Modern Musician - Andrew Knauer:
Hey, what's up everybody? This is Andrew from the podcast team. Before we start this episode, I have a quick announcement. It's that time of year again, and Modern Musician is hosting our 5th Annual Success With Music conference. Last year, we were featured by the Grammy Awards, and this year it's going to be even better. From May 26th to the 29th, we're bringing together over 15 top music industry experts to dive into everything surrounding how to build a loyal fan base and make a living with your music.

Modern Musician - Andrew Knauer:
So if you've never been before, the conference is free, it's 100% online. We have an incredible lineup of speakers this year. You'll hear from Adam Ivy, Chris SD, L Gates, Sean BrandMan Taylor, Tobias Rauscher, Bree Noble, Kristine Mirellr, Ariel Hyatt, Friedman Feinstein, Michael Elsner, Gabe Schillinger, Daniel Tucker, Chris Bradley, Sidney Eugene, Andrea Stolpe and more. It is a live event with a community around it so you'll get access to all kinds of networking opportunities. It's our biggest event of the year, and we're super excited about the crazy amounts of knowledge that will be shared and how we can all level up as music artists.

Modern Musician - Andrew Knauer:
So go right now. Click the link in the description. Get your free ticket to the 5th Annual SWM conference and get the most up to date strategies to crush your music goals this year. We can't wait to see you there. Now, let's get into the episode.

John Henny:
The more you learn about how the voice functions and you understand the voice, you will at least have some power of knowledge to discern if somebody is presenting information or an approach that's going to make sense for you.

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. 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 at today's music industry, and this is your invitation to join me. I'm your host, Michael Walker.

Michael Walker:
All right, I'm excited to be here today with John Henny. John is a leading voice teacher for over 25 years. We were just talking about... I'm 30 years old right now. So he's basically been teaching this since I was five years old, which is awesome. He's taught thousands of singers, including Grammy Award winners. His students have appeared on Broadway, major touring companies. Not only has he taught directly to artists, he actually is a coach of other coaches as well. He's trained hundreds of voice teachers. He has a popular podcast called The Intelligent Vocalist and a YouTube channel with over 11 million views and counting. And to put a cherry on top, he's also a bestselling author with several books about singing. So, we thought what would be a good topic to talk about today with one of the world's leading authorities on singing, well, probably how to improve your voice and get in touch with this natural instrument that we're all born with. So, John, thank you so much for taking the time to be here today and looking forward to diving in.

John Henny:
Thank you. I'm happy to be here.

Michael Walker:
You have a very robust voice as well just for someone who's teaching vocals and singing.

John Henny:
Oh.

Michael Walker:
The proof is in the pudding, I think.

John Henny:
It's all on the mic.

Michael Walker:
There you go. Awesome. So to get things started, I would love to hear a little bit more about you and your story and really how you got started down this path of becoming one of the world's leading authorities on-

John Henny:
Yeah, well, my story is truly where they talk about the randomness of the Drunkard's Walk. I came to this somewhat by accident. I was very passionate about music as a child. My dad was a naturally gifted singer and musician. My first musical memory was him playing the Beatles Help album on an old reel to reel. That's how long ago it was. I was just transfixed listening to Paul's voice and watching the tape move from one reel to another. My dad was from Glasgow, Scotland. The Scots are pretty well known for their frankness. And when I was a kid, I would try and sing, and my dad was such a gifted singer, he would say, "That's bloody terrible!"

John Henny:
So I kind of set the singing thing aside and I picked up the drums. My parents got me a drum set when I was 11 years old. I ended up studying with some amazing teachers, including Terry Bozzio, who played with Frank Zappa and went on to form Missing Persons, and a gentleman by the name of Freddie Gruber, who was kind of this drummer guru, and Neil Peart of Rush took a year off just to study with Freddie. So I had some amazing teachers and ended up playing drums professionally through most of my 20s.

John Henny:
And on a lark, a roommate of mine said, "Hey, I'm taking voice lessons with this guy." His teacher is Stevie Wonder's teacher and I said, "Hey, that's good enough for me. Let me try and see if I can start singing even a little bit just to be able to do backup vocals, et cetera." And within a couple of years, I ended up moving from the drums to the front of the stage. I really enjoyed it. I really took to it. Once I understood how the voice worked and started getting a handle on my voice, I started to really make progress. And then I ended up going to his teacher, a gentleman by the name of Seth Riggs, who was teaching everyone in Hollywood, and Seth had said to me, "You know, you ought to try teaching." And I thought, "I don't know what I'm doing." And he said, "Well, at least you won't hurt anybody." And so that was my modest goal when I first started teaching, was to not damage anyone's voice.

John Henny:
I found that I really enjoyed teaching. I hit a crossroads where I was in my early 30s and I had the opportunity to go on the road with a band that was getting signed and I thought, "I don't want to be in a band with a bunch of smelly guys. I think I'm going to pursue this teaching thing. I think this is for me."

Michael Walker:
I can tell you from first world experience that it's not as glamorous lifestyle sometimes as it's portrayed.

John Henny:
No.

Michael Walker:
Awesome.

John Henny:
And then once I really got into teaching, I really developed a fascination with how the voice works, really started delving into voice science. I'm not a scientist, but I found in my struggles to understand these concepts, it helped me to be able to explain what I understood to others and to be able to simplify it. And so I really started helping other teachers and working with them to understand these concepts and learn how to teach. And then that led to a lot of master classes and teaching trips in a lot of travel, not in a van. So it was somewhat enjoyable to go around and work with singers and teachers around the world.

Michael Walker:
That's super cool. Yeah. I can really relate as well in terms of that transition. So I toured with in a smelly van with six other guys for about 10 years before I started my family and was looking for a lifestyle change. I know that transition from like... It kind of like a basketball player who becomes like a coach, right?

John Henny:
Yeah.

Michael Walker:
There's a totally different skill set and framework that kind of goes into it, I think there's sort of this like meta level of zooming out. Not everyone who's a great player is necessarily a great coach, right? And so it sounds like you've really had the experience both as in the field, but then you were able to zoom out and start coaching directly artists. And then you were able to even zoom out a level, another meta level, to be able to coach coaches. But I think it really kind of comes with levels of mastery. I know that now in this point of your career, you've worked with a ton of singers and Grammy Award-winning artists and thousands of different musicians. I would love to hear from your experience what have you seen as being some of the biggest, most common mistakes or most common challenges when an artist first starts working with you that they're struggling with.

John Henny:
I think it's depending on the level of the singer. At the beginning level, singers get really caught up in the physical of the voice. There is a physical aspect in this voice where you need to start air molecules vibrating. You need to create a sound wave. And that sound wave is created by taking a breath and sending this controlled breath to your vocal chords, your vocal folds. And they are going to resist this air, compress it, and turn it into a sound wave. But beginning singers kind of get stuck on that level, the physical, and they don't realize that the acoustics, what happens after that sound wave is created through the resonance chamber of the vocal tract is actually arguably more important and more profound than the creation of the sound wave itself. So it's really getting them in touch with resonance how to control the power of vowels, how vowels can really register and balance your voice, because vowels are how you control these shifts in resonance.

John Henny:
As they start to progress, and maybe they are really looking at a professional career and you will be able to speak to this, they don't realize how not only unglamorous it can be but how much absolute hard work it is and how much they really need to take care of themselves and take care of the instrument because they're going to be put under stress and the instrument is going to be put under stress, and they really need to do everything they can to keep this instrument healthy.

Michael Walker:
Yeah. I mean, I was a background vocalist and like a harmony singer in the band, so I wasn't the main person who was singing, but I know that our lead singer at one point got developed polyps on his voice. He literally needed to have surgery on it. It was bad. It was really scary. So yeah, firsthand, I've seen how important it is to actually to do what you're saying and take care of your voice.

Michael Walker:
What are some practices or solutions that you'd recommend for someone? Let's say that we're speaking directly to someone right now who maybe they've taken a few beginning vocal lessons or a little bit more on the beginner level, but they know how important it is to improve their voice, they know that it's like the number one thing that most people who are listening here and pay attention to early on and they know like, "I really want to improve my voice and I want to start taking care of myself." Where do you recommend they start just to start developing more mastery over their voice?

John Henny:
That's a great question. That's a question that gets a little more difficult as there's more and more information out there. Almost what a voice teacher will be is someone who can cut down on the information fire hose and cut down on the noise. I almost think it was a bit of a benefit when I was developing my voice to not have the internet, because I was able to just stay on one path. Now I'm not saying any one path is the absolute right path. Yeah, there's no one true vocal technique. But it stopped me because I know I have a bit of ADD, it stopped me from hopping around and trying to grab all this different disparate information and kind of make it cohesively make sense. So I would suggest as they do their research, find somebody that they like, maybe one or two voice teachers, and just spend some time absorbing their information for maybe three months and start to get a handle on it.

John Henny:
Otherwise, you're going to have decision fatigue and information fatigue, and you're just going to get confused. This is one of the most confusing and frustrating instruments, because when you're off just a small amount in your vocal balance, the way that the elements of the instrument interact, the end result can feel like it's off a lot. And then you end up over correcting and you end up in this really frustrating seesaw of, "If I do it this way, I'm straining. But if I do it this way, I'm falling apart. I can't find this middle." So if you don't have access to voice lessons... And look, with the internet now and with online lessons, you can have access to great teachers all over the world. But yeah, good voice lessons can be expensive. So if you're going to do it yourself, which I've certainly done for periods of my own vocal growth, try and limit the flow of information. Just try and find one or two good sources and just stay with that for a period of-

Michael Walker:
That's such good advice. I mean, I think all of us can feel the collective overwhelm of the amount of information online right now.

John Henny:
Yeah.

Michael Walker:
It's like something doubling every year. It's like exponential. And so, I hear a lot from different masters and different domains is exactly what you're saying of like being selective about your intake. It's kind of like eating a meal, right? If you're just trying to gouge and eat everything, then your stomach's not going to digest it very well. It's not going to really work. But if you'll be really selective and make sure you're eating good, healthy, nutritious food, the right amount, then that's going to be a big benefit.

Michael Walker:
Another analogy that comes to mind is this idea of rather than jumping around, around and around. It's we're like planting a tree and a seed, and it's like if you plant the seed and then 10 minutes later, you dig it up, you're like, "Wait, this isn't growing yet. I'm going to go over here and plant the seed" and kind of bounce back and forth. You don't actually have the time for it to develop and to nurture into something that bears fruits. So let's say that someone is interested in finding the right mentor or the right vocal coach for them. Where would you recommend they start to kind of find the right person?

John Henny:
You know, you can Google it, right? I mean, you can ask. There are going to be certain questions or issues about your voice that are troubling you, that when you go into the practice room, you keep hitting this wall. Just start getting on and researching those issues. See what blogs come up. See what YouTube videos come up and see what podcasts come up. You can start to get an idea of somebody who speaks to you. Look, I am not the right teacher for everybody. Yeah, there will be people that I feel that I can help, but they just don't connect with me. And so much of it is not just what you need to learn, but who you need to learn it from. So you're going to find someone who really kind of speaks with you and you connect with. And hopefully this person has a lot of information.

John Henny:
The other thing I will say is, the more you learn about how the voice functions and you understand the voice, you will at least have some power of knowledge to discern if somebody is presenting information or an approach that's going to make sense for you.

Michael Walker:
All right, let's take a quick break from the podcast. I'm going to tell you about a free special offer they're doing right now exclusively for our podcast listeners. So if you get a ton of value from the show, but you want to take your music career to the next level, connect with the community of driven musicians and connect with the music mentors directly that we have on this podcast. Or if you just want to know the best way to market your music and grow an audience right now, then this is going to be perfect for you.

Michael Walker:
So right now we're offering a free two week trial to our Music Mentor Coaching Program. And if you sign up in the show notes below, you'll get access to our entire music mentor content vault for free. The vault's organized into four different content pillars. The first being the music, then the artist, the fans, and last but not least, the business. When you sign up, you'll unlock our best in-depth master classes from a network of world class musicians and industry experts on the most cutting edge strategies right now for growing your music business.

Michael Walker:
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Michael Walker:
On top of all that, you'll get access to our private music mentor community. And this is definitely one of my favorite parts of Music Mentor and maybe the most valuable, is that you're going to have this community where you can network with other artists and link up and collaborate, ask questions, get support, and discuss everything related to your music career. So if you're curious and you want to take advantage of the free trial, then go click on the link in the show notes right now, and sign up for free. From there, you can check out all of the amazing content, connect with the community, and sign up for the live master classes that happen every week. This is a gift for listening to our podcast, supporting the show. So don't miss it out. Go sign up for free now, and let's get back to our interview.

Michael Walker:
Yeah, that's a really important one, right? Because I mean, that applies to finding the right vocal coach, but also just finding the right mentorship in general and how do you tell the difference between the right mentors and someone who might not be as credible or might not have the right intentions. Yeah. And I think that the way you put it was just so well said too in terms of recognizing that it's like we're not all a cookie cutter person. We have different voices that we resonate with. Yeah, we can just go to Google and ask the world [inaudible 00:18:45]-

John Henny:
Exactly.

Michael Walker:
... deliver on a silver platter who's the right person. Okay. So let's take a little bit deeper into... I'd like to hear what you found from experience that are some of the most common beliefs or myths. Or what are things that a lot of singers think are certain way, but it's like a common mistake or a common thing that might help someone who's listening to this right now?

John Henny:
You know, that's a great question. And it's not so much myths, it's just putting the thinking that they have found the one answer and that this idea that there is only one answer, there is only one path. When you hear somebody just go "Singing is all about breathing or it's all about support." It's vitally important, yeah, but so many times I see singers where they don't have problems with their breathing, they have problems with resisting it at the vocal folds, or even more important, have problems with the acoustics and what's happening with the residents that's feeding back into that system.

John Henny:
So I think amongst the general public, I think one of the big myths is that great singers are born with their talent. They don't need lessons. They're just fantastic on their own and they want to bring up that Freddie Mercury never studied with anyone or Whitney Houston never studied. And if you look at Whitney, her mother was one of the great session singers of her day. I mean, she's sang with Elvis, she's sang with everybody. She grew up in a very musical atmosphere and a musical church.

John Henny:
I mean, she was just being taught every day of her life since she was a tiny, tiny girl. All lessons are is just a slightly more formal version of that in that you've made an appointment and paid money to essentially get the same thing. It's just somebody to listen and make a discernment and show you how best to practice and work on your own voice. I mean, you still have to do the work, but I think there's this idea that voice coaches and voice teachers can't help people. And of course I'm biased, but that's absolutely not true. And even great naturally gifted singers will still often have some holes or flaws within their technique that over time can come back to cause them issue.

Michael Walker:
That's so good. It's something that seems like pretty common sense in most of the world's top performing athletes, like Olympic athletes, right. It doesn't just like they just stumbled upon it. They have coaches and they have people that guide them and help them to become the best in the world. And for some reason, it's so easy to think with music that there's sort of this myth that we are just born with all of the answers and all the talent right away. Of course, some people we have, it's more natural. It comes more naturally. But it's not something that you're only born with or not. And certainly if you want to be at the top of your game and be like an Olympic athlete, then you need a coach. You need someone to be able to help give you a shortcut.

Michael Walker:
One thing that you mention that I'd love to dive into is I feel like most of us, we know that there are things that we should be doing but we might not necessarily be doing those things every day. Things that are like pretty common knowledge, like, "Okay, I should be exercising every day. I should be eating well every day. I should be sleeping. I should be taking care of myself." But in this case, I think that most singers and most musicians that are like, "Yeah, like I should be doing some sort of daily practice where I'm warming up my voice or I'm improving my voice." What would your recommendations be for someone who's kind of looking at creating a habit for themselves to actually improve their voices and they know that they should do it, but they haven't quite gotten around to it? How do they kind of work through that resistance?

John Henny:
You know, that's a great question. People think that practice has to be, if it's not at least 45 minutes or an hour, it's not going to do any good, that somehow there's some failure. Look, if you are preparing for something like a performance, then yeah, you're going to need some longer practice sessions. But if you can get in the daily habit of doing at least 15 minutes, 15 minutes a day, if you're doing the right things with your voice, have a profound impact. And so it's very much like... I believe this is what's laid out in the book Atomic Habits, that you just start off with something. Like set up your practice area. I actually just recently did a podcast on this, Preparing to Practice, but get your space together. Have a space that when you go in, it makes you feel like you're ready to work. You have things around you that inspire you. It's not just some cluttered messy room where you're worried about the neighbors hearing you.

John Henny:
You might want to think about if you have a situation where you can't make a lot of noise, look at investing into a vocal booth. You don't have to get some super expensive whisper room. There are some DIY vocal booths you can make. If you invest a few thousand dollars in a vocal booth, my gosh, think about what guitars spend on their gear. So that you have some place where you can go in and make your noise. And then start going there every day. Even if you don't do anything, make an appointment to go in and just be in the space. Get calm, get focused. And then if you don't practice the first few days, that's fine. At least you're starting the habit of going and being in the space and getting ready. And To warm up your voice, research shows that your voice is pretty well warmed up five to 10 minutes. Any more warming up than that is really kind of superfluous.

John Henny:
And then you can start really focusing on working your voice and, "What issues do I have? Do I struggle with an E vowel? Do I need to work on extending my range? What about my vocal break? In my lower register, do I feel unsteadiness is my larynx coming up?" There are all the technical stuff that you can really focus on and work. And then start working on songs and record yourself. Make a journal. A journal can be fantastic. Just have it there in your practice room. And when you make an adjustment, you're like, "Wow. When I think of my breathing, rather than pulling my stomach in, if I just feel myself gently push out, it has a different effect." Mark that down. Really think about your voice. Really get in touch with this instrument. And as you do that, you're going to start reaping the benefits and you're going to start looking forward to practicing.

Michael Walker:
That's so good. Yeah, and that book, Atomic Habits, I read it probably a year ago or so. I remember just thinking like, "Man, this is just gold coming every step of the way."

John Henny:
Yeah.

Michael Walker:
I love that idea that you just shared about setting up the space so that every... It's something that facilitates the habit happening with the least amount of resistance, the least amount of friction as possible, right? I think it was maybe Eben Pagan who talks about this idea of inevitability thinking, which is really about making the thing that you want to have happened set up in a way so that if you did nothing naturally, the thing would happen on its own without you having to create extra willpower. In his example, and I don't think it needed to be like this extreme, you can give your friend like a thousand dollars check and you say like, "If I don't do my habit today, then go cash the check." Therefore, it's more painful-

John Henny:
He has a lot of incentive to sabotage you, right?

Michael Walker:
It's funny. I mean, I had have this accountability that I set up with my wife because I get so excited about what we're doing with bonding musician in the business that it's so easy for me to work past 6:00 at night and to come out at like 10:00 if I don't set any boundaries. So for her, her incentive is that for every minute that I'm late after 6:00, I owe her a minute of massage. There's little accountability. I might be getting too personal here, but there's accountability, things like that that I think are really interesting. And it's all based on the idea that you just shared of setting up the space so that the thing that you want to have happened happens automatically. And setting up your space for voice, for exploring, improving your voice and your songwriting, and even if you're not feeling inspired to write music, just having that space seems like such an important practice and habit just to give yourself the space to do the thing.

John Henny:
You're touching on it, but mindset is incredibly important as well, especially with this instrument. None of us first come to guitar and feel embarrassed that we don't know how to play an E chord or that it's difficult to move from a C chord to a G chord, yeah? But the voice, even beginning singers feel this sense of embarrassment if their voice doesn't sound pleasing and they somehow think that that's a personal failing. And you just have to be really careful with the internal dialogue that you have. I find if you can develop a practice of mindfulness and being able to just be completely in the moment without judgment and really accepting your voice where it is at that moment and working with the instrument you have right now, it can really be a huge step in improving. Because if you're constantly criticizing your voice, you're getting frustrated because it doesn't feel the way it did last week or yesterday, look, this is a human instrument, it's constantly changing. And so you have to be accepting of that.

John Henny:
The voice, you can't trade this voice in. You can't say, "You know what? I'm tired of playing a Stratocaster. I'm going to go get a Les Paul." This is what you have. This is what you have to work with. You need to just be in full acceptance of this voice. And I believe that every voice, if it's working optimally, is a beautiful instrument.

Michael Walker:
That's so good. I mean, what comes to mind as you just described that, are singers that aren't necessarily the most technically like Weezer, for example, it seems like such an important factor of the voice is around authenticity or character. So much of that comes from what you just talked about accepting, accepting yourself as you are. It doesn't have to come across in a different way. And sometimes those flaws actually might be something that actually gives it character in the right way. I would love for you to dig into that idea of how does someone who struggles with being heard or being seen fully or has like a lot of fear around expressing themselves or sharing their voice, how did they establish that sense of comfort and be able to kind of lean into their natural voice as opposed to kind of trying to force it to be something it's not?

John Henny:
The worst thing you can do, and actually this is in almost every area of life, is to compare yourself to others. You have to eliminate that. This is about you being you. You don't have to have the biggest voice. You don't have to have the whitest range. You don't have to have the most beautiful voice. You have to be able to connect to other human beings and express common emotions. And that's the highest level of singing. It's not this technical stuff. This is just a tool. Communication is the highest level of singing. And you have to understand that you have something to say. And when you feel yourself, when you get in those situations where you have an opportunity to sing and there is stage fright or you feel that imposter syndrome comes in, that is really a matter of number one, as they say, "The only way around is through." You have to go through these experiences in order to gain the necessary experience to start getting more and more comfortable.

John Henny:
But also, you have to turn the focus from being inward. When I'm in situations, if I have to lead a masterclass or something where I view myself getting nervous, I'm realizing that I'm putting the focus on myself and I'm worried about what other people are going to think about me and are they going to accept me. And that, being accepted is a very strong primal human need and emotion, but if I reverse the focus and just put it on everyone else, and I really make myself disappear, your stage fright will actually begin to disappear as well.

Michael Walker:
Man, this stuff's so good, like you got on this. It has so many applications just to everyday life too, in addition to singing. Man, I mean, I'm just trying to think about where to go from here. There's like a lot of really, really, really good gold nuggets that you're dropping. I mean, honestly, I think that we've covered a lot of really good ground here. Our team will come in and be able to kind of probably edit out the part where I [inaudible].

John Henny:
Sure. Sure.

Michael Walker:
But I think probably we're good here to go to kind wrap things up. So John, this has been awesome. I love conversations like this. I think that really the true mark of a master is someone who's able to... There's always going to be kind of, I don't know, shiny objects or new kind of things on the surface or tactics, but it seems like the people who are really the most successful are the ones who go down to the fundamentals and really kind of go into the core of what's important. So things like what you talked about with mindset.

Michael Walker:
Some of the points today I think are a reflection of your 25 plus years of experience. So I really appreciate what you're doing and being able to kind of help. Really, it sounds like what you do is you help with the technique and helping people improve their voices, but really it's like what you're doing is you're helping them get in touch with themselves and being able to show up and to express themselves in a way that's authentic, and that is a truly life changing thing to be able to do for someone. So thank you for doing what you do and for helping other coaches to help them do this as well.

Michael Walker:
For anyone who's been listening to this right now and is curious to learn more, whether in regards to finding a coach or looking into more education from you, what would be the best place for them to go to dive deeper?

John Henny:
Yeah. Just go to johnhenny.com, J-O-H-N-H-E-N-N-Y. You can just click on the various tabs up there and see what I have to offer.

Michael Walker:
Awesome. Yeah. So what we'll do always, we'll put the link in the description so everyone has easy access. John, you're awesome. Thanks again.

John Henny:
Great. Thank you so much.

Michael Walker:
Hey, it's Michael here. I hope that you got a ton of value at this episode. Make sure to check out the show notes to learn more about our guests 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 I'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. It's time to be a modern musicians now, and I look forward to seeing you on our next episode.