September 20, 2024
About the Author: Stefan Joubert
In this interview, Stefan Joubert of the London Singing Institute talks with Matthew Ramsey, founder of Ramsey Voice Studio, about his journey, teaching methods, and the challenges beginners face, and many more!
Since 2012, Matthew has trained over 2,000 students worldwide across various genres.
Discover his passion for vocal coaching and exciting projects to make singing lessons more accessible to aspiring singers.
Stefan Joubert: What inspired you to start Ramsey Voice Studio, and how has the journey been since its inception in 2012?
Matthew Ramsey: I came to singing in a little bit of a strange way. I went to school for advertising even though I’d always played music I’d never been a singer. I went to college for advertising because I was convinced that it was going to be a good blend between my creative side and my business side.
After I graduated, I found a great advertising internship in San Francisco, and they brought me out there to intern with them and I just had the absolute worst four months of my life – doing something that is always going to be owned by someone else.
At the end of the four months, they decided not to hire me – which was a good move on their part. It reminded me of that Jim Carrey quote “You can also fail at things that you don’t love.” I decided instead that I was going to pursue something that I loved. And even if I failed, it would be better than doing something that I absolutely hated.
Music and songwriting had always been there for me, but I’d never really had the guts to take that shot. And so, for the first time, I started playing and singing and writing songs every day. I would go and play every coffee shop and bar that would let me play there. Around this time, I started playing in the train stations in San Francisco.
However, the problem with the train stations was they were really big in this massive, cavernous space. All of my favorite singers at the time, sang these really high notes like Thom Yorke and Jeff Buckley but I’d never actually learned how to hit high notes with any power – or really how to project my voice at all for that matter.
Typically, after about an hour of playing in the train station, my voice would be absolutely shot. That’s when I realized I’d better figure out this singing thing.
Around the same time I went and visited Austin, Texas. I met a friend there named Brett Randell who said “Oh, you want to take singing lessons? You should take a lesson with my teacher, Gene. He’s absolutely amazing!”
I started taking lessons with Gene and the rest is history. I moved to Austin very quickly. I had a voice teacher and a place to live – that was enough for me.
After about a year and a half of working together every single week, I commented on a specific vocal exercise that Gene gave me and guessed why he chose it for my voice. Gene looked up at me and said, “You just figured out what I was doing! Why don’t you start trying to teach this yourself?” With a ton of hubris, I said, “No way, I’m gonna be on tour selling platinum records. I don’t wanna have any piece of this voice teaching business.”
But for fun, I decided to start teaching a couple of my close friends and found I absolutely loved it. I have been on that road ever since growing ever deeper, getting deeper and deeper into the practice of teaching. And of course, always finding more ways of reaching students.
Stefan Joubert: As a vocal coach, what do you think are the most common challenges beginners face when learning to sing, and how do you help them overcome these obstacles?
Matthew Ramsey: The two biggest challenges that I see my students face is learning to sing on pitch and learning how to sing through the passage, or passagio.
With regards to pitch, in my experience very few singers are actually tone-deaf, meaning that they can’t hear the different notes that they’re supposed to sing.
Almost any singer that you work with has some ability to match pitch. At the same time, most beginning singers struggle with pitch to some degree.
In my experience, the best way to help them learn how to pitch is helping them find the area of the voice where they feel the most comfortable, and helping them match pitch there. Then once they’re able to do that, you’re able to expand on that comfort zone of where they can pitch.
Regarding helping vocalists sing through their vocal break, it really depends on why they’re having a hard time discovering the mixed voice. Some people back off too much and go too lightly – what we might call singing with a flip (like the sound of a young boy’s voice breaking in puberty).
Other people essentially yell a bit to hit those higher notes, they may also raise the larynx and spread the vowel – something that we might call pulling the chest voice. And in each of those cases, you want to balance those tendencies, with kind of an equal and opposite approach.
So if they’re having a hard time with pulling up their chest voice, maybe give them slightly “headier” exercises to help them access the top part of their singing voice. Or, if they’re backing off too much, maybe giving them slightly “chestier” exercises will encourage them to strengthen their attack up there.
Stefan Joubert: Your lessons emphasise Speech Level Singing (SLS). Can you explain why this technique is so effective and how it transformed your own voice?
Matthew Ramsey: Speech Level Singing is just one framework that I use in my teaching. I also use many others, including ones I’ve developed in my own 10+ years of teaching. However, SLS was an incredibly helpful framework because it really clarified what the goals are for most singers.
Most singers have a hard time singing through their passage. With Speech Level Singing, the solution is right there in the name – essentially keep all of your singing at speech level. So singing as if you were speaking.
The central tenets of SLS hold that when we speak, there’s no strain. So learning how to apply that same relaxation and lack of tension to your singing is a very beneficial thing.
Obviously there are some big differences between speaking and singing, but they both come from the same instrument. And so learning how to apply the way you work with the instrument to another is very effective.
Stefan Joubert: Many of your students are adults who may be starting singing lessons later in life. What advice do you have for those who feel they might be “too old” to learn to sing?
Matthew Ramsey: We have an idea as a society that unless you start singing lessons or unless you have a Grammy by the time you’re 20 years old – it’s too late for you. I think that singing is for everyone.
If there’s something that you’re passionate about, age shouldn’t be a factor in it. Nobody scoffs at the 60-year-old man that goes to the gym and exercises every day. But for singing, we have some definite cultural bias.
Are there certain physiological factors that change as we get older? Absolutely. But a skilled voice teacher will be able to work with a singer at different stages of life.
If it’s something that you really love just for itself, there shouldn’t be anything that holds you back. Singing is a beautiful expression of your soul.
Stefan Joubert: You’ve worked with students across nearly every genre of music. Do you adjust your teaching style depending on the genre, or is there a universal approach to teaching vocal technique?
Matthew Ramsey: I change my teaching style with the genre because every vocal style and every genre has its own requirements for how the vocals should sound.
For example, Pop and R&B are going to place much more emphasis on the vowel and emotion that you’re singing – whereas musical theatre will place more of an emphasis on the pronunciation and the consonant sounds because the intention is to communicate the text.
However, I also believe that most genres have more things in common than different and my approach to teaching good vocal technique is pretty universal.
For example, even in the journey to improve a specific genre or style, most singers need to learn how to sing on pitch, discover their chest voice and head voice, how to blend them together to create the mixed voice, how to sing with vibrato etc…
Stefan Joubert: You’ve been featured in publications like CD Baby and The Music Entrepreneur. How has your online presence helped expand your reach as a vocal coach?
Matthew Ramsey: I’ve had the good fortune to work with some brands who I respect and enjoy (my work with Shure Microphones, CD Baby, DiscMakers, MusicNotes, Focusrite, The Guitar Journal, and The Intelligent Singer Podcast come to mind).
It’s very cool to preach the gospel that vocal technique is for everyone and not just for “professional singers”.
The beauty of working with some of these brands is that people are still discovering my work all the time. Unlike in the past where a radio broadcast was heard once and never again, these articles, blogs, videos and podcasts continue to live on – waiting for more singers to discover them and learn how to sing.
Stefan Joubert: Many people are self-conscious about their voices. How do you help students overcome their insecurities and build confidence in their singing?
Matthew Ramsey: First off, in-person voice lessons are the biggest thing that you can do to help boost your vocal confidence in your singing. Because even though you may not know what the path to a better voice looks like for you, a trained voice teacher will.
Another thing you can do is listen to yourself singing a lot. Now, this can be very challenging because we don’t really identify the sound that we hear on recordings and in performances with our own singing voice – because we hear our voices so differently. I call this the “snake venom technique” because you have to take a little bit of that venom (hearing yourself sing) every day to build your tolerance.
Finally, start small when performing. Many singers make the mistake of waiting until they’re going to perform to a large crowd of people (such as karaoke) to seek vocal help. But instead, start by singing around people who care about you and can be trusted for constructive criticism. A voice teacher can be a fantastic resource to start with because they’re essentially a constructive audience of one.
Over a longer term, confidence in your singing ability comes from the combination of all these different approaches – especially singing technique and positive performance experiences.
Stefan Joubert: You provide free resources like videos with singing exercises. How important do you think accessibility is in the modern music education landscape, and what role does YouTube play in that?
Matthew Ramsey: YouTube and other sources of educational information have grown the number of people doing vocal training. There are more people who are interested in singing as a result of the abundance of information that’s accessible to people.
However, there’s also a lot of nonsensical and counterproductive singing advice out there. Even great singing advice can be received poorly if the student doesn’t understand.
Something like singing is especially challenging to know whether you’re doing the thing that’s being asked of you when all the communication is one-way.
This is why many of my premium singing courses involve some level of personalized feedback to know whether you’re on the right track or not.
YouTube is a great place to get started, but don’t want to get stuck there because it’s very easy to get confused and get stuck thinking that you’re not meant to be a singer.
Stefan Joubert: You’ve helped students from around the world through your online tutorials. Do you have any success stories that stand out, particularly from students who were initially struggling?
Matthew Ramsey: One of the students that rings a bell is Erik Drake. Erik had never had any sort of vocal training whatsoever. However, he came to a turning point in his life where he decided to overcome stage fright and begin doing vocal training.
He found one of my singing courses Master Your Voice, which in addition to being a video course, also features personalized feedback from me based on student recordings. After a few lessons, he auditioned for a musical theatre show and was shocked to be cast.
Since then, Erik has performed in several shows, appeared in the music industry news source Broadway World and even appeared in a TV pilot.
These are the types of stories that keep me so dedicated to teaching good vocal technique to as many students as possible.
Stefan Joubert: Looking ahead, what are your future plans for Ramsey Voice Studio, and what do you hope to achieve in the next 5-10 years with your vocal coaching career?
Matthew Ramsey: I’m in the final stages of publishing a book about vocal technique called Master Your Voice: A Journey To Discover Your True Singing Voice. It’s been a year and a half in the making, and so I’m very excited to have that out.
More than that, we’re also publishing a lot more fantastic tools to help singers around the world such as a Rangefinder App, a sing on pitch app and a key-changing app that will let you raise and lower the key of any song. Much of it will be made available for free or at very low cost.
I’m also very excited about our 30 Day SongMaster program, an online community where each month, students learn to sing a new song which teaches them a specific vocal skill (such as pitch or belting).
There’s a lot more going on behind the scenes that it’s too early to talk about – but it’s all very exciting. I appreciate the opportunity to share the news and thank you for this lovely interview.
