker:
Yeah.

Brett Manning:
Yeah. If you can't spell that, you definitely can't spell reward. 

Michael Walker:
It's easy to get lost in today's music industry, with constantly changing technology and where anyone with a computer can release their own music. But, I'm going to share with you why this is the best time to be an independent musician and it's only getting better. If you have high quality music but you just don't know the best way to promote yourself so that you can reach the right people and generate a sustainable income with your music, we're going to show you the best strategies that we're using right now to reach millions of new listeners every month without spending 10 hours a day on social media. We're creating a revolution in today's music industry and this is your invitation to join me. I'm your host, Michael Walker. 

All right, so I'm really excited to be here today with Brett Manning, who is a vocal coach and a singer. He's trained many well-known music artists including Taylor Swift, Hayley Williams, Keith Urban, Leona Lewis, Luke Bryan, Lauren Mayberry, Miley Cyrus. I'm sure you haven't heard of those people, you have total, total no-names. Obviously kidding, that's insane how many artists. He's also coached several Grammy and CMA award winners, Broadway casts. And, having such a depth of experience around singing and vocal coaching, I thought that it would be great to have him on here to be able to share some of his best tips and lessons for overcoming challenges when it comes to singing. As a musician, the voice is such a critical element of your songs, if you have lyrics and whatnot, so I think it's something that all of us, as musicians, has a core skill that we can develop. So Brett, thanks so much for taking the time to be here today.

Brett Manning:
Man, thanks for having me on. You've always been a great friend and a great colleague, and I love what you do. I think that anybody who is part of what you're doing is not only getting an educated edge against their competition, but is also getting a loving person who really, truly cares about the individual. Because I've seen people in your position, over and over, and what they do is, a lot of the time, they get your money and then they go, "Bye. Thank you for the money," and then they meter out a little bit and they just keep stringing you along. And you've never been that type of person and I really appreciate that you have character and integrity, because you really care. 

Michael Walker:
Thank you, man. That really means a lot. You know, I remember listening to Singing Success with my band Paradise Fierce, and doing the vocal lessons, and being [inaudible 00:02:37]. 

Brett Manning:
Yeah.

Michael Walker:
So it's kind of funny, if you would've told me that a few years later I'd be having conversation and you would've said those nice things about me, my mind would have been completely blown. So let's dive in. First of all, for anyone who is listening to this right now who hasn't met you before, hasn't heard your story, I'd love if you could just give a quick introduction to who you are and kind of how you got started down this path.

Brett Manning:
Well, when I was nine years old, my father died, he was shot in a deer hunting accident. And up until then I liked music, but my dad was real tough and you don't sing. You're a little kid and it's not cute; be tough. And I'll always love that tough, athletic side of me. I'm a physical fitness freak. If I jump down and I can't do at least 80 to 90 pushups, something's wrong with me. I'm always trying to improve in everything I do and I like that physical side but I found that you don't have to surrender that because there was a guy named Elvis Presley. And I was nine years, after my father had passed away, I was watching a movie with Elvis and I thought, "This dude is cool." And the school is having a talent concert, so I tried to sing along with him. So I got this little Elvis creator sets and then everyone was singing (singing). And I didn't understand it was a lot of lyrics and (singing) and I had this little vibrato and then I learned the screen. I didn't know anything about singing, I was just trying to sound like this guy.

And my mom had been a professional singer many years, so I grew up around singing. So I'd sometimes sing and then I'd hide it. Sing and then I'd hide it because I wasn't supposed to sing because it wasn't tough. And so I remember hearing him sing (singing). I thought, "Okay, that's cool. He's got that wrap, that's even tougher." So I put on a black leather jacket, flipped up my collar, had a T-shirt underneath, rolled up jeans, and some old school Converse and I got up there and sang that at a talent contest. And the girls were screaming their heads off. And I'm like, "There's something to this. I like this." Elvis wasn't stupid at all. And shortly after I became a fan of him, he died. He was very young. It was kind of weird. And I ended up moving from where I was living, Northern Utah, at a place that's called Crystal Springs. It had a hot and cold spring right next to each other. Two rivers and they'd flow in and make gross, brackish water but here it was mineral water and cold water.

And I would hang out between those springs and just sing where nobody could hear me, just outside. And I thought, "You know, maybe I can sing?" Then when I moved, I went back into the athletic thing and my friend's like, "Nah, singing's not cool. You're not tough if you sing." But I would catch them singing along with the radio and it just wasn't cool. Now, it's cool. So you have to understand what I had to go through, this process of feeling restricted and that psychological restriction cause your throat to close up. So when I first took a lesson, I'd say I was 14, 15 after my voice changed. Yeah, 15,16. Because I took some lessons with a lady named Evelyn Harris, and she was in the classical world and she passed away since. She's classical world over at Weber State College and she was very, very strict. So it was breathe here and do 1,000 things, and she worked for some people. She does. But for me, my throat was hurting. I was going ka-ka-ka-ka-ka-ka-ka-ka-ka. And the reason you do a ka, is to get rid of the nasality.

So I can use her stuff, but you don't do that with everybody. If a person's talking right here, they're not, and when they're here, ka-ka-ka-ka-ka, and then ka-ka-ka-ka-ka will undo that. So it wasn't diagnostic as much as it was systematic. The systematic training disengaged all the other learning processes that I needed to know, that you've learned from my Singing Success program. Nay-nay-nay makes you nasal. Mum-mum-mum makes you balance. [inaudible 00:06:40] gets you out of the nasal and shows preference to your head as a resonator. Because you want to say... I closed up my mouth. All the resonance is in the head. And then here, ma-ma, and nay-nay is even more forward and brassy. Well, as you hear from all the singers we listen to on the radio, there's a place for every type of voice, the personality being the character of the voice, should be encouraged not discouraged. 

But for me it was gutting out when I was (singing). And I remember trying to sing (singing). My throat was so sore. And then she stopped, she goes, "Oh, Journey? Steve Perry is not a good singer." Oh, my gosh. And she goes, "And this song is so immoral." Lying beside you, here in the dark. He kind of wrote it to his wife. So he ain't scamming around on the road. And then he says, "I'm forever yours. Faithfully, I can't wait to get home." Being on the road ain't easy on this love affair, two strangers learn to fall in love again. I get the joy of rediscovering you. I'm forever yours, faithfully. And she just didn't listen to me. And I was like, "I don't want to sing anymore." It hurts my throat every time I go. I still have a break, and I'm never going to get through this break. Now, I'll say she helped some people get through the break, she did. 

Some guys connected with her because of their type of voice. Sometimes not every... I had heard, at this point, not every teacher fits every voice. So when I went to college, years later I went to college, and I started trying to sing a little bit and I liked Prince a lot. I always liked Prince. I played a little bit, I had a poster of him on my wall back there, he was sticking his tongue out. Elvis Presley and Bono. My three biggest influences. And what happened is I'm trying to sing a little Bono. He squeezes and pushes, I couldn't figure out how to get through there. Prince is easy because of (singing), it'd just be up there. And then (singing) then it drops in the chest. Okay, well that's easy enough. (singing), right there, that's easy. So he'd stay in chest here. But Prince had a mix but I could never get to his mix but I would like a song where he sang only in chest or only in falsetto. And so when I tried to get through that bridge, I'd go... I couldn't really quite do it. 

In college, I ended up, by accident, becoming a dance major. Don't ask me how. I was a hip hop dancer, I taught break dancing at a high school because I got caught in the trend, when it first began. Was making 100 an hour teaching break dancing. I only taught three hours a week. That was a lot of money then. That was like making 1,000 a week at a high school. So, not bad. So because I just made that transition from break dancing to hip hop, then ballet, jazz, modern dance, and modern hip hop in college. And they needed dancers and so it was a very easy direction for me to go. And a musical theater instructor, my beloved mentor who only passed away a year ago, I think he was like 90-something. His name was James Prigmore. He wrote film scores in Hollywood for 15 years. He did Starsky & Hutch, Love Boat, Fantasy Island, all those old shows from back in the day; tons of others if I start thinking about it. 

And he was a brilliant composer. Played at the level of Rachmaninoff and I kid you not looked exactly like Santa Clause. He had curly hair, bald spot on the top, octagon glasses, and he wore coveralls. As a matter of fact, every Christmas children would walk up to him and their mom says, "I'm sorry. He thinks you're Santa Clause." And he'd be jovial about it, laugh. He could shred the piano like nobody I had ever seen. So I started doing some piano with him and he said, "I think you can sing." And I said, "Well, I got to tell you, recently I went back to church," I haven't gone to church for a long time, and I just gone and find God. So I wandered into this church randomly and I heard these people singing the song called We Exalt Thee. It was very simple. So I'm singing this song, I'm trying to remember what key it was. It was comfortable, it wasn't high. And a girl turned around and she was just crying. And she goes, "You have a pretty voice." "Really?" I've always tried to sing and up until now I felt like I could sing.

So this girl, that I'll never see again, just some random girl, you turn around crying. It gave me that little bit of courage. Maybe I can sing. And this guy said, "I think you can sing." And so he played Day by Day from Godspell. And I'm just singing (singing). And he goes, "You have a musical theater voice." "Really?" And he says, "Yeah. Just very natural." I was like, "Wow, okay." "I could set you up with this teacher." And this teacher happen to be roughly an associate of my mentor that you've heard me talk about before in the program, Seth Riggs, the brilliant, greatest vocal coach who's ever lived, if you had to pick one. Somebody said that about me in Italy and I said, "I won't allow that because Seth." You could put me in the conversation if you'd like but... put me in a group of 30 or 50 guys that I like, but Seth is the greatest of all time. 

Well, this associate of his came and started working with me and had some things right and some things wrong. It was very interesting. I got better and worse. Some things that I figured out on my own, I couldn't do anymore. And he had a lot of the most relaxed pushing I could ever find. And says this, "No, no, no. You have to split your resonance. You're going in a hard pallet. You're going...  You're doing the hard pallet. It has to go behind the soft pallet... " And I went, "Oh, that's your mix. You got to go up, behind the soft pallet, split the resonance half in the mouth and half in the head." I went, "Really?" And suddenly the lights came on. And that wasn't until I was 25. I didn't start college until I was 21. I had three really rebellious years which will come out in my book someday. Really crazy, if I told you the stories you'd be like, "You're lying. This sounds crazy." 

So anyway, I went off with this coach and I worked for three years, sometimes twice a week. Some things were really good, some things were really bad. Some things that I implement today that really worked but the three years of bad training have stuck with me. Meaning, the bad habits were hard to undo, even after working with Seth Riggs. He'd get me into it, but my default was just yell. And I found other problems. A deviated septum, it's hard to breathe at night sometimes. I don't breathe through my nose, I breathe through my mouth, it dries your throat out. So I had really bad morning voice. I just have to really deal with that. Probably not going to get a deviated septum surgery. I don't want to get my nose smashed and reconstruct. Probably should, but I'm stubborn. I think it might affect my sound and there's a certain quality of my sound that I like that I don't want to mess with.

So I went on to actually move out to LA and study with Seth. I went back and forth between my old coach and Seth and it was confusing. Out of loyalty, instead of being loyal to my voice, I was loyal to a man who was not really helping me, because I loved my coach. And then I went to see Seth and he said, "You can't do this anymore." He said, " Well, let me hear one of your lessons." And said, "Oh, this is crap. This is not what I teach." And I go, "Oh, no. I'm getting my coach in trouble." I felt like a shmuck. And then he said, "Why don't you learn to teach my stuff?" Because I had a couple of friends with me. I said, "Well, I've been just showing him stuff." He said, "Sounds like you've been teaching him. He's doing the technique better than you are." And then he said, "You're out of lessons?" 

He goes, "No, just him." "What does he do with you?" And he explained, he goes, "Well, you're going right up to high C, effortless." And he goes, "Yeah, I was straining and he gave me these exercises and it helped me." He said, "You need to teach." And I said, "Well, I'm not sure if I'm qualified." He said, "You know what? Your students are qualifying you." He said, "You are doing a great job. You bring people out here with you for your lessons." "Yeah, well, they're just my buddies." And he goes, "Well, start charging them." Well, they gave me a little extra money and so once I started out with just a handful of students and then some cat at church told me, "Brother, have some faith. Quit your other job." And I had just gotten married, I was 25. He said, "Quit your job as a waiter." Little coaching and I was delivering pizzas. And so I quit all that. 

And I went immediately into full-time coaching. I went from eight students to 30 in a month. And back then, that was a lot of money. That was a lot of money too. But even then, for the economy, the way it went at my place, we couldn't believe it. This is back in '91 when I got married. '91, '92. My rent was only 265 a month for a duplex, a three-bedroom duplex. So we moved out of that into a 750 a month house with 3,000 square feet. Can you believe it? It was in the... not The Avenues, they call it the... I don't remember. It's by the college but it's all named after Princeton Avenue, Harvard. So I lived on Harvard Avenue. It was like if you lived there, it's old money place, kind of like Bellevue out here. It wasn't a huge house. I mean, it was way bigger than anything I was used to. And then, after a while, going backwards, I got to go study with Seth. 

So I sold everything I owned. I had amassed a lot of furniture and beautiful grand piano. I sold my piano, everything, and lived in a trailer home, like a fifth wheel trailer, kind of like a RV home, that my parents had at Disney Land Campground. Happiest place on earth. And studied with Seth and all I did was music for six months and then moved back to Utah to teach. Taught there for two years, wrote my program Singing Success. Well, longer than two years. Taught there for... because I moved there for six months and taught a few more years, then moved back there in '93. Yeah, '93, and then I taught until '98. In 1998, I released Singing Success. Because by the time I released Singing Success, I had 130 students who wanted to see me every week. And that's with having a couple of associates that I've built in Utah. And I became one of Seth's master associates so I was training teachers for him.

By the time I left, I had to come here and start all over. Nobody knew who I was. And the funny thing is that as I was teaching I remember I was going from teaching 40 and 50 hours a week while producing the program. Working only at night, and sleeping five hours a night for a year. Some weekends I'd sleep in. Saturday and Sunday catch up sleep. But worked my butt off. And I had one of those digital workstations where you have to scroll through it, go tick-tick-tick-tick-tick, and then go find the place and set a parameter and you got to delete. Now you go click. So that little click, took me three minutes. And I had to do all these edits myself. So I'd stay up all night long doing these edits on my program, and then some other guys makes it in this Roland 880, or whatever it's called, digital workstation. With a little tiny screen and you have to find, select each track and then move all the tracks over. 

It was a pain in the butt. So if I had Pro Tools by then, I would have done it much faster. But I'm glad I had to suffer to do this. I'll tell you, when you have to suffer something, you love it more. So the number one selling vocal program in the world was actually produced in a basement in Salt Lake City, Utah. And then I moved here. And then for two, three years sales were trickling here and there. Sometimes one a day, sometimes one a week for my Singing Success program. Sometimes three in a day, sometimes three in a month. And then, around 2000, started consistently at one or two a day. That was good. Then I hired a guy in 2001, he was a brilliant marketing guy and strategist and we started working together and started assembling a team and by 2002 we were the number one selling program in the world. We're selling about 10 programs a day. I mean, it's 200 bucks, you can do a little math. It was decent money. I was happy with that. And we started doing even better. It just kept climbing.

And I began producing other programs because I thought this was... I started with 400 pages of script and edited it down to 42 to produce the first one. The second, I don't remember how many pages of script I started with but I ended up, with the 360 program, I ended up with 90 pages of script for that one. So it's much more detailed and much greater. But yet, the simple program worked. And it still works. And produced all these Grammy winners. That our goal was we want to out give and out serve everybody. So in that, we have been very blessed to be able to travel. Me and my associates have traveled around the world, teaching this. I'd never been to South America, not once, but my associates, Jamie Wigginton, who I now refer to as my colleague, he's at Belmont College, a professor there. He's my first associate in Nashville. He travels out to South America all the time. So I'm saying in that sense, yeah, I get to teach the whole world through my progeny, I guess, you could say through the people who work for me. 
So that's probably the 15 or so, 20 minutes or 25 minute version of a much, much longer, deeper story. It's both tortuous and yet beautiful. Mountains and valleys too high and too low to talk about here. But some day. 

Michael Walker:
That's so awesome, man. Thank you for sharing that. It's really inspiring to hear your story and so. Having a lot of conversations with people like you who have achieved something to be really proud of and a lot of success, the number one vocal coaching program in the world. And it seems like there's these common patterns that I start to notice over and over again. And so a few things that really stuck out about your story, which was really the main thing driving you, was this focus on serving at the highest level and providing value and blessing other people. And it seems like that is something that I see reflected in all of my mentors, the most successful people, is that's a core value, that sort of thinking. The question that they ask themselves constantly is how can I serve at the highest level? And whatever that means for you, whether it's faith in God, in the Bible, or in a higher power, or the universe, if you're focused on, "How can I serve at the highest level," seems like beautiful things happen and you're able to really make a big impact on other people. 

And another thing that really stuck out about your story was how your process really started with honing your craft and coaching other people and becoming really, really good and working directly [inaudible 00:22:04] working very long hours and you're working your butt off in order to hone your skills. And then you started creating this program and you started to... at the point that you just couldn't keep up with the demand you started creating this program to be able to share of lessons you have learned and then it was like even having this amazing program, that at this point now, has changed so many lives and singers like Taylor Swift, Hayley Williams, Keith Urban, Miley Cyrus, who have taken the training. Even considering that you had this gem the first year or so that you had released it, you were getting a sale a week or sometimes it was kind of off and on. But then, when you connected with some of the marketing side of things, in terms of you're taking this gem and actually putting it in-front of people, that's really where the dial got turned up and you started really getting a huge amount of impact.

And I think that's also reflected, and I see it a lot, with musicians too who have amazing... they have the talent, they've honed their craft, it's incredible, but now-a-days it's like if that's all you have, then it could still be a challenge to be successful unless you know how to promote it successfully. But it's still, you need... that's the foundation. You need to hone your craft. You need to have that super valuable thing that you can offer. So I really appreciate you sharing your story, and I personally have... I think it's super inspiring. And I hope if you do write a autobiography, a book, someday, I'd love to hear all about the mountains and the valleys and the entire journey.

So one thing I wanted to ask you, for anyone who's listening to this right now, I know at this point you've worked with so many singers, both directly and then through your entire team and I'm sure that a lot of the same questions, a lot of the same challenges or struggles come up over and over again with singers. So I'd love to hear from you, what are some of the biggest patterns that you see or the biggest challenges that you see singers struggling with when they first get started?

Brett Manning:
It's just such a great question because one of the first questions that happens if a person's had a lot of experience in academia is that they're going to ask the question, "Do I need to read music?" No. Kids don't read music. Kids don't read before they talk. I got in a debate with a really, really great piano teacher about saying I think to make a person read before they can play. She goes, "No, no, no, no. You need to read because you learn." And I fundamentally agree with her now only in the sense that I watched her teach my kids, and they don't read a note of music. She just gave them the hands to do it. Here's how to play this piece. So, I mean, my son looks up this music and he's acting like he's reading [inaudible 00:24:47]. That one Bach piece. And he plays it all the way through. He did it when he was still, I think, 12. No, maybe he was 13 years old, I put it on Facebook and he's got a little hat, and he plays and he goes, "Thank you, Lord." Because every time he'd film it, he'd make one mistake and yeah. Get towards him, hit one bad note, it's so hard to play all those easy music. But he now plays it with his eyes closed and he plays it by feel.
So essentially, she does agree with me that, yeah, first you just play. She said, "You set your hands free." She'd use this exercise thing to set your hands free. And I'm like, "That's why I like the way you teach." And I send everybody to her, she's three time world champion. They did a special on PBS on how to play Chopin or how Chopin is supposed to be played and brought her in to play it. So that shows something. She plays like she sold her soul. It ain't real. And she grew up in Europe and she went through a lot of suffering to be able to play like she does. It wasn't easy. And so same thing for me, it's like, for this you come at this with a bunch of presuppositions. One, do I need to read music. Number two, do I need to be musical. Well, you're already musical if you can speak with any inflection whatsoever. If you talk like this, you're probably not going to be that musical. Although I know people who talk boring. But if you have... when you say, "Man, what is that sound outside?" Well, I'm actually responding because there was a sound outside. I'm not making that up. "Man, what is that sound outside?" (singing). 

So now we're musical. You're grooving with me because that is... we speak with groove, we talk with groove, and so the methodology behind what I learn was called what they called speech level singing. And I like to even say speech level and speech-like singing. Because as you know, from using my program, especially the newer, the 360 one where I really go painstakingly through this articulation tour, is that it's your consonants that actually make you interesting. You have to sing with vowels because words are vowels and consonants. But if you only sing with vowels, you're boring. You're singing a scale (singing). Nobody's going to pay you to watch you to do that. So when you learn to speak your lyrics with the coolness of Coldplay, I mean, that guy can sing and walk and wrap you in because he crunches on every single word. And you look at all the best commercial singers, they knew how to shape their words. 

They didn't have what I call Telladega Nights syndrome. You remember that movie? But anyway it has a scene that Will Ferrell just took second place in this race that he wasn't even supposed to be in. He jumped in for another driver because the other driver went to the bathroom in the middle of the race and then he's eating a chicken sandwich, like what are you doing? You're at a pit stop, there's all these cars are going around and you go, "All right." Races, he passes everybody, he takes second, and he goes, "The car ran really well. I'm sorry I don't know what to do with my hands. And it will be good to put them down on the side." He goes, "I feel like I was on a spaceship." The interesting thing, what people don't know, maybe you haven't heard this. When drivers are gripping the wheel the whole time, their hands actually feel like that after. They feel like it's hard to hold them down. So their hands just naturally want to float up. So that's why he's doing that.

Well that's how people feel with Telladega Nights syndrome. I'm not sure how to shape my words. I'm not sure how to make an artistic decision or how to make the sound interesting. So one of the things that I've done is developed a methodology that connects chest and head voice. And if you're watching this and you say... that's your chest voice. ... that's your head voice. And some of you might say, well that sounds like falsetto, but falsetto is airy. If I sing... the airy sound is falsetto. ... I have a chance of connecting because this ones clear. ... will connect with... And then the voices between is called the middle or the mixed voice. So a head voice here... chest voice here... and then middle ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma. Feels like somebody's pulling on my face and you have a third resonator. 

So you have chest, you have a head, and then you have something called a pharyngeal which is a back of the throat, when you go... So you're adding the... as a connector between chest... because again, in the chest here you can feel vibration. You can say ah, and if you go ah, you could feel the sound that's coming out of your mouth. Externally, chest voice resonates against your chest. Internally, the roof of your mouth. Externally, head voice resonates in the top of your head and the back of your head. Internally, in the nasal cavity. But it's not nasal unless you add the third one, the pharyngeal; starts in the back... and projects forward... like N-G. So when I'm saying nay-nay-nay and mum-mum-mum, that little bit of crying, that little whiny cry, takes a place of 1,000 exercises to stretch out, coordinate, and warmup the voice.

And then, of course, as you know the [inaudible 00:30:18], doing that, it acts as a chord reset mechanism. The chords are vibrating along their entire length and your chest voice, ah. When they go in my head, they're... they zip up. Well, in-between there, something has to change. They're stretching harder... they flip into falsetto. Well, that's no good. Unless you just want to sing falsetto all the time. And there's some great singers who flip back and forth. But you kind of after a while... you're kind of lazy. You're not very heroic. Just a... After a while it's like, I'd get bored watching that. Be heroic, try something. 

And what it was, we found it's just inside edges need to stay together as you're going up the scale but without pushing it. If I go... well the insides are coming together, but I'm pushing. [inaudible 00:31:11], same note, not pushing. So I can go... push, [inaudible 00:31:18], I'm not breaking and I'm not pushing. So learning how to keep it on the level of speech, like you're talking, very important. Because if you start adding outer muscles of the larynx, muscles that you can feel and your audience can see, you're in trouble already. That's the kiss of death. And this guy is guilty as anybody of using those compensatory muscles. You're compensating for the weakness and lack of coordination and lack of developed coordination, memorized coordination that comes from doing the right technique for a long time. 

So 90% of what I'm doing is I'm fixing my voice all the time because bad habits, and because some of the channels are bad. I'm not sure if you know this but there was about a 12 year period where I suffered from chronic reflux. And that sometimes trashes people's voice. Seth Riggs, my mentor had reflux, and he talks like this the whole time. And he could still sing and he can get up too. And he's 90 and he can go all the way up to ma-ma-ma-ma. And he does it very easily, as do I. Very easy, most days. But it's because you habituate coordination. You think of preachers, the guy who has too much polish and perfection, you don't listen to him. And this guy says, "And then, I began to search for the wisdom in scripture." And, "I found that..." And he's in love with the sound of his own voice.

And I remember seeing this guy out in California, he's like, "Wow, he just speaks so well." And I'm bored, I didn't learn anything. And I remember this one guy goes, " You want cash? I'm a shmuck." And it was the things I want to do, but I don't do them. And I'm like, I love this guys, I connect with him. So, yes, I'm always trying to improve my voice. I'm trying to find everything I can, but you know this intuitively, and everybody watching this knows this intuitively. Personality prevails. The winners, consistently through history, have been the person with the most interesting personality. It's when your voice is so distinctive that people get a hold of your personality that success becomes inescapable. All you have to do then is have good production with a great song. Not even a great production. Great production helps but you and I have heard crappy production but a really great song.

Michael Walker:
That's so good. Yeah, such a great lesson. If you can't be impersonated, if you don't have something distinct enough to be impersonated, then you're going to struggle to be successful or at least to grow. Because the art people will still remember for it to stand out. So it sounds like what you're saying is really at the core of what you've discovered is that one was speech-level singing. It's not about trying to be something that you're not and about forcing and trying to strain your voice to become something else. It's really about peeling things back and building the articulation so that you can hit higher notes, you can have a more natural voice as you go higher, but it's really about going deeper into what makes you you and your authenticity. And that's also the thing that was going to help you be distinctive and to stand out.

Brett Manning:
Yes. Yes. And to allow yourself enough diversity that people don't get that bored listening to you. I'm not sure if you've ever heard my record? Yeah, and I'll send you just the... I think I got a YouTube and Apple Music, if you have the Apple Music app, that link so people like listening to it on YouTube and wherever, depending on what you prefer. But if you have an Apple Music account, I'm guessing you do, you can listen to the whole thing. I think it's a great record; I'm super proud of it. The one thing you'll notice is even if you only listen a few seconds of it, is that my voice changes a lot on it. It's extremely diverse. And I even did words where a person says, "You sound a little like maybe there's some [Skitsarena 00:35:38] involved in here because the style goes from here all the way over to here. But notice, if you listen to it from front to back, it kind of... I don't want to say evolve, because evolve says it goes higher. Evolve and change are not the same thing. It just changes.

Some things are getting better and some things are getting worse. If you go back and study classical music, you go back and just do the early '30s and '40s jazz, was so amazing and was accessible to everybody. It wasn't chaos in jazz. It was something that everybody could listen to and still is the most romantic music in the world. And there's great music being produced right now, but so I say don't worry about trying to evolve or devolve, just worry about changing. Hopefully you're evolving, hopefully you're adding more to what you were. You're getting better. But for me, when I first got to Nashville, I heard something that was a little discouraging because I was trying to play some Chopin and Bach and all that stuff. And I let go of piano for a long time. I only recently started, about three years ago, and I think I've tripled my piano playing ability, no kidding, in the last two years. And it's because I sought out help. 

I didn't want to because I wanted a teacher like, "Okay, I get it. Play this way." And somebody who gave me a more cohesive methodology of learning. But I find that people, if you can't change, if you can't adapt your musical style, if you still think... '80s rock style is your thing, well that's cute if you're going to be in some kind of cover band. But things that are cool today, are not cool couple of months from now. That's why you want to try to find a sound that is as timeless as possible. One of the benefits of rock is it's usually a timeless sound. Look, you know this to be true. If Radiohead re-released High and Dry today for a culture that's never heard them, it would be relevant. It wouldn't be like, "It sounds old school." It'd be like, "This is cool." Because some stuff just lives on and on and on when you have the basics: drum, guitar, bass, piano or some sort of keys. It just lives on and on.

That's why a blues song could be done now, 10 years, 30 years ago. And it's always great. And while styles change and you have to have a little bit of what are they doing now. You remember in the '90s, remember the song... right? (singing). Sonny came home without his... Ta, dah, dah, everybody does these full step jumps. There was so much of that going on, right? There's the jumps and then there was a period in the '90s where it was... So many people using that interval and I still love that interval for some of my writing. And you start hearing that a lot of people are writing the same song. I'll give you an example. Ta-dah-dah-dah, ta-dah-dah-dah, ta-dah-dah-dah-dah-dah, that's your melody. One, one, two, two, one, one, two, two, one, one, two, two, one, one.

And I can name about 10 artists, but I'm not going to do it on here, because I don't want to rip people too bad. Because they can rip me just as easy and it would be right. But you've heard, ta-ta-ta-ta, ta-ta-ta-ta, ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta. That's not a melody. It's not. Well, yeah it is, because it's... It's mundane, it's lame, and if you're in the third grade and you're writing melodies like that, we'll forgive you. But a third grader wouldn't do that. They'd have the sense to be able to follow some kind of chord structure and some kind of level of creativity that is not just you copying the latest popular thing.

So somehow, singers vocally and musically have to be able to write ahead of the trend while saying, "Here's some things that are trendy, the things are cool." Because there is a sound that is current. But that sound is getting crazy. I'll give you an example. We had the [inaudible 00:40:14] that was singing like that, the craziness. And then you had the grunge, and they'd go like this. And then you had the boy band the kind of real fan boy band thing. And then another response to the boy band was the [inaudible 00:40:31]. Everything sounds like a pirate now. And it went from pirate to the open mouth cartoon singing like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles trying to rock, but (singing). Wow. You don't try. I can teach you to sing like that in three lessons and it's going to die. Seth Riggs would say, "Great singing will outlive bad singing." So you have the [inaudible 00:41:00], then you had the (singing), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle rock band, then you had, I call it Soy Sauce Singing. Soy sauce, everybody sings like this. Like cartoon character singing. And it freaking drives me nuts because it gets too crazy.

So my daughter, who was singing, and she's a great singer, phenomenal, 13 years old and can sing her brains out. And honestly, my son was way ahead of her when his voice changed. She was like, "Ooh, this is my chance. I can pass you now." And he still sings and plays and everything, but she's just short of singing... she's demonstrated for Leona Lewis's lessons. Leona saw it, "Wow, girl." But she practices every day two to three hours a day, every single day. I'll send you a recording afterward, and you'll be like, "That's your 12-year old daughter?" That's one when she was 12, she just did a Lauren Daigle song, Rescue, and slayed it. Ed Cash heard it, who is a big, Christian producer, knows all these people and so in that band, We The Kingdom, and he goes, "Dude, that's little Tess?" I said, "She just shot up like this."
She went from improving by about 20 to 25% every year, to doubling her voice ability every three months. And just putting the effort. But I said, I totally said, "You got... you're going to need more influence. Go back to Mariah Carey or... She's singing straight. When she first started, she was doing too many affects, then she start flipping to falsetto because everybody's using a lot of falsetto, and she did it too much and then it shows she couldn't find her mixing, and then she started yelling and panicked and busted up her voice. Now she's... I hate saying this publicly, but she's not the singer she used to be. Still, she's the richest female singer alive. Not bad. I mean, she's done well. And on top of her game, she was considered the best singer in the world, or amongst the top three, Mariah, Celine, and Whitney. 
But what you have to do is you have to be able to stay current ahead of these trends. So songs for [inaudible 00:43:04], you're singing like that, don't do that. Maybe you could do it, instead of going just consider going (singing). Okay. It sounds like I've got some influence but you can't pinpoint it. And hopefully it sounds kind of modernish. But, I don't ever want anybody to necessarily be able to nail down my influences. If I tell them 10, and said, "Okay, do you have a little Bono influence?" Hear that. Prince influence? I hear that in your falsetto. Cool. I can hear all these influences settle. Oh, I can hear your technique too because of what you teach. 

So for the singers watching this, one of the biggest advice is, get your voice to function, to obey you, to hit the notes you want to hear. That's not the hardest part. That's the first part. And you can't get to the hardest part without the first part. You can't worry about shooting a ball... In basketball, if you're a good shot, if you can't even dribble. That's why they teach dribbling before shooting. Control the ball from the ground, you can control it in the air. That's what my son does. He puts people on their back. Hate to keep bragging about my children, but I'm a full-time single father, so I'm going to do that. They're my life. He puts people on his back and when people leave practice, he says, "Oh, where are you guys going?" "Oh, home." He goes, "My practice just started." He stays around for another hour and he has my intensity because he leads. On all those teams, basketball, football, he is a worker and he understands foundations. 
So he's like, "I want to be the best ball handler, the best shooter, and the best passer. I also want to be the best defender, the best rebounder." So he gets tons of steel, tons of blocks, nobody wants... when they come up to him and he's guarding them, they pass the ball because he's going to take it from them because he has that intensity. So as a singer, what you want to do is you don't have to be the best singer in the world, you have to be the best you in the world. People will sense if you got to the top of your game, and they'll appreciate it. Because you find a singer who maybe average but he's great at what he does or she does. And I was almost tempted to mention somebody, but I want to be careful. But there are singers that we know that are just kind of average, but they have so much personality and they maxed out their voice and they're exciting. 

If somebody sings with a sense of adrenaline, even if it's patient, and even if it's a slow ballad, there's always a sense of urgency. Like when you hear Michael Jackson sing She's Out Of My Life. It's a ballad, but there's a sense of urgency that crushes you. Like as the Scientist, that I played earlier of Coldplay. This very patient, almost lazy, but at the same time extremely energetic, extremely interesting. Like I said earlier, rather be dangerously interesting than technically boring.

Michael Walker:
Hello, what's up, guys? So quick intermission from the podcast, so I can tell you about an awesome free gift that I have for you. I wanted to share something that's not normally available to the public. They're normally reserved for our $5,000 clients that we work with personally. This is a presentation called Six Steps to Explode your Fan Base and Make a Profit with your Music Online. And specifically, we're going to walk through how to build a paid traffic and automated funnel that's going to allow you to grow your fan base online in a system that's designed to get you your first $5,000 a month with your music. We've invested over $130,000 in the past year to test out different traffic sources and different offers to really see what's working best right now for musicians. And so I think it's going to be hugely valuable for you. And so if that's something you're interested in, in the description there should be a little link that you can click on to go get that. 

And the other thing I wanted to mention is if you want to do us a huge favor, one thing that really makes a big difference, early on when you're creating a new podcast, is if people click subscribe, then it basically lets the algorithm know that this is something that's new and noteworthy and that people actually want to hear. And so that will help us reach a lot more people. So, if you're getting value from this and you get value from the free trainings, then if you want to do us a favor, I'd really appreciate you click on the subscribe button. All right. Let's get back to the podcast.
That's so good. Yeah, you're totally right there. It seems like there's a level of character, there's a level of presence or authenticity and that's ultimately, it sounds like what you're saying is that that's the mastery level of singing. And you can't get to that mastery level if you don't have the tool set, if you don't have the basics down in terms of the techniques, right? And so that's why you start with the techniques and you just get to a point where your voice does the thing you want it to do, but then it's like just because you can do that doesn't necessarily mean that you have character or style, so you really have to... then you have to do the hard work of mastering and figuring out what is that unique style for you and that character that can start to come out.

Brett Manning:
That's right. That's right. I mean, you look at your playlists. If you look at your playlist, I'll bet one out of five has a technically right voice. But the other ones are just, this is just an interesting singer I like. I mean, I listen to singers that do things so horribly wrong that I'd be afraid to teach them. I'd be afraid to fix them. But not very many singers like that. Most singers have some kind of foundational ripeness. And what I do is I don't mess with person's individual sound. I say I want you to become more of you. What I've hopefully have never been accused of, to my knowledge, is of changing a person's sound and gutting out their style. There was one lady, she did everything kind of girlish and I said, "Look, get your legs down a little bit. It'll help you." And she goes, "It's not me." "Oh, okay." So she sang the high notes right here, and she did demo singing here in town and Dixie Chicks copied her style. Because I heard the original one. This is the way I sing it, and she sang it just like how this demo singer sang it. With the kind of high notes and everything too.

So you get as right as you can, and then you make choices. Like somebody said the best way to make a hit country song is to record a country song and then screw it up a little bit. You mess with it a little bit, you break out what everybody else has done over and over. Sam Hunt, you know? First one to really, really make country into pop music. He had a pop influence with Faith Hill and some others, and Shania Twain, but it was still country. With him, it's like a pop kid living in the country. Or country kid living in a pop land. And he took a lot of chances. Loops, drum loops in country music? Blasphemy. But it worked. I don't like drum loops in country. I feel like there's a lot of great drummers here and they should play. But I understand that it connects people, it merges styles, and that's a smart thing. And a lot of people love it. 

Michael Walker:
That is true. That seems like that's one thing I see coming up over and over again is that a lot of times things that go viral or things that become the new waves of things that happen, often times are familiar with them, they have something unique that kind of just twist it. So it's something everyone can relate to, and they're like, "Oh, yeah. I know what's happening here," and it's like, boom. And it's like, whoa, what's that? What is that thing that totally just took that thing? I thought that it was going to be and kind of threw me for a loop. So I think you're right that it seems like... it's an interesting way of putting it. You write a hit country song and then you break it a little bit, you make it different. So that kind of breaks expectations.

Brett Manning:
I love that you said it that way because I recall a conversation I had with Keith Urban, I did a co-write with him years ago, and I really should record that song and ride his coat tails, because I'd co-written it with Keith, that's a good thing. But we had a really great writing session. He said, "Man, I've been writing all week and it's sort of like a love opportunity here and it's called I Never Thought." And it was just like, I never thought that I would ever see you with another guy. This is a great hook. I always thought it's going to be like this but I never thought that I (singing), playing all over the neck and he was unbelievable. Up to then, I was just his voice coach, so then I got the chance to see him write and see how he went all over the place on the guitar. And I thought, wow, you just flow. And after that, that flow was imparted to me. I felt like I wrote quicker and faster and easier.

But I told him, I said, "Yeah, I think when you write the song should be able to stand alone without production." He goes, "Not true." Just as fast as he could say it. And he ended up teaching a song writing thing for a first vocal camp I did in the year 2000, and some people would say that and he would say, "No, it's not true." He goes, right away he says, "Bohemian Rhapsody. You think that's special without all that? It's just like whatever." Mama, just killed a man. Put a gun against his head; pulled my trigger, now he's dead. So is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Caught in a landslide; no escape from reality. But those harmonies, the barbershop harmonies. They're not even classic, it's barbershop. And then it goes into this opera thing, this rock opera. And it goes all over the place. And he says that song just takes more risk and more chance than anything and it was never number one, but it was on the charts for a very, very long time.

So you spell reward not R-E-W-A-R-D. If you spell it R-I-S-K, that's better. How do you spell reward? R-I-S-K. That spells reward? Yeah. 

Michael Walker:
Interesting.

Brett Manning:
If you can't spell that you definitely can't spell reward.

Michael Walker:
That's so good. I've never heard someone say it like that before but that's such an important point. It seems like that's one of the biggest hurdles that we'll have to overcome is taking risks, taking smart risks but you don't accomplish anything worthwhile without doing something that is kind of scary or something that's taking a risk to do. So, yeah, I think that's a really helpful, fundamental lesson for people who are listening to this right now.

Brett Manning:
Yeah. Those people are there trying to copy somebody exactly. And if you're doing your soy sauce, you ever hear that... ? Nobody sings... You don't sing like that. If you're becoming a character... I did this, so I talked about the Adele character singer. I said, Adele comes (singing), and that's how British say settle. They don't say settle anymore. Settle. Say settle. And their ou's are different, almost like W's. Nobody notice that. And it's only changed in the last 20 years. It's the way they talk, just like Americans talk very different than when we talked back in the '50s, we talked like this, right? Elvis, tell us about this song you'll be singing. They talked like this. 

You watch all the old '50s movies, and, "Why? Why? If you tell me that one more time, I'm going to slap you across the face." Nobody talks like that anymore. But they had a way of talking. And speech levels, speech patterns have changed drastically in American culture, but the same thing in British culture. So you had like a (singing) and then you had some person go, "I'm going to add a little more quirk to it." (singing). Next person go, (singing). [inaudible 00:55:31]. And you know what I'm talking about. Because there was a guy, he was on American Idol, and he's from Tennessee, and he's like, "Yeah, this song, this is my... I just really come out with my style." And he starts playing guitar and (singing). That's what he sounded like. And then homeboy, who I just have such great appreciation for... There was one they had Mariah, Keith Urban, and it was a very interesting... 

Mariah, Keith Urban, and Harry Connick Jr. And I love Harry Connick. I love Keith too, but Keith's, "I kind of like it." And then Harry Connick said, "I don't. I don't like this at all. I don't believe you. I don't think you sound like..." "Well, dude, that's my style." And he goes, "No, you don't talk like that." Did you just sing normal? And they passed him through and the kid made it a little bit further and then they just eventually, he got cut. But it ain't real. It is interesting, but it ain't real. Some people are just like that. Like Brett Dennen, you've heard of him, the British singer? (singing), and he has a little bit of that. But he's not a caricature of somebody else or a caricature of himself. There are some people that just sound like the guy that, this is going to be huge, it's going to be the best you've ever seen, huge. Nobody's ever seen anything like this. It's a character. He's a character, whether anybody likes him or loves him or hates him, he is a character. But if you're not a character, you can't have that type of success and you think of the best actors.

The reason why Jim Carrey was so compelling when he came out is because his personality was enormous. And I didn't like Will Ferrell when he first came out. I thought, "You're obnoxious." Over time, he won me and everybody I knew over because his personality is huge. And a personality wins. And so you all have a personality out there, you just have to express yourself. There's a core of you as a tiny, pearl onion, every one of those is layers. So you build these... when I talk about this, you peel back to find your sound, but you build layers by everybody you listen to. That's why I say be careful who you listen to. I love Eminem's talent, but if I listened to him too long, I get angry. His music is angry all the time. And so I can't listen to it. I can listen to it just enough to like, "Man, that's amazing." Okay. But that's not my steady diet.

Because can you listen to a box song and think of a cuss word? You can't. So I listen to music that is good for my soul first, and then I listen to commercial music. And I listen to music that is so far advanced beyond what I do that now, if I'm writing a pop song and if I decide to use a classical... that chord progression, and then just a simple melody along with that, a song called Sorento, that I wrote. Well that, it kind of smacks a little bit of Muse but not quite, but a little bit. There's a lot of Bach in there, there's a lot of Chopin in there, there's a little bit of Beethoven in there, and there's a little bit of modern pop in there. And it's a very simple, very simple, but I wrote that chord progression because I've heard so many great things that if you know the national number system, you know that, right? Six, four, one, five. So it goes (singing). You hear that over and over. Or one, five, six, four. Key of C and one, five, six, four. That's one, five, six, four.
Half of what's-his-face? Ed Sheeran's songs are one, five, six, four. Or Six, four, one, five. Real simple. But that song starts on a six and a seven, diminished, and then a one, four, two, and a five, seven, finally the one, and then a major three. [inaudible 01:00:31] I personally think it's stunning. I don't care who wrote it.

Michael Walker:
It's beautiful, man. I love that progression.

Brett Manning:
Oh, thank you. Thank you. Well, you'll hear the song soon. It's going to be on my new record. But you can break out of what everybody else is doing by simply just picking random numbers off the wall like this. See those numbers right there? Two, five, six, one? And above it is H and S and D. H is happy, S is sad, D is dramatic or diminished. So happy is major, sad is minor, D is diminished. So you got one, four, five, happy chords. Two, three, six. Well, I like to start with the six. Six, two, three, two, six. Those are the sad chords. And then dramatic. Sevens, which is used a lot in classical and not a lot in pop. But when it's used, you're like, "Oh, that's nice." And you use these sounds in a jazz musical and use a lot of diminished lead. You know that one? Christmas sound?

So you're using all these sevenths and the occasionally these diminished passing tones and that song is going to be timeless. I mean that was the first real song that guy wrote that did anything. And every Christmas, we hear that on the Charlie Brown, so we hear it on the radio that little Christmas Time is here, sweet little song. Because he used chords, a mixture. There was one, four, five, two, three, six, and seven. All people who've learned just a little bit of music theory will make you dangerous. A lot of vocal technique will make you dangerous because suddenly your voice becomes plastic, moldable, shapeable. Myself, I've demonstrated a little bit of that showing different sounds today. The reason a person can impersonate somebody is because their vocal chords are able to configure in the shape that that other person is doing. Maybe getting the articulation or the accent or the dialect can be a little trickier, but if you can get a little bit of that, you can break out and you can be unique and distinct.

Michael Walker:
That's so good, man. All right, so let's wrap things up. One thing that I want to say is just I feel what you just described is such a perfect way to put a cherry on the top of this conversation because when I'm talking with someone like you I feel like who you are speaks so loudly that the content of the conversation isn't as important as literally who you are and what you're expressing. So all the ways, all of the different impersonations that you've just kind of reflected throughout the entire conversation and the vocal parts that you were demonstrating and sharing your story and who you are and sharing everything about this conversation, I feel like has just been really inspiring and I really appreciate having this conversation, being here, and also what you've created as a platform for singers around the world. 

I think singing is one of those things that is so vital, it's a piece of who we are and your message of anyone being able to do that; if you can speak and you can talk and you can have variety in how you speak, then you can also sing, I think is a message that's really inspiring and crucial for everyone, whether you consider yourself a musician or not but especially if you consider yourself a musician. So, Brett, thanks so much for taking the time to be here. And for anyone who's listening to this right now and is interested in learning more about what you offer and about Singing Success, where can they go to dig deeper with you?

Brett Manning:
Yeah. Just go to the singingsuccess.com, my site, and really the biggest bank for buck would... if you just need to see how is this going to work for me, you can get the Singing Success Quick Start, which isn't very much. I don't know what we charge for it. 39, or something like that, dollars. And it's just one really, really good, simple lesson. And then the Singing Success 360 is it's a full system that teaches you style and technique. Seven-step technique lessons, seven style lessons, an introduction to style, so you understand how that works, introduction to technique, so you understand 10 greatest difficulties of singing, and the psychology of singing, which are all very crucial things. And each lesson takes you through totally different things. So it's kind of like muscle confusion. You don't want to bench press every day. You bench press and then you do pull ups and you do a leg day and then an ab... and then some days you do ab and legs together and some days you do back and thighs together, just to mix it up. 

So it's that type of system. Kind of muscle confusion. Keep you guessing as you're working to trick your voice into finding coordinations within this illusive mix voice that I've taught heavily to the world. I wrote the only program truly on mix called Mastering your Mix and I get to look at my wall here because I got all my programs and I got to remember how many I've written, like a dozen or so. And we did Mastering Mix and then Mastering Vibrato and then Mastering Harmony, which two more versions of that are coming out with the guys that co-wrote. The first one with Claude McKnight from Take 6. So they are 10 time grammy winners for singing harmony. So the greatest harmony group of all time, I just went to the top of the food chain to get that.

So they can get all of it, just for 37 a month, which is ridiculously cheap. It's usually 67, but if they put in your stuff, I think we've already... actually, they might not even need a code. I think we changed it on the website so they could just do it, anybody who's on here. And they can get locked in at that price. So it's kind of like Netflix for the voice but it's like a university. So you get everything you want and you can go down as many rabbit holes to find your voice as possible. If you need just one whole lesson on whistle voice, there's stuff for range extension. And then, you get to be part of a Facebook group that has weekly warmups, and that alone has got about $20,000 worth of warmups on there. Because it's weekly warmups for the last four years, plus extra tips and questions and Q&As every Friday, so. And then a coach-of-the-day, answering questions. So you get more... like we talked about. More service and more support.

I mean I could've just backed off and do it once a month because we have so much content, but I wanted to flood the people with content, not so that they would be confused about where to start, but amused at where they could actually end up. Like, wow, I can just do whatever I want here and get as good as I want. I want the person to have fighter's swag, fighter's confidence about their voice. Where Elvis Presley was a trained fighter and he was confident as a singer because he said, "I brought that confidence onto the stage." Why? Because you think you can beat everybody? He goes, "No. Because I've been beat a lot of times and it ain't that bad." He says training to fight and training mixed martial arts changed his mind. That's the same thing with signing. If you learn as much as you can about your voice, you're not... 

I mean, my voice, honestly feels pretty crappy right now. I yelled at my son's game and I knew I shouldn't do that. The ref was wrong. He didn't start the clock, and the other team dribbled down, there's one second left, and they dribbled down for 10 seconds. And then they started the clock as he shot. Could you imagine that? You're a father, you'd be like... you can't do that. And everybody was screaming. I wasn't the loudest. Take the [inaudible 01:08:26]. I was yelling. And I busted up my voice. So my voice feels like crap. Do I appear scared? No. I don't care. I can get my voice back when I want and I can sing with what I have today. Sing with the voice you have today, it's one of my quotes on there, sing with the voice you have now and train to get the voice you want.

Michael Walker:
That's awesome. Yeah, no, that's... If this is what your voice sounds like when it's not feeling good, then, yeah, I wish that my voice sounded that good when I'm on my peak. So it's definitely the proof-

Brett Manning:
You got a great voice, man. So I would be probably intimidated singing next to you. Because you got a lot of range.

Michael Walker:
You're being humble now but I appreciate the kind words. One thing I want to leave with is, so we'll definitely put the links for everything in the show notes, so anyone who wants to dive deeper and wants to check out the different options, I would highly recommend... as a musician, and as singer, your voice is the thing that is going to be front and center. Right? It's what everyone hears first and it's just in terms of a limited amount of time that you have, a limited number of amount of money that you have to invest in things, there's not much of a better investment that you can make in terms of your music than investing in your voice. 

So I would highly recommend if it's something that you're interested in developing, to look deeper into Singing Success. I personally have been through the program; it was game-changing. It's really, really awesome and it's not just me but Taylor Swift, Hayley Williams, Keith Urban, Leona Lewis, all of these artists who have been able to improve their voices through the methodology. So I would recommend checking out, we'll put it in the show notes. And, Brett, you're awesome. Appreciate you being yourself and coming here and literally just being... having 10 different personas that you're able to bust out on a whim is very entertaining to watch.

Brett Manning:
It was a joy and a pleasure. And, again, you're a warm person and I can't recommend you more highly than I have already. Just anybody who's working with Michael or sticking out to the rest of y'all here, working directly with the camera man, you got a servant person who probably cares more about your career than you do. So keep working with him. You got a good ally in this difficult industry.

Michael Walker:
Hey, it's Michael here. I hope that you got a ton of value out of this episode. Make sure to check out the show notes to learn more about the guest today, and if you want to support the podcast, then there's a few ways to help us grow. First, if you hit subscribe, then that'll make sure you don't miss a new episode. Secondly, if you share it with your friends on your social media, tag us. That really helps us out. And third, best of all, if you leave us an honest review it's going to help us reach more musicians like you who want to take their music careers to the next level. The time to be a modern musician is now, and I look forward to seeing you on the next episode.