Singing Your Way To Stardom

Marty Rendleman has over twenty-five years experience in the music business and is probably the only person to ever take two nine-year-olds and a fourteen-year-old to major-label contracts-two in Country and one in Pop. Singing Your Way to Stardom chronicles how that happened, and then offers invaluable advice and education for anyone seeking a career in the music business.

The New York Times bestseller about a young black man's journey from violence and despair to the threshold of stardom: "A beautiful tribute to the power of good teachers" (Terry Gross, Fresh Air). "One of the most inspiring stories I've come across in a long time."-Pamela Paul, New York Times Book Review Ryan Speedo Green had a tough upbringing in southeastern Virginia: his family lived in a trailer park and later a bullet-riddled house across the street from drug dealers. His father was absent; his mother was volatile and abusive. At the age of twelve, Ryan was sent to Virginia's juvenile facility of last resort. He was placed in solitary confinement. He was uncontrollable, uncontainable, with little hope for the future. In 2011, at the age of twenty-four, Ryan won a nationwide competition hosted by New York's Metropolitan Opera, beating out 1,200 other talented singers. Today, he is a rising star performing major roles at the Met and Europe's most prestigious opera houses. Sing for Your Life chronicles Ryan's suspenseful, racially charged and artistically intricate journey from solitary confinement to stardom. Daniel Bergner takes readers on Ryan's path toward redemption, introducing us to a cast of memorable characters -- including the two teachers from his childhood who redirect his rage into music, and his long-lost father who finally reappears to hear Ryan sing. Bergner illuminates all that it takes -- technically, creatively -- to find and foster the beauty of the human voice. And Sing for Your Life sheds unique light on the enduring and complex realities of race in America.

Vocal health tips, stories from the tour bus, and action items to improve your voice and boost your self-confidence from an award-winning musician and life coach Performing with David Bowie, surviving the murky depths of the music business, enduring a painful divorce, and making the first music video in outer space, award-winning recording artist Emm Gryner has navigated through life’s highs and lows using a secret compass: singing. Her voice, and her desire to express herself in music, has been a constant: from the early days of playing in bands while growing up in a small town, to playing arena rock shows and stadiums. Across these years and on many travels, she’s discovered the human voice to be an unlikely guide, with the power to elevate and move people closer to authentic living. This book is about that discovery: part study in the art of singing, part guide to finding one’s voice, and part memoir. This book is a must-have for anyone who knows they should be singing.

Contemporary worship music shapes the way evangelical Christians understand worship itself. Author Monique M. Ingalls argues that participatory worship music performances have brought into being new religious social constellations, or "modes of congregating". Through exploration of five of these modes--concert, conference, church, public, and networked congregations--Singing the Congregation reinvigorates the analytic categories of "congregation" and "congregational music." Drawing from theoretical models in ethnomusicology and congregational studies, Singing the Congregation reconceives the congregation as a fluid, contingent social constellation that is actively performed into being through communal practice--in this case, the musically-structured participatory activity known as "worship." "Congregational music-making" is thereby recast as a practice capable of weaving together a religious community both inside and outside local institutional churches. Congregational music-making is not only a means of expressing local concerns and constituting the local religious community; it is also a powerful way to identify with far-flung individuals, institutions, and networks that comprise this global religious community. The interactions among the congregations reveal widespread conflicts over religious authority, carrying far-ranging implications for how evangelicals position themselves relative to other groups in North America and beyond.

Now with helpful audio examples available online, Idiot's Guides: Singing, Second Edition, is a fast-track approach to improving vocal technique, including solo, ensemble, and sight singing. Filled with illustrations and exercises, this book covers different musical styles — from pop and rock to country and classical.

Madeline Tyler and her two best friends, Ellie Jo Johnson and Olivia Chaplin, have just graduated from high school in Griffin, Georgia, in the spring of 1961. In search of a better life than rural Georgia offers, the girls set off in the pursuit of their dreams--but it isn’t long before life steps in and derails their plans. Madeline’s dreams of attending college are cut short by the deteriorating health of her father, and she finds herself returning home to help out with her family’s needs. Ellie and Olivia both enroll in beauty school, making a start only to see tragedy strike, ending the dreams of one in a heartbeat. Meanwhile, Madeline meets Bart Richmond, a charismatic used-car dealer and wannabe NASCAR driver who likes fast women and faster cars--and he has his sights set on her. To complicate matters further, Nick Elliott, Bart’s married friend and owner of Griffin’s cotton mills, can’t get Ellie out of his mind after watching her win the local Miss Iris contest. Only time will tell how the two men will impact the friends’ lives. Set in the South in the 1960s, this saga tells stories of love lost and found for three young women whose lives are forever changed.

My Alien Origin is an intriguing fish out of water story from outer space. An alien named Lyrad has his mind magically transferred inside the mind of a dying human baby boy named Daryl. The alien grows within his young black host’s body and experiences the true meaning of family, and he adjusts to sharing his consciousness with the black child, who miraculously has survived. Lessons are learned by Lyrad as he is confronted by the budding Civil Rights movement in New York City. As Lyrad discovers firsthand the meaning of the words discrimination and prejudice, Daryl comes to understand the meaning of despair and hopelessness. Together they learn to find happiness despite their despair, the way black folks have done for generations.

A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org. To produce the song sequences that are central to Indian popular cinema, singers' voices are first recorded in the studio and then played back on the set to be lip-synced and danced to by actors and actresses as the visuals are filmed. Since the 1950s, playback singers have become revered celebrities in their own right. Brought to Life by the Voice explores the distinctive aesthetics and affective power generated by this division of labor between onscreen body and offscreen voice in South Indian Tamil cinema. In Amanda Weidman's historical and ethnographic account, playback is not just a cinematic technique, but a powerful and ubiquitous element of aural public culture that has shaped the complex dynamics of postcolonial gendered subjectivity, politicized ethnolinguistic identity, and neoliberal transformation in South India.