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[0:00] Charlie Murphy: Hello and welcome to Mapping The College Audition, a podcast where we explore the landscape of the college theater world and try to demystify this daunting audition process. I'm your host, Charlie Murphy, director of MTCA. Check us out at mtca.com. And today we have got Matt Edwards from Shenandoah University on the podcast, continuing a nice string of these Act 2-style episodes we've been doing recently, especially with our college guests. This one, it's a bit like the one we did with Don Wadsworth from Carnegie Mellon, who is a voice and speech professor at CMU. It kind of serves the dual purpose of giving you another perspective on the university while also giving you a deep dive into a specific area of expertise.

In Matt's case, it's vocal pedagogy, and I'd say vocal style as well. Two expertises there. Even for those not interested in Shenandoah, and by the end of this episode you may just have been turned around on that lack of interest, I do think you're really going to enjoy that last part of this episode, where we get super nerdy on some vocal styles principles, some cool vocal concepts you might not have heard of before, and I think some free SAT practice. If you didn't know what a cricothyroid was before this episode, you probably still won't know what it is, but you will have heard that word a number of times. This episode makes me think a lot about our MTCA founder and my dear friend Ellen Lettrick, who loves voice nerdery more than any other human I've ever met, and I've had many conversations with her, which of course had me as well prepared for these conversations as I could possibly be.

I'm actually going to get to see Ellen tonight as I record this, because Leo, Ellen, and I are all going to see our wonderful friend of the pod and MTCA alum Ali Louise Borsgi in Tommy, and we're so excited to root him on tonight and share some MTCA pride. And for those who are attending our Summer Masterclass week this July 30th through August 4th, we've just announced that this will be the show we're all going to see as a group. Your all-week pass includes one premium ticket to the show. These are great tickets right in the orchestra. You cannot believe how good these seats are. God, I sounded like Trump there. You cannot believe how good these seats are. And of course, family and friends are welcome to join with as many tickets as you want.

So we'll be holding a talkback with Ali and the rest of the cast right after the show, and those talkbacks are always a blast for all of us. So please plan ahead for that. It's going to be super fun. Speaking of our MTCA alum, as of today, May 1st, many of you seniors out there just became one. Congratulations. Congrats for all that hard work. We are so thrilled to be celebrating all of your final decisions today, for those of you who have made them. And I say that for those of you who have made them, because this is really an extraordinary year, given the FAFSA snafu, and many students have had to delay their decision until May 15th or even June 1st, which of course also then affects waitlist movement for other students.

So this is definitely a less uniform kind of celebration day than some others in the past, but no less joyful for it being a bit spread out. This class absolutely killed it with their hard work and energy, and we're just so excited with the results and all the amazing, amazing schools they've decided to attend. So congrats to you, Class of 2024. And now, Class of 2025, you're up! Keep crushing it with those spring masterclasses, and we're excited to see many of you in person this summer as you continue your prep for your own prescreens and applications coming right around the bend. Can you believe how soon that is in the long scheme of things? And as you do that prep, I'm going to give you just one more quick plug for a discount we were able to secure for all of you, both current students and alum.

You're welcome. This is open to all of you. It's a 10% discount on the product Vocal Mist. A few people at Unifieds asked if we could arrange what we did with Beltbox earlier this winter, since these products were like literally everywhere at the Palmer House, and here's a case of ask and you shall receive. You can use the code MTCA10, that's MTCA10, to purchase one of these if you're interested. If you don't know what a Vocal Mist is, it's like a portable nebulizer in the class of products like a personal steamer that a lot of people have used in the past, but it is cuter and it won't mess up your makeup, as our students like to remind me. So check that out if you're interested. MTCA10 to save 10% on one of those.

And I believe that discount should go in perpetuity, so I'll remind you again that it exists, but the Beltbox one is more limited in scope. We will do that again next year for that limited period of time, but this seems to exist in perpetuity, so go get it. I mean, I don't know. If you want to have urgency to buy it, go buy it now, but if not, you might be able to wait. I have no idea if these would be Matt Edwards approved, but Ellen did give us the big thumbs up, and we're talking about vocal technique in this episode, so it seemed like as good a time as any to launch that discount. Wow, that's a long intro. And one more thing, it's my birthday tomorrow, so you know the drill, leave us a podcast review to wish me a happy birthday.

I don't want a stinking Facebook post, I don't want a like on Instagram, whatever. I want an Apple podcast review, please. And of course, my second wish would be that all the children of the world would join together and sing in harmony and peace. A little Easter egg for those of you who listened to the Brandon Gardner interview last week. Please do enjoy this interview with the great Matt Edwards.

[5:08] Charlie Murphy: Well, we are so excited to welcome Matt Edwards from Shenandoah University. Matt has a BM from the Cleveland Institute of Music, an MM from Louisiana State University, and a DMA from Shenandoah University. He's one of the leading voice teachers for commercial and musical theater styles in the United States, was awarded the Van Lorenz Fellowship, is a guest editor for the Journal of Voice, he's performed all over the country, and even wrote a book called So You Think You Want to Sing Rock and Roll. And he's now an associate professor of voice and musical theater at Shenandoah University, where he's the coordinator of musical theater voice, as well as the artistic director of the CCM Vocal Pedagogy Institute. Shenandoah, as we remember, is in Winchester, Virginia. They take classes of about 18 and offer degree BFAs in acting and BFAs in musical theater. Matt, welcome on the show. How are you doing today?

[5:58] Matt Edwards: Thank you, doing great. How about you?

[6:02] Charlie Murphy: I'm doing all right. It's nice to get to connect a little bit in our pre-show. And, you know, we're talking about, we are sort of delighted to be in this season of, like, having schools back on the podcast. And, of course, each of those situations is a little different. Sometimes we're having schools back on because the faculty changes, and sometimes, as in this case, it's really to hear a different perspective. So I'm just going to urge any of our listeners, if you're interested in Shenandoah, to also listen to the episode we did with Kevin Covert, that'll be bringing you back to, like, my second ever interview, I think, was Kevin. But this is really, we're going to think of this like a part two to that interview a little bit.

So please listen to part one, and then we're going to kind of go even a little deeper as we do it. But let's start off a little bit with your personal background and your kind of journey to the school. Any fun tidbits we should know about you that didn't make their way into that brief bio?

[6:41] Matt Edwards: Oh, I mean, I was a musical theater high school kid. That's what I loved to do. But I was also, you know, had my rock band. I love Nirvana and Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, all those good 90s alternative bands. You're aging yourself, Matt. You're aging yourself. Nirvana, it's like sadly, the years are adding up. But so I was in high school. My plan was to be a music theater, music education major at a school in Ohio. And it was getting close to May 1st. I was about to put down that deposit, and my dad lost his job. And so all of a sudden, I have two non-working parents and college on the horizon. And so my dreams of going for that music theater education were kind of shot down. And so I ended up staying at home, living in the basement in my parents' house and commuting to Wright State University, which is a great program, except I wasn't good enough to get into their musical theater program and also didn't know what to even do. This is still pre-internet days back then. The internet did exist. I'm not that old, but the internet as far as having...

[7:46] Charlie Murphy: You're Nirvana old. We know exactly how old you are.

[7:48] Matt Edwards: Nirvana old. I like that. I'll take that. But so I ended up going as a music education major, thinking that I'd get to work on all kinds of music. And then I discovered it would only be classical music. But that was okay because I'm six foot four. I'm a bass baritone, and I cannot dance to save my life. And so like, you know, the classical world works for me. And so I got asked to be in the opera the second week of school. And I said, sure. And I got into the opera and I kind of liked it. And so I started going down that pathway. And then one of the vocal coaches that was there said, well, if you want to really do this, you need to go to an opera school. And that's how I ended up at the Cleveland Institute of Music.

And when I got to CIM, I got extremely, extremely fortunate that the head of the opera program was an actor who directed opera. And he believed that the problem with opera was the lack of acting. And so I was thrown into studying Meisner, Chekhov, Stanislavski, Uta Hagen, all the greats. We were in acting class six hours a week as, you know, classical voice majors. And there's plenty of musical theater programs where the kids don't, unfortunately, get even six hours a week of acting training. And so I got really fortunate and I came to believe that singing was all about letting your actor lead the way. And then I started working professionally and discovered in the opera world that was a very unique opinion.

Everybody else thought the voice should lead the way. And so, you know, that really is where I started going, I don't know if I really do like this. I'm very actor driven in everything I do. And I took my first voice pedagogy class and it was with my wife. She was my girlfriend then. We've been together for 20 years at this point, 23 years. And anyway, so we were sitting there in class and learning about these things called contemporary commercial music styles, which was basically non-classical singing styles. And I found that there were all these teachers that were specializing in that, and I was immediately intrigued. And so I was teaching some musical theater kids and I was realizing that a lot of the classical tools I had were not helping these students do what they needed to do.

So I started seeking out alternative tools to help these people along their journey. And that's what got me fascinated with voice pedagogy and helping out, you know, performers in non-classical styles. And ever since that voice pedagogy class, I haven't turned back. I have rarely taught classical voice and now I pretty much never do. And it's all musical theater, rock, and yeah, it's a lot of fun.

[10:07] Charlie Murphy: So interesting knowing you from the outside that I feel like it's, yeah, I think what you're really known for, what we think of is like, yeah, that you do more pop rock, MT style pop, so many things that are not classical. It's interesting that you have that foundation starting or your interest started in the classical voice of it all.

[10:21] Matt Edwards: I was singing opera until I came to Shenandoah. I was a resident artist with Tri-Cities Opera in upstate New York until I took this job. So yeah.

[10:28] Charlie Murphy: That's so cool. Okay, well, let's get to Shenandoah a little bit in terms of, you know, we've heard Kevin's perspective a little bit, but what do you see as you see the musical theater students, especially in the acting students, but especially when you see a Shenandoah musical theater student, what do you think distinguishes them from other musical theater students? What makes, you know, sort of makes the core of what a Shenandoah student is?

[10:48] Matt Edwards: Well, I think, first of all, they're good people. We really try to find good people through the audition process. I want somebody that I am going to enjoy being around for four years. I want somebody, you know, that if they want to hang out with my kids, watch them, I feel comfortable having them over. I want to be able to go out and have a dinner with them if they're stressed out about something and be able to have a real conversation, a heart-to-heart conversation with them. We don't like the drama in the drama school. We try to keep it out as much as we can. Sometimes that's easier said than done, as we all know, but we really try to keep everybody working together because we feel like we're stronger when we work together than when we start getting into divisions.

I think on the performing side of it, they're unique and they have a good sense of who they are. I know lots of schools say we don't do cookie cutters. You know, it's a little cliche, but we do really look for not cookie cutters. What that means to us is just regardless of who you are, you don't look like you or your performance doesn't seem to be just a generic whatever your type is, but that you bring a unique point of view to everything you do. You sing things in your own unique way. You're not trying to sound like somebody. Your acting choices are obviously unique to you. When you dance, you bring your spirit into what you do with the choreography and you really let that lead the way. I think just all around, we're looking for unique people, people who are going to be interesting to others and that as we start to put them into roles in our main stage shows and eventually as they go to summer stock and they graduate, that they're going to bring something special to the table. I love it.

[12:25] Charlie Murphy: Well, Kevin talked to us a bit through the musical theater curriculum in terms of the dancing, acting, etc. I'd love to just do a little deeper dive on the vocal curriculum for you. What is your approach? What is a student doing year one, year two, year three, year four from a vocal technique perspective?

[12:34] Matt Edwards: Yeah. We have a really unique setup that I'm not sure that any other university has where they study with one voice teacher for the first three years and then they all come to my studio for their senior year. I always have them during their senior year and I help guide them through lots of things. We'll get to that in a minute. But in their first three years, they're really focusing on building upon their strengths and expanding their capabilities. We do musical theater specific training with them. They don't go through any classical vocal technique, classical singing training. We do what's called evidence-based voice training. What that means is we all have a really intricate understanding of how the voice functions.

We're coordinating the motor system to have complete control over the range of motion of the singing voice. So, you know, a singer can make really buzzy sounds, they can make really breathy sounds, they can make warm sounds, they can make bright sounds, and ideally they should be in full control over which side of the spectrum they want to be on and have every option available to them in between. We help them do that by working through, you know, a wide range of musical theater repertoire. Our music director, who's Patrick Brady, is a Broadway legend. He was the original music director of The Producers, Young Frankenstein, Fosse, all kinds of shows. And he used to play the auditions for his shows. And so after watching tens of thousands of actors come through for his productions, he knows what a book should look like and what a successful book is.

[14:12] Matt Edwards: Composed of and so he put a list together of 16 categories that we want students to explore in their first three years and so it's up to them and their teacher to start deciding where they want to do that building. So if the student comes in and they're naturally inclined to the golden age, then they might start in golden age. If they're inclined towards pop rock, they might start going into the contemporary musical theater and some pop rock stuff as well. And then we want to make sure though as they get settled, they start exploring all the things that they're not good at. Along the way, we have juries every semester where the whole faculty gets together, so all the voice teachers are in the room with me as the coordinator of musical theater voice.

We have Shiloh Martinez who coordinates the musical theater dance, Kevin who's the head of the program, and then Patrick the music director, and we're all in there together to monitor the students' progress and keep an eye on them. We really try to set it up to be a supportive atmosphere. I don't want it to feel like the gauntlet that I used to have to run for my voice juries where you were afraid of the rubric and how you're going to get ripped apart. It's not that. Our whole idea is to be there and help the students continue to grow and to reinforce what they're hearing in their lessons, support them, or if they're starting to run off the track a little bit, to help guide them back and get them back on the right path.

[15:28] Matt Edwards: Then they continue to work in their acting through song classes. They get credit for bringing those songs into their voice lessons that can count towards their rep requirements. So that way they're actually working on those songs and figuring out how to navigate them. They can bring all their roles, their material from the roles that they're performing into their voice lessons, so again they're getting guidance on that material. And then by the time that they get to be seniors and they come to me, I try to help them finish putting a bow on any of the little technical challenges they have, and then I start really helping them refine that book to take the 16 songs and narrow it down to the eight that they actually want to carry around with them on a regular basis.

Then I really do a lot of work with them about honing in on their identity as a human being and as an artist. One of my favorite projects to do with them in the first weeks of the semester, fall semester when I first get them, is we do vision boards. So we make a vision of what they want their career to look like, and then they put together a vision of what they want their life to look like. The life vision has to be separate from the career because I want them thinking about who they are as human beings, what's important to them, what do they bring from their cultural identity, from their family identity, who they are, how does that influence what they want to put out into the world.

[16:50] Matt Edwards: And then we use that information to start picking rep. So as they're picking rep and they're a challenge between two songs, but which one fits your vision? Which one communicates your identity? Who are you and what do you want this agent or casting director who's going to watch this performance to know about you as a human being? And so then we continue down that path throughout. I have them in a group class where I meet together with them for an hour and 40 minutes, then I have a private lesson with them. In that hour and 40-minute group class, they're getting up and they're singing, we're talking about the big issues that affect them on their career path as they're getting ready to launch out of here.

And then as we prep for their showcases and get that ready, we start turning an eye over to pop rock. So next week we're doing country music and they all find a country music song that they think might work for them if they're ever asked to sing that, and they're bringing it in. They're learning a little bit about the history and the culture of all these different musics.

[17:40] Matt Edwards: Most people don't realize that the roots of all American popular music is Black American music, and so we're really digging into the roots of Black American music. They're learning about the Gullah people, which in the United States is the people who have most held on to the African culture. And so when we listen to what that original early recordings of the Gullah music was, how that influenced the Black churches of Christ, which were an acapella group, acapella church, and then we listen to similarities between those singing styles in Motown and the blues and rock and roll and start talking about how that influence came with influences from Ireland and from England and Scotland, how people melded together and how we got all the music that we now know today as American popular music.

And so we've been doing it—this is my 14th year of taking students down this path, and every year their minds are kind of blown by all that they learn about the music that we all love but the stories that we've never heard before. And so I think that by the end they leave here with a really great command over their instrument. They have full access to the full range of motion of their instrument, they understand how to really tap into who they are and what makes them special, and they really have a lot of respect for the history of their art form.

[18:56] Charlie Murphy: It's so cool, and you know, so well said in terms of the year one through three and then the year four. We talked with Kevin a little bit about sort of the showcase process, but I kind of love to hear you talk about the launch into the business. I kind of love to hear, like from a vocal perspective, what kind of contact do you have with your alumni students? Are they coming back to you with vocal questions and issues? Are you hooking them up with teachers in New York? How do you feel like that sort of—or do you feel like, hey, after four years you should be able to kind of navigate this on your own? How do you think of, you know, sort of your graduating students and their continued vocal journey from 23 to 27 or whatever in those next couple years?

[19:32] Matt Edwards: So another one of the things that I try to do with them in the spring semester is really give them tools for how to take care of a lot of their own vocal issues. So the idea is that when you introduce the full range of motion, so can they sing with their soft palate high? Can they sing with their soft palate low? How does their soft palate move in between? If they get feedback that their voice is sounding a little bit nasal, then they know that the process of correcting that is to swing the pendulum to the opposite side of the spectrum. So it'll be going really hooty, getting that soft palate to lift up, exercise there until the motor system starts to pick up on that movement pattern and then try to neutralize it back into the middle somewhere where it's no longer nasal but it's not super hooty.

So through these exercises that we give them, they have a lot of tools available for self-correction. And so I would say that a lot of students leave here and they don't do regular voice lessons; they're able to manage themselves. We've got one who was one of the leads in one of the big Broadway tours, and she hasn't had another voice teacher since she left here. She's been out of school now for eight, nine years; she's really been able to manage herself. We have other students who really like having those ongoing voice lessons, and I am totally for that. I think it's up to each individual person what they need for their individual instrument.

[20:50] Matt Edwards: And so, yeah, I know a lot of the New York voice teachers through different conferences I go to, through our network, and I have a handful of teachers that I recommend that I know will be similar to what they were studying here. I don't mind if they want to study something completely different; it just sometimes can get confusing for them. So I like to try to start them off by suggesting, hey, these people are going to be kind of the same mindset as we were in the training, so it shouldn't feel like you're starting over from scratch but rather you're just continuing on with what you need.

[21:21] Matt Edwards: Yep. I have some more questions that we get later on about some of those specifics of terminology and sort of some of the CCM pedagogy and all that kind of stuff, but I also wanted to ask a little bit about your interaction with—do you interact with the actors or do you interact with anyone else in the Shenandoah? If I was an actor who wants to take a voice lesson or two, how does that work at Shenandoah?

[21:39] Matt Edwards: So unfortunately, I don't. I would love to, but we all have limits on our time. I love our acting majors; I think they're really talented, and I'd love to support them in any way that we can. We're looking right now at trying to make some academic voice lessons available to them, but most of them who want to study end up doing private lessons. So we have the largest voice pedagogy program in the United States. So voice pedagogy is the study of how to teach, and we have a master's and doctorate in that. We were the first school to have a master's degree available for non-classical singers, and we are the only school that has a doctorate that is open to all styles of singing. So no matter what it is you do, you can get a doctorate in voice pedagogy from Shenandoah.

And so those students often need sample students for their classes, and so a lot of times actors will get free lessons through those sample, you know, through those curriculum-based voice lesson courses for the grad students. And if not, then they can work out an arrangement with those students to have lessons outside of the university.

[22:39] Matt Edwards: I love it. I'd love to hear a little bit about, you know, you mentioned the 14 years that you've been there. Sort of in your time at school, how do you feel like it's changed? Like if we're going to kind of describe the path of Shenandoah from like point A, which is when you arrive, point B where we are now, and then point C where you think it's going in the future, what do you think that trajectory is like? How have you felt the sort of movement of the school as it's shifted in your time there?

[23:05] Matt Edwards: Oh, it's changed a lot. I mean, we could talk about this for a long time; I'll try to keep it concise. You know, the school was kind of built around the idea—it's the second oldest musical theater program in the country. People don't realize that, but Cincinnati was first, we were second. The curriculum was built around the Bachelor of Musical Theater, so at one point in time it had two years of music theory, two years of music history that was built into it. It also was built around classical voice training, so even when I first got here, freshmen were singing 75 foreign language repertoire their freshman year as musical theater majors.

[23:50] Matt Edwards: Wow, they were singing 75 foreign language their sophomore year, 50 their junior year, and 25 their senior year. So it was a lot. What most people don't understand is there's a science-based reason that that's problematic. Everything that we are training for as singers is skill acquisition. We are trying to coordinate the movement of specific body parts, and there are three phases of learning. There's the cognitive stage of learning where you don't even know how to do something and you have to start learning that skill. There's the motor stage of learning where you're starting to figure it out, but you still need help. And eventually, the idea is that we get you to the automatic stage of learning or automaticity.

And in that stage, your body just knows how to execute what it's supposed to do. If you train a student in classical vowels for three years with that being their primary focus, your goal should be to get them into the automatic stage. But that means that then when they go to sing musical theater, they're having to combat the automatic stage of their articulatory systems, which is set up for Italian, French, and German when they're supposed to be singing conversational English. And so we really confuse the motor system, and what we know is when you confuse the motor system that much, it slows down skill acquisition and can mess with the results that we give the students.

[25:03] Matt Edwards: So that was one of the first changes I made is that we started stripping away all the foreign language repertoire, and to the point now there is none. There is no requirement. I won't stop a student from singing it if that's their love, but it's not required because of the motor skill implications. And most musical theater professionals are not going to spend a lot of their time singing in foreign languages; that's just not going to be. If you're going to musical theater, it would be the exception, not the rule, that you're singing in a different language.

[25:30] Matt Edwards: You know, and there's schools that do both; they have the ability for students to study both, and you can do that, and some singers are really inclined to that. And that's why I think that there needs to be a school for every kind of student. We're the kind of school where if you just don't do that, you don't have a classical style voice, we have a home for you. You know, we're really interested in your unique vocal qualities that you bring to the table. When I got here, we were mainly attracting a regional crowd. We'd have about 120, 150 students audition every year for the program. That's totally changed. We now attract students from all over the nation. We always have a few international applicants in the mix. I don't know the exact numbers this year, but I know it was at least 1200 the last time I checked. I would say it's definitely over a thousand.

[26:07] Matt Edwards: Yeah, it may have been even more. So, you know, the applicant numbers have totally changed. We've changed the curriculum completely. We've stripped away the two years of music theory, of classical music theory, and taken it out because again, like I actually am a music theory nerd. When I entered the doctor program, I was the only voice doctor major who passed the theory comprehensive exams; I aced them. But having done it, I can tell you it has nothing to do with musical theater music. Yeah, it doesn't. Musical theater is based off of Black American music, jazz chords. It's based off of a whole different harmony system. I mean, yeah, it has one, three, fives, and sevens, but we're throwing in flat nines, sharp fourths, we're doing chord progressions that are different.

We use parallel fifths all over the place. And so having students sit through and learn all these rules that we break all the time in pop rock styles and musical theater styles didn't make any sense to me.

[27:32] Matt Edwards: So I advocated to get it stripped down now to a two-semester sequence where they are focusing on the skills they actually need to learn music. They don't ever get chord symbols in the back of their libretto; they just get the melody. So their number one goal needs to be able to read that melody, to sight-read it, and to sit down at a piano and be able to play it and plunk it out. Learning about Bach, Mozart, Handel, all those things, that's a great intellectual exercise, but what our students really need is a really thorough knowledge of music theater history. So they have a one-year music theater history course with Patrick Brady, who's living, walking music theater history. You know, the man has an incredible career and knows a lot of the people that are talked about in class personally. So they're getting to dive in and really learn about history that applies to them and thinking about how they can use that information to enhance their artistry.

[28:55] Matt Edwards: And you need to get used to paying attention to the other and reacting to what they do. So I was all in on that. We got a Meisner acting teacher into the program, totally changed the curriculum, and now the current setup is the students do the first three semesters of Meisner training with the acting majors. They're all in a class together, and they come out of that in an incredible place. They're really in a solid spot to then move into the next course, which is acting through song. So then they're in the acting through song courses where they study a little bit more Uta Hagen-based work, and they're learning how to apply the Meisner and the Uta Hagen to song. And then they come into acting for the camera, and they do a full one-year sequence of that.

And so I feel like that really then gets them ready to live in self-tape world. You know, we have a student who's just on Law & Order, graduated last May, and she already booked Law & Order. So it also, I think, opens up career possibilities for them to have that on-camera experience. Totally, totally. I was gonna say, just what about in those last couple years? Like, do you feel like there have been significant changes? When we last talked to Kevin, it was in 2021. It was right in the middle of sort of COVID still happening. Do you feel like there's a lot of change that's happened in the past couple years sort of reacting post-pandemic?

[30:11] Matt Edwards: Yeah, so the acting for the camera being extended to a year, it just went into effect. And so that was part of coming out of the pandemic. We now have self-taping integrated into the acting through song classes. And every once in a while, we decide to do a self-tape round for the season auditions. Sometimes Kevin will be out teaching a workshop or directing a show, and he can't get to campus in time for the audition day. So we'll do self-tapes. Sometimes we just decide as a group, hey, we haven't done a self-tape round for a while, and then let's start there. And so that way, the students do get some real experience with the reality of the business that they're going to face. I'm trying to think of other things.

Since 2021, we just continue to enhance the dance curriculum. And so we've got it now that it's just musical theater majors in the musical theater dance classes. They had some openings for dance minors from other majors, and we just felt that that wasn't ideal for our students. So now they have their own classes, but they still have the ability to take dance classes with dance majors. But we have them in class four days a week. They're getting a lot of great experience. That's been awesome. We also now have a doctorate in, or is it a, no, a certificate in performance medicine. And so we now have a physical therapist that's over in the dance area. And so if the students need physical therapy, they get it right on campus from students in our medical degree programs, which I also think is a great win for us.

[31:40] Matt Edwards: Yep. It's very cool. It's awesome. You know, as this episode is being recorded, I think we're right in the middle of, and you even emailed right to this today, say, Hey, it's crazy right now. I mean, it's this crazy time of year where everyone is making their final decisions, right? Like as we're speaking, people are making decisions in the next week or two. If a student is lucky enough to have Shenandoah as one of their options, why do you get a sense that a student ends up saying, I am going to sign on the dotted line? Yes, Shenandoah is for me. And why do you feel like if you find out, why did they end up not choosing you? Do you have a sense of like what makes them say yes and what makes them say no?

[32:08] Matt Edwards: Yeah, I think we really encourage them that once they're accepted to come visit campus. So I really discourage anybody from visiting campus before the audition. It's not going to make a difference in your audition. If you're trying to travel here, you're spending money and time to come see the campus and you don't know if you've gotten in yet or not. So we recommend waiting. If you're on live campus audition day, great. You're going to get that experience. But even if you audition live on campus, we like you to come back and spend the whole day in the life of a student. We pair you up with somebody. You get to go to an acting class, a dance class, a voice class. I give you a voice lesson or Patrick gives you a vocal coaching.

You get to go and have dinner or lunch with Kevin and sit down and get to really know him. You usually have dinner or lunch with the students over at the CAF. So you get to know what the CAF is like. And I think during that experience, the students really get a feeling if they're going to fit into the Shenandoah family, really. Do you feel like this is a home where you feel like you're going to thrive?

[33:06] Matt Edwards: We are in rural Virginia. It's a small county. That's a county of around 150,000 people. It's a smaller campus. There are 2000 undergrads. But you know, the nice thing about that is, is you don't have big city distractions. You don't have, we also don't have Greek life, you know, and fraternities and sororities. So you're not distracted by parties all the time. So when you're bored, you usually join either the playwrights group, the Shakespeare group, the improv groups, the songwriting group. I mean, we have so many groups, I can't even keep track of them. The students are constantly putting on different productions. The playwrights group puts on a new show every Thursday night at 11 o'clock at night.

So you know, you're creating with your extra time instead of wandering the city or wandering the clubs. And I think that that's really good. We do have a football team, we have a lacrosse team, soccer, basketball. So if you want to go to athletic events, you do have that opportunity available to you. So I think that students who want an intimate education, where they get to really know their faculty, they have our cell phone numbers, they can come talk to us at any time, we're on a first-name basis with all of our students, and we treat them like the young artists that they are, then I think that this is a place that they'll really thrive. And that's usually what leads them to say yes to us.

[34:25] Matt Edwards: Now, some students will come here and be like, I don't know if I want my faculty all up in my business like that. They just, you know, they want a little bit more distance. And I get that, that's fine. So maybe we're not the school for you. Because the second that I hear that you're struggling and something's going on, you're probably going to be getting a message from somebody of asking what's going on, how can we help you. Sometimes students have had their heart set on being in a big city, or had their heart set on being on a campus with 30,000 other students. And I get that, that makes a lot of sense to me that you would want that kind of a college experience. And if you do, you're right, we're not the right school for you.

Sometimes we do have students who come and they really do want to do choir, they want to do classical voice and be in the opera and do musical theater, not really the place for that. So again, you know, you might be better off at one of the other institutions that does a great job with that kind of work. But I think that if you want, you know, the, if you want to be exposed to pop rock, singer songwriters, we have a commercial music degree program. So you can go watch the student rock bands perform, do all those things. I feel like this is a really good home. And our conservatory has 600 undergrads in it. So you're also going to be surrounded by lots of other performing artists who are just as passionate about their craft as you are about yours.

[35:41] Matt Edwards: That's so cool. And, you know, it's so funny to kind of think about the positives and negatives of an intimate school. I mean, I think normally we talk about the positives of a small class personalized attention, but of course there is that thing of like, you know, if you're in a class of 80 and your class of, you know, some of these schools, the 200, 300, 400, if you count, you know, over multiple studios, there's, there is a different level of personalization. You are getting, you're saying, hey, if there's something going on with a student, you're going to know about it. There's only so many musical theater majors, you know all their names, you know what's going on in their lives. They're going to get a text. It's a different experience than you'd have if it's, you know, double or triple the size of the class.

[36:12] Matt Edwards: It is. And the nice thing is here is our faculty all genuinely like each other and we stay in touch just casually. But then as we're, you know, having normal texting conversations, you may text and say, hey, what's up with Sally? Is she not showing up for your classes? And you know, we can just easily get in touch and find out that, oh, there must be something going on that we don't realize. And then we can really get on top of it. And we have great mental health services at Shenandoah as well. So we can get students into counseling, into therapy. I'm a huge supporter of getting students the mental health help that they need. And I feel like we can really stay on top of that with the, you know, close relationships that we have with our students.

[36:48] Charlie Murphy: All right, we'll take a quick break. And the back end, we're gonna talk a little bit about the audition process. So back in a flash.

[36:54] Charlie Murphy: All right, we are back with Matt Edwards, and we're going to talk a little bit about the audition process. So because Kevin did answer a decent number of these questions, I would love to stay as we've been doing a little bit focused on the vocal aspects of things, especially when talking about the vocal aspect of the audition, even though as we're hearing, so please feel free, you are thinking and talking about other stuff. I'm just going to direct the questions or the vocal, but expand as much as you want to. But sort of in short, when you look at an audition, what are you looking for from a vocal technique perspective? Like what are you sniffing for in the voice as you're going to weigh in on going, this person feels like they might be a great fit for Shenandoah or not?

[37:20] Matt Edwards: Yeah. So we do things a little bit differently than some other schools. There are schools where you get a vocal rating, you get an acting rating, and you get a dance rating. And then they combine all those ratings together to kind of figure out how the student scores. We don't do that. We're all looking at the full package. We're looking at the dance, the acting, and the voice. Even though I can't dance to save my life, I've watched more than enough dance auditions and spent more than enough time around my dance colleagues to know what is trainable in our program and what's not. So when we start with prescreens and the video prescreen, I'm watching the monologue, I'm watching the songs, and I'm watching the dance reel and the wild card.

So I'm really taking in the whole package. Then what I'm thinking to myself is, where does the voice align with the rest of this package? Now if I have a student who's kicking their face all over the place and the dance is just stunning, you watch their monologue and it's good, and then they go to sing and there's some limited abilities in their singing, I'm balancing that limited ability with everything else that they did and going, you know, with that kind of dance, the voice is trainable. We can get them to a place where they'll be able to sing well enough to get into ensembles if they dance like that. So then in that instance, I'm looking for their pitch, their ability to stay in pitch. I don't need them to have a huge pitch range.

I just need it to be on pitch. I'm looking to see if they have some sense of musicality. It's nice where you see that there's some indication that they can do some, you know, phrasing. And when I'm talking about musical phrasing, I'm always looking for it that is in line with their acting choices. So the way that we teach musical phrasing is like, I like to use a lot of psychological gesture, which is a checkoff technique, but if in this moment you're trying to pull the other person in, then I need to hear that your voice is pulling this person in. If in this moment you're trying to throw out all of the things that you have to say to push somebody away, I need to hear that your voice is doing that.

So I'm looking for those actor-driven things in the voice. And then I'm just looking to think to myself overall in this vocal tone quality with our history of training singers and with the voice faculty I have, do I think we can get this person to a place that when I put them in front of agents in their senior year, they're going to be okay. And so a student like that, that's how I'm making the decision.

[39:49] Charlie Murphy: And what does that mean? Like as much as we can define it, I'm asking a possible question, but as much as we can define like what is a trainable voice or assuming most voices are trainable, are there sort of any red flags that you would look for you going, I actually don't know, even though we have this amazing training program here, I don't know that I will be able to train that voice. What would you hear that would make you go, that's going to be a tricky voice to work with?

[40:02] Matt Edwards: So there's things that can be so habitual that they take longer to train. And I agree with you that all voices are trainable. You can always do something, but when you watch 1200 students audition and you have to make decisions to get down to a class of 18, you start drawing lines in the sand. And I think that's been one of the hardest parts of me for this job is at my heart, I want to help people and I love helping people improve their singing. So to start drawing lines in the sand has always been hard for me to be like, well, this is my deal breaker. I would say pitchiness, I tend to shy away from because most of the time we can improve it. Sometimes we can't. I've had plenty of instances where we find out that then somebody has a hearing issue and we need a lot of medical intervention to help them get to that spot where they're going to have better pitch accuracy.

And I'll take them on that journey happily and help them along the way. But if they're pitchy and then I've got 20 other people who are at the same level who aren't pitchy, I'm probably just going to drift towards the other 19. If I feel like they're a shouter and they're just pushing and pushing and pushing, sometimes that's really hard to break that habit. I think in part because students are deceived by cast recordings. I don't think they realize that the microphone is right now, what, five inches away from my mouth. This is also how close they're recording these Broadway cast recordings. Then they use all kinds of effects like compression, which makes every, squeezes the dynamic range of the singers, which makes it pop and feel like it's right in front of your face.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, jump onto YouTube and look up Broadway singers on and off mic. It's a video I put together where you're going to hear people in like a rehearsal room followed by their cast recording. You'll hear what I mean. I'm not saying they're not talented off mic. They're super talented, but their voices aren't as loud as you think they are. And so if a student has this, you know, is struggling with some vocal dysmorphia and feeling like they're not loud enough and they have to push and push and push to get a sound that can be really hard to break them out of that habit. And so I tend to shy away from that a little bit thinking, I don't know if we're going to be able to get this person to lighten up in the way that we need them to or not.

And then if I do feel like it's just a, just an even sound that has no levels that is not connected to their actor at all. That's the thing that's going to start to lean me towards maybe no, because I feel like I, it can be again, hard and take a lot of time to get them to.

[42:37] Charlie Murphy: Welcome back to Mapping The College Audition. Today, we’re diving deeper into our conversation with Matt Edwards from Shenandoah University.

[43:07] Charlie Murphy: Matt, let’s talk about vocal pedagogy. How do you approach teaching voice to your students?

[43:37] Matt Edwards: Vocal pedagogy is about understanding the voice as an instrument. I focus on helping students find their unique sound while also teaching them the technical aspects of singing. It’s essential to create a safe environment where they can explore their voices without fear of judgment.

[44:07] Charlie Murphy: That’s so important. How do you help students build their repertoire based on their vision boards?

[44:37] Matt Edwards: I encourage students to create vision boards that reflect their goals and aspirations. From there, we select songs that resonate with them personally and align with their artistic vision. This process not only helps them choose the right material but also fosters a deeper connection to their performances.

[45:07] Charlie Murphy: I love that approach. Can you explain what you mean by holistic evaluation during the audition process?

[45:37] Matt Edwards: Holistic evaluation means looking at the whole person, not just their vocal ability. We consider their emotional connection to the material, their stage presence, and how they interact with the audition panel. It’s about assessing their potential as a performer, not just their technical skills.

[46:07] Charlie Murphy: That makes so much sense. Do you think students need to be vocal chameleons, able to adapt their voices to different styles?

[46:37] Matt Edwards: While versatility is beneficial, I believe it’s more important for students to develop their authentic voice first. Once they have a strong foundation, they can explore different styles and techniques. It’s about finding balance—being true to oneself while also being adaptable.

[47:07] Charlie Murphy: Absolutely. What advice would you give to students preparing for their college auditions?

[47:14] Matt Edwards: My advice is to focus on authenticity. Choose material that speaks to you and showcases your strengths. Practice consistently, but also allow yourself to be vulnerable during the audition. Remember, it’s not just about impressing the panel; it’s about sharing your unique story.

[47:20] Charlie Murphy: Great advice, Matt. Thank you for sharing your insights today.

[47:26] Matt Edwards: Thank you for having me, Charlie. It’s been a pleasure.

[47:31] Charlie Murphy: And thank you to our listeners for tuning in. If you have any questions about the college audition process, feel free to reach out to us at mailbag@mappingthecollegeaudition.com.

[47:37] Charlie Murphy: Don’t forget to check out Shenandoah University and follow Matt on social media for more tips and insights.

[47:43] Matt Edwards: Yes, you can find me on TikTok and Instagram @edwards_voice.

[47:47] Charlie Murphy: Until next time, keep pursuing your passion for the arts!

[47:52] Matt Edwards: Bye everyone!

[47:57] Charlie Murphy: Bye!

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[57:20] Matt Edwards: I think of just continuing to question for yourself, why am I doing this? What is important to me? What kind of art do I like to consume? What kind of art do I like to create? Do my choices in everything I do communicate that to somebody else?

[57:36] Charlie Murphy: That's fantastic advice. All right, one more break, and then we're going to go even a little deeper dive on some vocal pedagogy stuff. So back in a flash. All right, we are back with Matt Edwards. That was really exciting. We got to do our normal sort of first two chunks, but now we have a nice long chunk I want to do a little bit getting into the CCM vocal pedagogy, which by the way, you said this, but it's Contemporary Commercial Music. It's not CCM as in the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music acronym, right?

[58:02] Matt Edwards: Yes, I didn't coin the acronym, and we are all aware that that's, yeah, it could be. Is it CCM or Shenandoah? What is it? I'm also confused with a hockey equipment manufacturer, so. Unbelievable. And Contemporary Christian Music, so. It's very, people mix up with MCA and TA, the MTC. It's all very hard to do all these letters.

[58:27] Charlie Murphy: But I just want to talk a little bit. So now CCM, in terms of your vocal pedagogy program, is now being taught at other places. So this is, I mean, you've been quoted on this podcast where people have gone, we bring in CCM vocal pedagogy, meaning people from this training sort of that you are fostering. Is that something, do you feel like you are tracking out in the world, like your teachers and what that pedagogy is? I guess, is there a definable pedagogy that you go, this is our methodology or this is, you know, in terms of like, you know, there are places out there that we teach one voice, we teach this kind of thing. Like, is it definable in that same kind of way?

[59:02] Matt Edwards: Somewhat. I mean, it's most closely associated with evidence-based voice pedagogy or science-based or science-informed. And the whole idea is that we're taking all the research that's being produced by speech-language pathologists, laryngologists, voice scientists, and we're building training techniques off that. Even now, neuroscientists, because we're really getting more and more information about skill acquisition and how the brain works. And so we're using that information to create, you know, exercises, techniques that align with the students' goals. So at the CCM Institute, which is the summer program I run to teach all these teachers this approach, we say that we're talking about teaching at the intersection of identity, technique, and artistry.

The artist has to think about who they are, what they want to say, what they want to do. We have to consider their cultural ethnic identity and figure out how those life experiences have informed them as a human being. And we want to preserve those things that are important to them, right? If you come from the South where you have somewhat of a Southern draw, a Southern accent, but that's a huge part of who you are, we need to be careful about training that completely out of everything that you do because then we're stripping away part of what makes you you. So we want to consider those things and have those conversations and ask the singer that we're working with, what do you want? What do you want to sound like? Where are you trying to go? When we understand where they want to go, then we can craft exercises that help them move in that direction.

[1:00:33] Matt Edwards: And those exercises are all based off of motor learning theory, what we know about skill acquisition and those cognitive motor learning and automatic stages. And it helps us then really start building a customized exercise routine to help them explore their full range of motion and develop the coordination across that range of motion. Then once you have the technique starting to get into that automatic stage, it makes it easier and easier for them to be an artist. And then we're drawing from their identity and how they see the world to combine that with what they want to say in any given piece that they're working on with a technique that is in that automatic phase and can respond vocally to the intent of the actor.

So that's kind of like the core message of what we do. Then our idea is that there's lots of techniques that can work. You could tell somebody, we have indirect, tactile and assertive ways of doing anything. If you have somebody with tongue tension, you could say make your tongue feel like it's jello. That's an indirect way of getting somebody to loosen up their tongue. For some people, that might be enough. But for somebody else, they're going to go, yeah, I don't understand that. So in that case, then we might be like, here's an image of the tongue. We'll show them an MRI of the tongue in action. We'll show them some other animations of how the tongue moves into an e-vowel or an a-vowel or an ah-vowel.

We'll have them look in the mirror and get to see how their tongue moves. And then we'll use a tactic like putting a straw underneath of their tongue to make sure that their tongue isn't retracting when they sing to help them break that retraction setting that's in the automatic stage in their mind. And then if that's really not working, we might get real assertive and stick some thumbs underneath this tongue, start to try to massage it out and give them a real feeling, a real awareness and sense of when that tongue is doing the retracting action and start giving them cues to help it release. And then eventually our goal is to work them back towards more indirect ways. And then the ultimate goal with musical theater is to get them into actor-driven ways.

So for instance, we might think about, we can have open mouth resonance, so more megaphone where we're open in the front, narrow in the back, or we can have reverse megaphone, which is more closed vowel resonance where it's narrow at the lips, but opens up in the back of the pharynx. Those things though, I like to associate with acting energies. So there's this idea of first circle energy and third circle energy, right? So drawing an energy inward to contemplate or say whatever it is that you need to say, or I'm sending my energy out into the world. Well, if I'm drawing energy in, I'm probably in a closed vowel position. And if I'm sending energy out, I'm probably in an open vowel position, right?

So we're then making sure that all of these vocal ideas connect to what you would do as an actor. If you're pushing somebody away, you probably got a lot of vocal fold closure and some significant chest register involvement in your mix. If you're pulling in somebody and you're pushing, you know, 80% chest at them, they're probably not going to want to come too much closer. So if we're trying to pull somebody in, we need to start getting air running through those vocal folds that envelops the person and wants to draw them in. So we're always thinking, how do I align this technical idea with an actor-driven purpose so that they're not stuck in their head when they're out there trying to perform their song?

[1:03:50] Charlie Murphy: It's so cool. Well, and you know, I myself am not a vocal pedagogy nerd, though. I feel like I have so many friends and colleagues who are that I'm, I kind of catch the ancillary voice nerd world stuff. It seems to me from that perspective that like, there's like lots of new stuff a lot of the time. Is that true? Do you feel like it's like constantly every couple of years, like we're really learning more about the voice? Like, what is new? Since you've been doing this, you know, in the past 14 years, at least, like, are there a lot of significant breakthroughs in the way that we think about and teach voice?

[1:04:13] Matt Edwards: Yeah, I think so. I mean, for a while, we really thought that it was possible to bulk up the vocal folds over time with training. This goes back, I think it was in the 80s, that it was written about in a textbook by one of the world-renowned voice scientists, that we thought that with voice training, the thyroarytenoid muscle that runs through the vocal folds might actually be bulking up. Like lifting, whether it be like pushing weight to get it thicker and heavier, like that was the idea. So that we were using a lot of information from exercise physiology principles about like the overload principle, which is you need to overload on a muscle to get growth. The reversibility principle, if you are not constantly working out that muscle, we're going to see a decrease in, you know, function of that muscle.

And we had a lot of those thoughts operating in our vocal training. But Dr. Aaron Johnson, who's a speech-language pathologist and researcher at NYU Langone, has done a lot of work vocalizing rats, as funny as it sounds, but vocalizing rats to see if their thyroarytenoid muscle changes, and it doesn't. He also got a grant to work with some Parkinson's patients with the hope that maybe vocal training might help strengthen some of their vocal muscles and help them not lose their ability to talk as quickly. And unfortunately, he didn't find the results that he was looking for, and we're all starting to lean more and more towards going, you know, we may not actually have muscular changes like bulking happening up at the thyroarytenoid level.

We're starting to increasingly get more and more information from the neuroscience world that's suggesting that the growth is actually probably happening in the brain and the neurological connections and the way that the nervous system communicates with the different parts of the body. So when we're training chest voice, we're not necessarily strengthening chest voice, we're actually coordinating chest voice. You're coordinating the closure of the vocal folds to give you chest register. Then when we talk about strengthening it, we're strengthening that neurological connection so that we have more and more muscle, or we have more and more, you know, fibers, neurological nerve endings going into these muscles and helping speed up the action at which that muscle can close and bring those vocal folds together.

And so there's some theories leaning in that direction, which would really suggest that all of these motor learning principles are really really important for the skill acquisition part of learning how to sing. There's been a lot of research done surrounding SOVTs, which are those semi-included vocal tract exercises, and looking at how popularity of people using straws and such things shot up in the time of me doing this, yeah.

[1:06:46] Charlie Murphy: Yeah, it has. And Dr. Ingo Tietze at the National Center for Voice and Speech, he's a friend of mine, he has really pioneered this research and brought it mainstream. And they, him and Karen Tietze Cox, his daughter, they worked together out there, just published a book all about straw phonation. And we're starting to realize that when you make vowel changes, you change the way that air flows through the vocal tract, and then the air goes backwards in the vocal tract too, coming into the closing phases of the vocal folds and changing the way that they close. So while we do talk about intensity, register, and vowel quality of being these independent things, the truth is they are coupled together when we're singing. So we can separate them out for certain training things in the skill acquisition phase, but eventually they do all have to work together.

[1:07:34] Matt Edwards: Yep, totally makes sense. Well, and you've mentioned a couple of these kind of terms, you know, I think a lot of voice teachers I know will sometimes feel very strongly about like, well, I wouldn't call it a belt, it's more of a calling sound, it's a mixy, chesty, you know, yodel, or whatever other things they'll say. Like, how do you feel about sort of different voice teachers using different terms and how that does or doesn't affect the singer?

[1:08:02] Matt Edwards: So I've sat in many conference rooms as we have had discussions about trying to, you know, codify a language, and it goes nowhere, and it is never going anywhere. We are never going to all agree on this. What I think is most important is that you can make a wide range of sounds with your voice that you can make sense of those sounds and connect them to your actor. So whatever you want to call, hey, if you call it calling, shouting, chest dominant mix, you know, mode one, whatever you want to call it, metal, curve, whatever you want to do it, creak, fine, call it whatever makes sense for you and the clients that you're working with. But at the end of the day, can they make sounds other than that sound?

Because if they can't, then we have a problem. Because when you can only make one sound, you are limited to the range of human feelings, emotions, whatever you want to talk about it as an actor point of view, you are limited to a very narrow range, right? So to me, if, you know, I have students a lot of times that say that their belt feels like a head voice, but people tell them it's a belt. So I always tell them, then keep that to yourself. Don't ever, don't share your nice little secret there. You have it easy. You can do eight shows a week in your head voice while they think you're belting. So rock on with it. Go for it. You know, there's other people that are really confused, but I call this chest mix, but somebody else told me it's a chest belt.

What do I do with that? Well, if it's getting you callbacks and people like it, just keep doing it and call it whatever they want you to call it. You know, when you're working together, develop a terminology that you can work together with and then adopt your own terminology to make sense of your own voice.

[1:09:34] Charlie Murphy: Well, and you mentioned, you know, at CCM, the sort of integration of, I think you said identity. It was identity. What was it? Identity technique and artistry.

[1:09:39] Matt Edwards: Artistry. Identity technique and artistry. So, you know, we talk about some of these terms, you know, especially with our new understanding or evolving understanding of kind of like, of gender. And I don't really mean to engage in like a, what is a gender kind of session in general, but just in terms of when you're talking about vocal quality or vocal clarity, maybe I'm really saying, I do think sometimes teachers I encounter that are trying to be as inclusive as possible, sometimes end up almost like muddling their clarity in what they actually mean when they're referring to different kinds of voices. How do you talk about different sounds and different voices in ways that like where you would normally use traditionally gendered word?

[1:10:12] Matt Edwards: Well, I mean, I, so ever since I've been a part of teaching this method, I've been teaching this science informed approach for about 15 years. And from the beginning, we talk about that the voice is a gender neutral instrument. Really what matters is pitch range, right? That every, no matter what you were assigned, what gender you were assigned at birth, your voice breaks at the E to F above middle C. And that's the point at which, so when you are going up higher in pitch, the vocal fold is elongating up to around that EF. We believe that the thyroarytenoid muscle, which is like the bicep, is really counterbalancing the action of what's called the cricothyroid muscle.

[1:11:02] Matt Edwards: Try to get back into lifting here. But, so it's kind of counterbalancing that. But then as we start to go across the break, that thyroarytenoid muscle is starting to let go and the resistance is starting to switch over to the vocal ligament. And that's the break, is the handoff from the thyroarytenoid muscle resisting the lengthening of the vocal fold and the vocal ligament taking over that resistance. So, with anybody of any gender identity, you are trying to learn how to control the way that we make that transition around those breaking points. Then we have these acoustic registers, which is where certain vowels are producing certain frequencies that start to get out of the range of possibility.

Like from this high G, what's G5 and above, it gets really hard to sing anything other than an ah. So regardless of your gender identity, you are going to be modifying towards an ah once you get into that pitch range. So I think about it more as in terms of what you're doing as a tenor or a baritone or a bass or a mezzo, an alto, contralto, soprano, whatever you're doing. There's even debate around using those words. I was at a conference where we talked about not using terms like soprano, alto, tenor, baritone, and I went on a podcast and used a sign female at birth, a sign male at birth, and I got an email from a transgender singer who said, please just use soprano, alto, tenor, baritone, and bass.

So we have to all understand that we are in a phase in the training right now where there is not universal agreement of what terminology is acceptable or not. What I do know is there's a tenor saxophone, an alto saxophone, a baritone saxophone, and all of those saxophone terms are really related to the pitch range and the pitch range is what we need to consider. So I'm always really thinking more about are we making this vowel brighter or rounder or warmer in this pitch range? Are we bringing in more closure, less closure, more airflow, less airflow? What are we doing? And I think that then we're just really dealing with the human being that's in front of us, because regardless of your gender identity there for years and years and years were countertenors who identified as male, but they sang a soprano. Yeah. Right. So, you know, this isn't people seeing different ranges regardless of their gender identity. So you have to work with the human that's in front of you.

[1:13:23] Charlie Murphy: Yeah. Let's talk a little bit of vocal style. So, I mean, you mentioned your sort of classical training. You know, I know it's something you really have an expertise in and, of course, an intrusive study. What do you see as those kind of distinctions of style from a vocal perspective?

[1:13:36] Matt Edwards: So I've asked this question to a number of different artists who I think really understand themselves singing a different style. And they often kind of have trouble answering, like, what am I doing differently when I'm singing? You know, that when I'm singing Nirvana versus when I'm singing more legit, you know, they're like, it just sounds different. What is the singer doing? Or what are you teaching someone to sing differently when it's a pop song versus a poppy musical theater song versus a more legit kind of voice? Like, what is being done differently by the singer? All right. So in the Golden Age, we really work on a lot of, if we're doing a traditional Golden Age kind of approach, we're really working on unifying the vocal registers across a wide pitch range.

You want the low note to have very similar buzzy qualities as the high note. And you want them to sound like they're closely related. When you're working on a pop song, let's say, like, we're singing in All of Me by John Legend, you have the beginning part, which has more firm closure or more chest on the resonance. Feel free to give us a little bit of it if you want.

[1:14:39] Charlie Murphy: I'm not going to sing another little karaoke version here. You're going to be singing after teaching all day.

[1:14:44] Matt Edwards: But when he's doing like, OK, so like, what would I do without your smart mouth? You're just kind of staying in that nice closure place. But when he's doing all of me, you're starting to go into that falsetto, into that lighter head voice. And then you got to transition back down into a lighter mix. So there is no trying to unify the registers for that song. You actually need the registers to break apart. So when you're training a singer for pop rock styles, you're training them to really have control of what register they are in so they are able to make conscious decisions based off of the style of that song. The way that we get into that register at the vocal fold level is called an onset.

And the way that we release out of that is called a release. And we have different kinds of onsets and releases. The most traditional one for Golden Age and classical singing is a clean onset release, where we bring the vocal folds together at the same time as we start to release air from the vocal folds. So, ah, is a clean onset, clean release. We rarely see that inside of pop rock styles because it really kind of messes things up. If I come in and sing, we both lie silently still in the dead of the night. It doesn't sound right at all. OK. So instead, we might move things in like aspirate onsets and releases where we're going to release air at the beginning. So getting a, ah, kind of a feeling.

So an on an aspirate onset of, ah. And a release where it just fades away. So then we get, ah, we both lie silently still in the dead of the night. Changing it up. We could add creak in there, a little bit of vocal fry, that, ah, kind of a quality. We both lie silently still in the dead of the night. And what I think about using that is, is I'm struggling to say what I need to say. So my vocal folds don't have the strength to come together because we know in normal human interactions, when somebody is in a, you know, a torn up place of a heartbreak after a relationship, they're probably not going to walk in and sing with clean vocal fold closure. That's not how life works. Right. When somebody gets into a heightened state of anger, they're just amped up like we hear in punk music.

We start hearing these glottal onsets. So we hear like twenty, twenty, twenty four hours to go. And you hear that, uh, uh, uh, uh, that's a glottal onset release. So we want to train those into things. Then we start to look at the way that people use language. Right. So in a golden age ballad, we might have more even phrase waiting where the vocal tone needs to carry. So we get if I loved you, where each word is weighted equally. But if we do, there was something in a desert. There was someplace wild and green. It's too even. I'm losing something. I need to let the words have certain weights and let the onsets and releases change. There was something in a desert. There was someplace wild and green.

We want the voice to change and play. Yeah. And so it's training the singers to have that much freedom and flexibility. And then it's also looking at use of rhythm, because in traditional like more golden age thing, we're singing along with the cellos and cellos do these long bowing movements where they're bringing the bow across the string. So we have long legato lines. But in rock and roll, you have a pick hitting those guitar strings in a rhythmic fashion. And so the voice needs to lock vertically with the instruments underneath to have a rhythmic drive. Whereas in the golden age, we're thinking more of a long line. That's more of like a cello might play.

[1:18:15] Charlie Murphy: And how much of like this do you feel like? Obviously, maybe not all of your students could do what you just did. But how much of your students feel like they'll have that both automatic, as you mentioned, understanding of it, but also that like literal intellectual understanding of it? Like, do you feel like many of your students could graduate and be like, I know what I'm doing and clearly define all of those different terms and those different styles that I'm singing in?

[1:18:36] Matt Edwards: We talk about it all the time to make them just have an understanding of the language, because I want them to be as self-sufficient as possible. I feel like they do it really well. You know, not every. So one of the things I think that makes us unique at Shenandoah is we don't insist that everybody does everything well. If you are like, look, I don't do golden age, then fine. You don't do golden age. You're a pop rock person. That's fine. And we're not going to beat you over the head. There's a lot of pop rock out there in the musical theater world. Yeah. And I would rather you be amazing at pop rock and never be able to do a golden age musical than you to be mediocre at both. Be minus everything.

Right. Then we have vocal chameleons who can kind of do it all and the vocal chameleons who can do it all really grab on to all of these understandings of how their voice works. They have that coordination to move in between all of these different vocal modes, and they understand how to do all these onsets releases. They learn about them in their freshman year. They learn about them again in their senior year. They're covering them in their voice lessons. So I feel like after four years of hearing this terminology, they really do understand it and some of the feedback. What I love at Shenandoah is for showcase. We not only do a virtual showcase and a New York showcase, but we bring about 15 to 20 casting directors and agents onto campus each year.

And I can sit in there in the workshop and watch what's going on. And we just had a really high level casting director on campus. What was it? Wednesday. And he was watching the students jump in between things and just kept remarking how well they did it. And he was shocked how easily they can move between styles. So I do think it is a skill set that's trainable at the undergraduate age. And I do feel like we have a lot of people who leave and can do it if that's what they want. If they want to be a vocal chameleon, they can learn to do it.

[1:20:16] Charlie Murphy: That's so cool. OK, I'm going to wrap up with a little bit of your blog, because it's one of the things that made me go, oh, I got to have Matt on this thing, because I read your sort of summary of the past audition year. And I've read your blog before, but I went, oh, God, I really want to talk to Matt on this. So I love just kind of hear about like something you've been working on for a while. This has been out there a while, the sort of the blog when the blogging days existed, more popular. It gets seems like it started. What is the kind of feedback that you get from people who read or, you know, when you hear people who go, I really appreciated this or this was helpful? You know, do people point out specific bullet points or do you get pushback on stuff? What is your experience of sort of people interacting back with your blog when you get that?

[1:21:01] Matt Edwards: Well, I mean, you know, 14 years ago, I think it was when I first started doing some of this stuff. There was a lot of pushback because people were really resistant to this idea that not all singers needed classical training. You know, it's interesting. One of the things my wife, a friend of ours, Alison Crockett, and I just finished writing a book chapter for an upcoming book through Oxford University Press, where we start delving into why this bias existed. And it's a lot of classism and elitism that was existing in Europe over in Victorian England as things were changing that made everybody want to refine everybody's voice. Voice pedagogy was actually called voice culture originally. And the idea with voice culture is, is that you would train somebody to sound more cultured.

Once that was brought over to the United States, racism creeped into it. And I've got plenty of historical writings where people were, you know, specifically going after African-Americans in their style of singing and saying that was damaging and bad and horrible and terrible. And they had no scientific proof. And when you read the language they used, it was actually very clear this was all about racism. So when I started first, like trying to get some of these ideas out there that, you know, no, this is not classical, is not the root of everything that you can teach people how to do these styles. I got a lot of pushback and I got some angry emails, angry, lots of things. I still get them every once in a while.

And I'm OK with that, because you got to speak truth in life. You got to be truthful and honest about what things are. But I feel like through that blog and through a lot of my other writings, my book and other things, people have started to really absorb the information and grapple with their own indoctrination, because our American music education system has operated on indoctrination ever since it was formed. And basically you have a system of acculturation where the people who run the institutions tell you, if you want to get a degree from us, this is what you're going to learn to do. Then they turn out people with degrees in their own style and then hire them back in to tell everybody else to give up their cultural identity and adopt theirs.

Yeah. So I've seen a lot of teachers since I started writing in all of the different ways that I write start to really challenge their own indoctrination process and start to think outside of the box. And so now I see a lot more people going, Yeah, I agree. We should be doing more of that. And that's been really exciting for me is to see the mindset shift. I mean, I think you're going to see now that there's a whole lot more musical theater schools that have the students mainly singing and musical theater rep.

[1:23:25] Charlie Murphy: Oh, for sure. That was not the case. That's across the board in terms of also, you know, we're seeing that with stuff like voice and speech, you know, with dialect, you know, sort of standard American dialect was like, I mean, that's I'm not I didn't go to school that long ago and we were taught the standard American. We were taught this is an option. You can we're not to train out of your voice and other things. But now I think that is now going to be unpopular pretty soon that anyone is is teaching any kind of sort of standard American dialect. You know, in the voice and speech world, too. There's just some there's so many ways in which that that's existing. Do you feel like is there like a bullet point that people found particularly helpful?

[1:24:04] Matt Edwards: I mean, one of the things I really appreciated, you know, I appreciate this in a lot of the ways you talk about do's and don'ts and and give some of your advice, but you do really give a lot of specifics. Like I pulled out a you wrote like a lot of bakers. There's a lot of people who baked for their wild cards or some of that kind of real specific stuff. And of course, you know, we realize this is a snapshot. So next year, maybe there won't be a lot of bakers. There'll be a lot of jugglers or whatever it is. But, you know, do you get that kind of stuff, too, where people go? I really appreciated this. And for anyone who has read it, I recommend it's a great, you know, check out sort of Matt's advice on the this college edition year.

And you'll see other sort of do's and don'ts in the audition world. But do you get that kind of like, hey, this was really helpful or or anything to get a lot of questions? Because I do think there's sometimes a bravery of like any time you put out there, I think this, you know, it's very easy for someone to go, but what about this? But but don't you see this angle of it, too? And you go, yeah, of course, that's that's true, too. You know, as you're trying to summarize this. But what about those kind of reactions? Are you getting that positive feedback, too?

[1:25:01] Matt Edwards: Yeah, I get a lot of positive feedback. I think people appreciate that. I'm being honest about what I saw. It's not like, look, I love baking. My wife's a baker and I love eating everything that she bakes. But I just want to be honest. Yeah, I just want to be honest with the next gen, the next year's kids auditioning, that if you're sitting there thinking about what I should do, you should know that a bunch of people did that because maybe there's something else that's even more unique.

[1:25:45] Matt Edwards: Sharing of your own viewpoints that we can get other people doing the same and I try to be very honest and say like look at this through my lens of the kind of students that we're attracting to our program that we're looking for that we built for other programs are going to have other ideas and I hope they share what their ideas are as well so that way students can really go. Okay, so I'm not auditioning for Shenandoah that program so maybe that advice doesn't work. These other schools might really like that or wow I think that I'm not auditioning in Shenandoah, but I'm auditioning at these schools that will like that information and so I'm gonna stick with that. I don't care if they come to us or not at the end of the day I care that they get into the place that's right for them.

[1:26:25] Charlie Murphy: Yep. So well said. All right. Well, let's wrap my last question just to talk a little bit to the parents in this process. So you mentioned you have young kids yourself. I imagine you must interact at least somewhat with the parents of your prospective students and you know this is a really hard process on them and some of them navigate it beautifully some of them struggle with it. Do you have any sort of advice to the parents of young students who maybe their parents of juniors just starting out if they're seniors? Who are just making their final decisions? But just sort of as they're going through this process what you would advise from what you've seen of what's worked with parents in there and their kids.

[1:27:00] Matt Edwards: Yeah, there's so many things we could say here. Um get ready for a roller coaster of emotions it's gonna be all over the place and really try to take in what your students are saying listen to them support them and embrace therapy. Like I cannot emphasize that enough I get soon for the parents embrace their own third or either their own but for their kids embrace therapy for your kids. I have a one of my kids is in therapy and it has served them so well in learning how to regulate their emotions and our relationship is so much better as parents and kids because of it and so I think that if your child is really struggling with emotions, they're dealing with depression. They're dealing with anxiety therapy has changed a lot and right now it's really good and there are so many tools that they can help kids understand cognitive distortions and how those cognitive distortions are getting in the way.

They can start to learn about anxiety and the Tigers in the windows that we misinterpret, right? Our brain is programmed to see a tiger once and then be fearful of it so we don't get killed but sometimes our brain misinterprets one bad audition as a tiger and then every audition situation becomes a tiger and it's not a tiger. It's a sweet little cuddly cat and you'd have to like reframe that in your brain so like embracing therapy for your kids as a way to manage this because if they don't learn how to handle this now they're gonna struggle for the rest of their lives. They've got to learn to handle rejection because it's sadly a huge part of this even for the most successful artists that there are people working on Broadway.

[1:28:30] I think that stepping back a little bit and refusing to do everything for your student and if it starts to fall apart using that as an educational opportunity of going so how serious are you about this? Your book isn't together. Your audition is coming up soon. I'm not doing your book for you. If you're serious about this, it's time to get your book together and then if the student starts going, I don't know if I want to do this they're better off figuring that out now than figuring it out after four years. And then the final thing I would say is to remember a bachelor's degree is the entry key to many professions and so I've seen plenty of students graduate from Shenandoah and end up doing other things for all kinds of reasons, right?

They decide that they really do want to have kids and they don't want to wait so they go and start a family and then they're like, well, I don't want to perform and have a family so I'll be a lawyer and they go to law school and they're successful and they're still able to go down this path. They're going to be a different lawyer because they studied the human experience as an actor and that knowledge of the human experience is going to help them relate better with their clients with judges with anybody they work through in their profession. So a musical theater degree is not doing your kid to a life of waiting tables. It is an entry level for other professional degrees and the master's degree is becoming the new bachelor's degree.

So, you know them getting a degree in this even if it doesn't lead to Broadway is not the end of the world they're going to learn a lot of transferable skills and we have so many young people stuck in their devices who do not know how to interact with adults and one of the best things they're going to leave this BFA or BM or BA with is a knowledge of how to interact with other human beings and I think as we see the rise of AI and tech continuing to take over many sectors of the business world we are going to have more and more value in those college graduates who are great communicators and have a personality that really shines through.

[1:30:29] Charlie Murphy: Yeah, it's like about in the business world that's the number one sort of skill they're looking for a storytelling communication that that you know it's the math of it all of the stuff is like that's not that hard but the how few people are able to really be good storytellers and good communicators.

[1:30:40] Matt Edwards: Yep.

[1:30:43] Charlie Murphy: Matt this was such a joy. Where if people want to hear even more information not they haven't gotten out two episodes of great Shenandoah information but if they want more where should they be checking out more information either on you or on Shenandoah?

[1:30:52] Matt Edwards: So on Shenandoah go to su.edu slash conservatory and then you'll find the musical theater program listed in there and then you can find out information from about the program we try to keep the website pretty detailed so people can get a good understanding of us if you want to learn more about my work first of all, follow me on TikTok. It's Edwards underscore voice. I don't want it to you so I'll let you say it again, but I don't want some websites. We're talking 2024. Give me some TikTok.

[1:31:17] Charlie Murphy: No, what do you say that I get TikTok again for them?

[1:31:21] Matt Edwards: So it's Edwards underscore voice and that's also my Instagram as well but I'm most active on TikTok and check that out if you want to check out my website it's edwardsvoice.com if you want to learn more about the CCM Institute at ccminstitute.com you can learn a lot in your nine days with us. We have a lot of people who come here performers who we have Broadway performers all the time coming through here who they've got a career and they're teaching on the side some big names have come through the Institute and they come here for the nine days and then they're out there teaching and several of them their teaching careers have really taken off.

[1:32:03] Charlie Murphy: So if you have some of them, I know it.

[1:32:04] Matt Edwards: Yeah, you know.

[1:32:05] Charlie Murphy: Yeah.

[1:32:06] Matt Edwards: So if you have, you know a student who is interested in maybe one day becoming a voice teacher send them our way for the summer. It's a real nice crash course on getting them started and I really try to set it up so I give them ideas of how to then continue their own education once they leave. So we're a good launchpad to then go out and attend other conferences. I'm really a big believer in every human being is different. Everybody needs different tools so I really want people to go out and find all the tools that they can because you never know what client is going to come through your studio as a voice teacher and is going to need a different set of tools. So we really encourage people to check out Estill check out CVT check out all these other things as well.

It's not I don't see it as we're better than that. I think that we all have unique perspectives because of the clientele that we work with and so I think you can get a really nice balanced view from what we do but then it translates easily into other methods as well.

[1:32:46] Charlie Murphy: I love it. All right. Well Matt. Thanks so much for time today. This was such a joy to get to chat with you.

[1:33:00] Matt Edwards: Yeah. Thank you for having me. I've enjoyed it.

[1:33:05] Charlie Murphy: Heck yes. Yes. Yes. I really enjoyed that chat with Matt very impressive how easily he goes into the deeply technical from just being in the casual and practical so seamlessly reminiscent of some of those conversations about vocal styles and sort of versatility and I thought he gave some really great practical advice mixed in here too.

[1:33:19] And yes, yes. Yes on those transferable skills. You've heard me say that many times on the pod and boy do I think that's true, you know? I can say personally as a parent who of course would feel a level of anxiety if my child said she was gonna be a professional actor just because I did it doesn't mean I don't know what that anxiety would feel like but this would be like the number one thing that would ease my fears knowing how excellent that training is for life across the board and speaking of practical advice. I really like Matt's advice about the artist's way. You know I've asked a lot of professors that question especially when they give that answer of like the goal is to be your authentic self which again we co-sponsor.

It's good advice but I think people sometimes don't know what to do and I think that question is a kind of impossible one you know basically, how do you discover who you are and I really ask it mostly out of solidarity and empathy for the student out there who doesn't feel like they have that answer down to an easily definable thing?

[1:34:04] I feel like sometimes it's almost easier for our students who are wrestling with the like do I have the bravery to be my fullest self when they know that it's something outside of the norm because then once they find that bravery and they sort of hear the answer is yes, do it. Come on, you know, we're giving you that encouragement to sort of be your fully self your fullest self you know that it's really about a kind of liberation but some of our students are still really figuring out what it is that is more extraordinary about them and it's not really something that you can force you know, it can be tempting to kind of force it a little bit but I really recommend sitting with yourself in process and exploration and trying to figure out what is your actual special sauce and not just what you think would be like a safe and easily definable choice to say this is what I am.

[1:34:47] But there you go the artist's way certainly something a lot of professional actors engage with and there is a concrete idea to help you on that path and certainly this discussion of kind of self-discovery and exploration is a big part of what we would do with you at MTCA especially as your song and monologue coach and we're picking material and all that kind of stuff. I also really liked Matt's input on being really good at pop rock and not that into Golden Age how that might actually be okay for some while others will really try to be a vocal chameleon, you know. I do think and I think he indicates as well in the professional world those true chameleons who work in many different genres are rare though they are of course so special when you find them in court of what everyone wants to be if you can be that you know sort of the the Bo Jackson of the theater world for those who are old enough to catch that reference for those who don't know who that is.

He's like a rare bird who excelled as both a professional baseball and football player but what is interesting is you also heard Matt talking about vocal versatility as such a positive thing can you make different kinds of sounds and his own background being so expansive and how that was helpful for him.

[1:36:03] So, you know, it's kind of an interesting balance of if you're a professional basketball player how much soccer should you play or sometimes if you're getting more granular in that world they'd be like if you're a professional point guard in basketball. How much should you work on your post moves, right? We've had some of those conversations on the pod before but I think it's important to figure out where do you stand in that world? You know, I think it is possible to be too narrow and focused in a way that could potentially limit your potential but I also think it's possible to be too broad and feel like you might end up being a jack-of-all-trades and master-of-none you know when you're talking about the disciplines of musical theater that jack-of-all-trades might translate into being an amazing swing if you're a pretty good actor singer dancer, right?

[1:36:47] But if you're talking about styles it might be a bit trickier for you to get your foot in the door if you aren't a slam-dunk for any one show or any one style, you know if you kind of feel like that B plus across the board because of course you can't swing eight different shows at once now it does give you the maximum bites at the Apple which of course is nice to be able to audition for so many different things as opposed to a narrower range, but will you be able to sink your teeth into any of those apples so many metaphors? But I thought kind of an interesting perspective and an interesting conversation to have with yourself as an artist.

[1:37:20] And the last thing I wanted to hit which I'm surprised actually hasn't come up on the pod before was just the way Shenandoah scores their auditionees, you know being holistic as opposed to numerical. That's not really something, you know, you can do anything with that knowledge it's not really anything to do there, you know from the actor perspective you try to do your best in all aspects including your holistic experience of sharing your personality and the stuff that we always talk about you know, how do you show yourself in the room authentically and then your job is done? But I do think it is sometimes comforting to know that it is not always numerical and to be clear some schools that do use a numerical ranking as you've heard in the pod for some that is their entire process it is entirely about numbers for some it might be a nice starting off point and then maybe they juice the rankings a little bit with their own columns and a special exceptional score that's gonna help weight the averages and some do it exactly like Matt describes where it is much more of the vibe of the human being in the class they're putting together, of course considering talent, but not necessarily doing it from a numerical perspective.

[1:38:44] Again, that's sausage being made isn't really for you to worry about but somehow kind of losing even that objective element of score on what is already a subjective experience. I mean we talked about what is a 9 out of 10 for acting really, right? So some of that is kind of relieving for me to know, you know, I've been told before with professional auditions hey, you had the best audition of the day we just went a different direction because the cast we put it together and of course, you know who knows I'd say that to you did I said to poor people who knows right? But it is heartening to hear, you know it also really encourages the attitude that so many actors end up with which is some version of let go and let God right control the things you can control and don't stress about the things you can't yeah.

[1:39:06] I'm sure the reverse has been true in my career where I've been cast because you know I gave them a 6-4 guy they were looking for and you know I wasn't numerically the favorite of the people behind the table so to know that there's luck and subjectivity and then to focus on doing your best is a gift if you can arrive at that place though, of course easier said than done.

[1:39:19] Charlie Murphy: Well, that's it another episode of Mapping the College Audition produced by Megan Cordier and Kelly Prendergast who become even farther younger than me tomorrow and for which I am eternally jealous. Follow us at Mapping the College Audition check us out at mtca.com and leave us that sweet rating and review if you want to give me a birthday smile. Very grateful to all of you listeners and for your help in growing the podcast community within and without of our broader MTCA family for which I am also grateful to my young artists out there mapping their journeys. Congratulate those seniors in your life for their epic journey and juniors. You will be here before you know, we'll see you next week.