This week’s guest is Kim Chandler, a renowned contemporary vocal coach and session singer who teaches professional singers from her studio in Marbella. Her career as a performer has seen her provide vocals for TV and film and she often presents workshops for teachers of voice. Kim has also created the Funky’n’Fun vocal exercise series and a curriculum poster used by fellow contemporary voice teachers in their studios. Kim joins Alexa on Singing Teachers Talk all the way from sunny Spain.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Kim didn’t actually intend to be a vocalist, it was a case of being asked to do more and more singing work until she found that it was her full-time profession. Some people still only know her as their old French teacher.
- As a session singer, you need to be able to be quite gymnastic vocally. Your voice technique needs to be on form and you need stamina. Kim has had to sing for six or seven hours at a time, going from the top to the bottom of her range.
- A session singer should also be quite generic sounding. If you have a signature sound, you should be an artist. A session singer needs to blend into everything that’s happening around them and not be too distinctive.
- Having great ears is the number one thing for a session singer. That’s for tuning, harmonising, timing, and double and triple tracks.
BEST MOMENTS
‘The more you do it, the better you get, the more exposure you get’
‘I like the challenge of not knowing what I need to do next’
‘We’re like the decathletes of the singing world as session singers’
EPISODE RESOURCES
Guest Website:
Social Media:
- (Twitter) @KimChandlerVox
- (Instagram) @KimChandlerSinger
Relevant Links & Mentions:
- Michael McDonald Top of the Pops: YouTube.com/watch?v=DapM2CSVdUg
- Humidiflyer: humidiflyer.com
- Curriculum Poster: comptonpublishing.co.uk/the-chandler-curriculum-for-training-pop-s.php
- The Ultimate Vocal Voyage by Daniel Zangger Borch
- Funky Fundamentals Online Course: musicgurus.com/courses/funky-fundamentals-for-pop-singing
- Training Contemporary Commercial Singers by Elizabeth Ann Benson
- (YouTube) Breaking Down the Riffs by Natalie Weiss: YouTube.com/c/NatalieWeissOfficial
- Fun Vocal Exercises for Improvisation by John Fluker
ABOUT THE GUEST
Kim Chandler is a renowned contemporary vocal coach/session singer. She runs a busy studio in Marbella, Spain, coaching arena-level band singers, charting artists & professional vocalists. Kim also helps singers rebuild their voices after surgery & rehabilitation and has worked with HMUK for years in this capacity.
Kim has decades of high-end performing experience. Her voice is heard on TV series, films, albums, cruise ship shows, and thousands of jingles worldwide and has backed & supported many international artists. Kim has performed at some of London’s most iconic locations such as the Royal Albert Hall and Buckingham Palace.
Kim is regularly invited to lead workshops, and teacher training events and present at voice conferences. She spent more than a decade in leadership positions for the British Voice Association, as President & Director and Head of Communications, and as a Principal/Senior Lecturer at Leeds Conservatoire & London College of Music.
Her pedagogical output features in academic compendiums such as “Training Contemporary Commercial Singers” and “Teaching Singing in the 21st Century”. Kim is the creator of the popular “Funky ‘n Fun” vocal exercise series used by singers, teachers and institutions alike and a new curriculum poster for CCM teaching studios.
Link to podcast presenter’s bios
