October 27, 2021 • 36 mins
We don’t think of world-famous singers having anxiety about performing their songs for live audiences. But the truth is, sometimes they do. In this episode, Eric talks with Shawn Mendes about how hard he has worked to get comfortable trusting the process and trusting his voice.
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin, Are you ready to do a vocal lesson? I'm
ready to do a vocal lesson. Why don't we start
with a little me me me? Yeah, make me sing
the one I'm most scared of, me me me me
me me me me me. I guess it's that, but
you would go all the way up right, Yeah, do
that again? Me me me me me me me me
(00:36):
me all right, I don't know what you're scared of,
because you made that sound so easy. Me me me
me me me me me me. Yeah. It's really hard
to do though, because I'm hyper focused. I'm like hyper
focused on being relaxed on a e vowel where I'm
feeling like I'm less open. I start to kind of
trip myself up even just doing it there. I had
(00:56):
to be like, all right, we're gonna do this, but
you gotta relax, man, you don't have to be so tight.
This is backstage pass. I'm Eric Metro, and this podcast
I'm inviting you into my studio to hear how some
of the most successful and famous singers work on their craft,
(01:18):
the art of singing. They also happened to be students
of mine, so I have to say I know them
pretty well. We'll talk about everything, their vocal process, their careers,
how their emotional life affects their voice, and how it
all intertwines with their lives. That was me talking with
Shawn Mendez. He'll know his songs like Stitches, Mercy, treat
(01:38):
you better If I can't have you, There's nothing holding
me back Wonder and also Spotify's most dream song of
twenty nineteen, his duet with his girlfriend Camila Cabeo called Senorita.
Now don't worry, You'll get to hear from Camilla Cabeo
in a future episode later this season. Sean's really close
(01:59):
to his family. In fact, they were his earliest audience.
I remember the first time I sang for my mom
and my family. He was The Climb by Miley Sara.
I went into my kitchen and I played the music
and I was shaking because I was like singing in
front of my mom and my aunts and my cousins,
and I sang the whole song with my eye clothes
(02:19):
and I opened up the eyes and I'm pretty sure
my mom was crying and everyone was crying, and I
was like, wow, it was really sweet. So she still
tries to get me to do that in the kitchen.
Sometimes some day you've got to record that for her
as a gift. You know what I did from Mother's Day?
I recorded her favorite song as Fast Car by Tracy Chapman.
I was away because of the quarantine, so I recorded
that for her. You've got a fast I've got a
(02:49):
ticket to anywhere. Maybe we can make a change. I
remember when I first started learning guitar. I picked up
the guitar and she's like, just learned this song from me, please,
And that was probably like the first or second song
I ever learned on guitar. Too. It didn't take long
for Sean to figure out what he needed to do now.
Even though he got his and innovation and quite an
(03:10):
emotional response from his kitchen audience, Young Sean decided to
move his performances to a somewhat wider audience. On Buying
Fine no longer exists, but for those of you who
don't know or had forgotten, it was a platform where
you could share six second long videos like this one
Hallo from me or this one which got millions of
(03:34):
views from every second other day and a Jeans Girl
they were doing like a viner's meet up in downtown Toronto,
and they asked me to come and just be there.
So my parents were like, should we come? I said, no,
no one's gonna know who I am there. I don't
really think anyone's going to know me. And then when
(03:54):
I got there, I kind of was walking up the
subway to like the main area undonea square, and I
remember just like Mayhem started and I finally found my
way to this stage and got to perform for like
a couple hundred people, just with a mic and an
acoustic guitar, and I remember this feeling of like performing
for people and with people they were singing along. I
(04:25):
came home freaking out to my parents. I was like,
you're not going to believe what happened, Like all these
people were listening to me singing songs. And when I thought, okay,
you know what, I want to be a performer. I
want to be an artist. Was that very first time
in Toronto, and I was lucky because I got to
do it in front of people who knew who I
was because of this social media platform, and it was
(04:47):
this like such a great first experience for me. I
guess like ever since that moment when I like really
got to perform for people for the first time with
no lights and no cameras and just an acoustic guitar.
I was kind of in love right off the bat.
And there's a couple hundred people cheering and they're super excited.
There's this obviously this confidence boost you get and you're like, Okay, well,
(05:08):
if a couple hundred people are liking this, than maybe
a couple hundred thousand people will like this, and maybe
a couple of million people will like this. And I
think that it only takes a couple to kind of
ignite that flame of I'm going to take this all
the way. Did you feel that way right from the start? Yeah?
I think I always had this grand vision of where
things can go. And I owe a lot of that
(05:29):
to my parents for being so you can do anything,
you can do absolutely anything. And I feel really lucky
and blessed because I know that a lot of people
may not have the support that they necessarily need to
go the distance. And I feel like more support than
anyone even ever talks about or ever hears about, is
necessary for success. I got to see Sean play at
(05:52):
the Rodgers Center in Toronto. It's his home base, so
of course it was a really special show. I ever
see a person in this room. I watched the show
(06:19):
with his family and his friends, and of course Camilla,
his mother, was right in front of me. She looked
like every other teenager in the crowd, singing along, dancing
and enjoying the best concert of her life. I don't
(06:40):
know if she could have ever imagined just how successful
he was going to become, but I knew, and I
think on some level, Sean always knew. My favorite story
is when you said you used to walk around the
house with the ball between your legs when you're into
the soccer face. Yeah, I would have like a soccer
ball between my feet all the time because I was like,
this is either going to go to the World Cup
or nowhere. And that's how you approached the singing. It
(07:02):
was the same with the singing. When I say Sean's discipline,
do I ever mean it? I'm already singing in the
lesson ten minutes before we start a lesson. I'm doing
my pre warm up warm up. I know. I love that, though,
and that's just you right totally. I think the truth
(07:23):
is like everybody has a different real like passion and
a real desire within them and not everyone's going to be,
you know, as obsessive about singing as I am, but
they're going to have something. And I think the trick
to success in your life is finding the thing that
you really love and putting all of your energy into that,
(07:44):
because that is when you're going to get real reward
from what you do. The truth is, you have to
practice really really hard, and you have to work really
really hard, but you also have to be really really
patient because things that are great take a long time.
I think in every single profession there's so many times,
especially when things get bigger, where it's really hard and
(08:08):
really exhausting, but there's always this kind of flame that
can't burn out for what you do and this love
for what you do. And right right, well, I like
the fact that you did have an obsession before singing,
and that was with soccer only because it's showing that
you really got to find the one thing that you
really love and it might change along the way. Yeah.
(08:28):
I mean I played soccer, and I played hockey, and
I played baseball. I played a ton of sports and
I even took like a drama like acting class where
I was like I played Prince charming in a play
when I was like thirteen and I was testing all
of the waters out before singing and playing guitar came along.
(08:49):
And there's a very clear difference between something that you
like to do and something that is your passion, because
when it's your passion, you start doing it and then
four hours go buying and you wonder where the time went.
I think that anyone who has a passion will know
when I talk about this little tingly feeling that you
get when you're doing the thing that you love to do.
And even if you get five seconds of like euphoria
(09:12):
through your body because you sang it one certain way
or you played a chord a certain way, you're whatever
you're doing, you're painting, you're doing anything. That little five
seconds of euphoria makes a lifetime of work really exciting
and desirable, you know what I mean. And I also
think it's really important to say that if you feel
like you haven't found your passion and you've tried a
(09:32):
lot of things, it doesn't mean that one of those
things won't end up being your passion because you kind
of have to grow to figure out what it is
that you do love to do. Sean's completely right about that.
For me, it wasn't until I saw Ed Sheeran and
him playing an acoustic guitar and him singing the way
he did that I thought, you know what, I can
do that. I never really thought I could be justin Bieberan.
(09:53):
I never really thought I could dance like him and
be like him. But I can play guitar and I
can sing like that. Ed to me, was the most
exciting musician there was because the guitar was his third
arm and he was like using it as a real
piece of him. And I love the way he played,
I love the way he wrote songs and sang. He
really inspired me. And sometimes it just takes a minute.
(10:14):
It's waiting for the right time to kind of present
itself to you. Ed was actually one of the first
musicians who I ever met. And I flew out to
la the first time with my mum and he was
performing on a show called The Voice, and we went
there to meet him and he was so kind. I
was backstage with him and he said to me, look man, like,
(10:35):
what do you want to do? And I said, well,
I want to do what you do. I want to
play guitar and sing and be a singer songwriter. And
he was like, then, you have to put an insane
amount of effort and work and love into what you do.
And he's like, no matter who you meet, no matter
how many people you meet, you have to show them
so much love and you have to work really hard.
And I think that his advice. I'll always remember. I
(10:57):
met you in two fifteen, I believe. Do you remember
where it was? I think it was at the Staples
Center and Camilla introduced us. He's talking about Camilla Kabao,
who was already one of my students. Yeah, we were backstage.
I was talking to her. You came over. You were
smiling this big smile, and she said, this is my
voice teacher, Eric Vitrow, And do you know what you said?
(11:21):
I don't remember. All right, Oh, okay, I got a
few questions for you. He started asking me about voice immediately,
and the whole time we stood backstage, that's how we
did about it. Yeah. I remember thinking, Wow, he really
is interested in being great, like he really desires to
get better. Yeah, which was pretty impressive. And after all
these years Sean's dedication, it's still impressive. I spend most
(11:44):
of my time preparing myself to do vocal lessons with you,
preparing myself to how I'm going to feel after a
vocal lesson. Am I gonna have to meditate? Am I
gonna have to meditate before? Am I gonna have to meditate?
Somewhere in between? So I guess a lot of meditation
really ranks high in your life, super high. But I
need the meditation right right. Sometimes I need the meditation.
(12:04):
Sometimes you have to meditate before our lessons. But Sean
didn't always meditate in journal. When it actually started taking
it seriously and discipline myself to meditate daily for ten
minutes at least, that was life changing because it's not
about the act of meditating for ten minutes. It's about
the moment of being in the vocal lesson and being like,
(12:26):
let me just take a deep breath. It's the attitude.
It's the motto of meditation. You know. I wake up
in the morning. Something that really helps me kind of
not go into an anxious state of thinking right off
the bat. Is like getting straight into a cold shower
and breathing and feeling my body and being like, all right,
here we are. I get out of the shower and
(12:47):
I go downstairs or outside, I find myself to someone
where there's some light and I can see this guy,
or put my feet in the grass or something, and
I do the Whimhoff breathing technique, and then maybe I'll meditate.
Maybe I'll have a coffee. And even as I'm having
my coffee, like I'm doing this all very mindfully, sitting
there with the coffee, and I'm not letting myself check
(13:08):
my emails or my Instagram or my Twitter, because this
morning is for me, it's not for everyone else. And
I think that that morning ritual of really letting myself
be there and for myself really helps. And then I
guess at some point later in the day, I'll find
myself journaling and meditating and it's really helpful. Yeah, you
(13:29):
know what I've never said to you. I thought it,
but I've never said it. I've always been dying to
stay as a joke, but I didn't want to put
it in your head. But now you're so far beyond its.
Like I told you someday this meditation thing would work out,
because I used to say, and you remember what you
used to say to me. I can't meditate. I can't
do that. No, like you get really acting. Oh, I
used to get so and used to tell me to journal.
I journal every day. Now, yeah, did you journal today?
(13:51):
I didn't, but I will, I will, I will do it,
and I never did. And I could see that look
in your eyes, like, ask me one more time, and
I'm gonna you can be so anxious you can't meditate, Like, yeah,
I get it, Oh my god. Yeah, but look at
how far it's come. And you know you were You
were telling me to meditate and journal the day I
met you. Yeah, I was telling him from the day
(14:13):
I met him. But I'm so glad now it's a
part of his daily routine. Sometimes I feel like we're
in lessons and I'll be sitting on the floor kind
of closed eyes, cross legged and meditating for five minutes
and you're just patiently waiting for me to come back
to being human. But it's part of the process. And
we've had tons of breakthroughs, and when we have a breakthrough,
the most important thing to remember is that this will
(14:34):
not be the last breakthrough. It's gonna come around, it's
gonna happen again. You just have to be open to
the fact that it's always changing and you can't do
anything about that, and that's kind of the beauty of it.
Comparing Sean from all those years ago when I first
met him and knowing him now, I definitely see him
as being much calmer and much more grounded. And I
(14:55):
have to believe a lot of it has to do
with the journaling and the meditation. I rest my case now,
don't go anywhere. Sean and I have even more to
talk about backstage. Pass will be right back. Welcome back.
(15:18):
Let's keep going with Shawn Mendez. I think it's time
to talk about his favorite vocal exercise, the bottle. Don't
get me started about the bottle. You're gonna have to
explain that it's not drinking the bottle. It's not whiskey
or vodka. It's basically like a plastic water bottle with
(15:38):
a straw attached to it, and you sing into the
straw and you're blowing air through the straw, and you're
kind of making bubbles in the bottom, and you're doing scales.
And I think the reason I love the bottle so
much it makes my voice feel better. But I think
the bigger actual reason is because it frees me up
(16:00):
from judgment and critique. At the beginning of the lesson.
You know, I can't really hear myself very well because
I'm being muffled through water. So I'm okay with it
if I miss a couple of notes and it kind
of frees you up. I think there's a lot of
insecurity with singing when you have a lot of people watching.
(16:23):
Sometimes I get so into it having to be perfect.
I stopped hearing my voice and I start making up
what I'm hearing, and I'm like, Eric, it sounds scratchy
and it sounds bad, and I'm missing the notes. I
have to sit down and kind of collect myself. Otherwise
we're not going to be able to move forward with
this stuff. So it's taken a lot of work. When
(16:43):
I first started working with Sean, I used to worry
about his anxiety and full disclosure his anxiety gave me
a lot of anxiety, but not anymore after all these
years of observing him, I now know he always pulls
out of it. You know what's hard for me is
doing mimes in a scale like really chill and really
(17:04):
quietly just going up, even like at the beginning of
the lesson, when you asked me to go m like
doing that stuff I get so freaked out about doing
because I'm like, well, if you crack on one of
these little simple things, you just suck. That's the real truth.
If you ask me what we do in those lessons.
(17:25):
Sometimes I black out some days. It's really hard, literally
word for word. I've said to Eric over and over again,
I don't know why, but I can't sing, and it's
a scary place to be. And I think this subject
goes across hundreds and hundreds of different types and ways
it could be for people, But for me, it's this
feeling of like I've forgotten how to sing, or maybe
(17:47):
I never even knew how to sing, or maybe I'm
just getting away with this big trick. Maybe I'm not
even a good musician at all. Sometimes I'm always like,
if one day Eric was just like, I'm not doing
lessons anymore, I'd be like, well, I can't sing anymore.
And there's this big spiral that happens within the course
of twenty seconds, and Eric sees it in is this
(18:09):
they start to cross. Okay, So sometimes it is my
job to get people out of their heads. Make that
quite often my job is to get people out of
their heads. It's an occupational hazard. Some singers find singing
scales up and down or singing major arpeggio's really easy,
So I'll throw in a minor one because when they
(18:31):
start focusing on how to sing that unexpected minor note
and tune, they can't pay attention as much to the
quality of their singing voice, So then their voice can
really open up. Or I'll have them do a variety
of physical gestures so they completely forget about their voice
because now all they can think about is all the
ridiculous moves I'm making them do. Like for me, I
(18:52):
go through this thing, I'm like, well, why can't I
just sing because I can speak when I wake up?
But you're doing vocal gymnastics and you really have to
warm up otherwise you can really hurt yourself. But yeah,
I still haven't learned that lesson. Well, yeah, because if
you start listening to yourself with that afectionistic ear right
from the very beginning of the warm up, it puts
(19:12):
you at a disadvantage because you're not going to sound
great at the beginning of a warm up. That's the
whole purpose of warming up, and sometimes it doesn't even
sound great at the end of the warm up. Sometimes
it takes doing a vocal warm up and then even
taking thirty minutes of like resting your voice, or thirty
minutes of just eating some food or anything, and you
come back and you're like, oh, wow, I am warmed up.
(19:32):
It's just you're a little bit too inside of the practice.
And I think the hardest part of singing is getting
out of your own way, is dropping the ego and
like just being a kid about it. Like when you're
a kid, you just sing. When you're an adult, you're
like singing, but at the same time also like critiquing
and judging and like afraid. And one of the most
(19:53):
amazing leaps we made as a duo was the day
I was like realizing I was like not letting you
tell me what the real objective thing was because I
was so afraid and so anxious, and I was like
no, no no, no, yeah, yeah, I don't want to hear that.
I don't want to hear that. I wasn't listening to
(20:14):
my teacher. I was like, I just have to get
through it out of so much anxiety. And then you're like,
I really think you should trust me. That was not
long ago, and I feel like once I really like
started to just like trust you and trust the process
and trust me, my voice started to open up more.
Not only your voice, but don't you feel better as
(20:36):
a human being? I mean, like I said, it's parallel
to like to life in general. I love when we
are just like cruising, like I think for me, it's
become a meditation too, because I put my phone down
for an hour. I just basically have headphones and I
can only hear you in the piano, and I can
(20:57):
be so focused on just the notes and my breathing
and very present in my body, and you and I
are very just zoned in and calm. It's a beautiful experience.
I find a lot of the time I end up
leaving the vocal lesson calmer. The whole thing was a
very zen moment, even in the silence when we're breathing.
(21:19):
I love those moments because that feels like the only
hour of the day where things move that slow and carefree.
Oh wow. Yeah, when people can let go, it makes
all the difference in the world. And like you said,
be able to open your mind and go all right,
So tell me what to do and I'll do it,
and I'll trust it, because if you can't trust your teacher,
(21:40):
then who can you really trust totally? I mean, I
think singers are so emotionally attached to their voice that
sometimes we'll be backstage at an award show. We'll spend
fifteen twenty minutes warming up, and then another forty minutes
just talking about the heart and calming down and getting
into the right frame of mind to be able to
do this. Even in our lessons, you end up accomplishing
(22:00):
more when you're in the right frame of mind than
doing an hour worth of scales stressed out and frustrated.
And I think being a vocal coach it's much more
than going through scales with someone I always call Eric
my vocal coach slash therapist, because you're never like just
doing one thing. That's what you are in my phone.
(22:21):
Your bio is voice teachers, last therapist. Well, someone did
say in an interview once I was their vocal life coach,
It's true, you really are. I love that phrase, vocal
life coach. I thought that was one of the biggest
compliments I'd ever gotten, because my lessons aren't always about
vocal placement. Sometimes the most important thing is helping a
(22:43):
student get mentally ready for a show. Something that helps
me a lot is that I say to myself before
a vocal lesson. I say to myself before a performance
at the Grammys that this is just play. It's art,
this is music, this is love. This is something that
was created to make people feel. It sounds crazy, but
sometimes the pressure and a vocal lesson that I put
(23:05):
on myself is equivalent to the pressure backstage at the Grammys.
And it's because they're the same thing. To me, You've
got to sound perfect. Working on that on kind of
toning that perfectionism down has been a really big part
of my life. Yeah. I would actually say, you're more
nervous than our voice lessons then you are at award shows. Yeah, totally.
(23:25):
At an award show you kind of have no choice.
But at a voice lesson, I can be like, I
can't do this, I can't do this today, and then
I get more nervous. I can psych myself out a
little bit more. I'm already I'm even sitting here right
now being like I'm talking too much. I'm gonna be
tired for our vocal lesson in an hour. So I
find even if I'm doing a lesson. The thing that
helps me the most is that if I'm three warmups
(23:46):
in and I'm starting to feel myself get that perfectionist
kind of vibe going on, my tunnel vision is going in,
I just kind of shake my body like crazy and
I go, I'll start like whatever, like to like laugh,
to get myself out of that little thing. It's like
snapping myself out before I go into that perfectionist place.
(24:08):
I say to myself in that it's just fun. This
is just play. Let's just have fun, you know. I
always get the sense that a lot of times people
in their mind think, well, when I or if I
become really successful, if I make a lot of money,
if I get a certain amount of success, if I'm
number one on the charts, then I'll be happier. Then
I'm going to feel really good. Yeah. I mean, this
(24:28):
is a very touchy, a hard thing to talk about
because when you say that money and success doesn't bring
you happiness, and maybe a bunch of people would jump
to say, oh, switch lives with me, and I'll tell you,
you know, and I'll be happy, you know, if I
had the money you had. Money does a lot of
amazing things, and success does a lot of amazing things
(24:49):
for you, and it makes your life comfortable and easy,
and it's the biggest blessing in the entire world. And
I think you have to be aware of that. But
at the same time, you have to be happy before
you play the stadium for the stadium to make you happy,
because you're not going to get on the stage and
walk off that night and lay in bed and be like,
(25:11):
now I'm truly happy because I've played in front of
fifty thousand people. You can maybe make the ego happy,
but I'm talking about the real heart. It has nothing
to do with the fifty thousand people. How did you
feel when you were on the stage. Did you feel
that you were being an honest, kind of real version
of yourself And did you feel like there was love
in the room and was this thing very real? Then
(25:33):
that's really what's going to bring you happiness. So it's
just true happiness comes from within and not from outside success.
Some of the most fun shows of my life have
been in front of like fifty people that you're like
sweating and everyone's screaming the lyrics as loud as you can,
and there's this insane amount of excitement in the room
and the pressure is down, and it just feels so
(25:56):
intimate and close. And those have been some of my
absolute favorite shows Mine too. One of my favorites was
at the Grammy Museum Me Too. That was one of
my favorite shows ever. And that was such a small
(26:18):
audience and it wasn't the same as a huge arena
with everybody laughing and screaming and dancing and carrying on.
But oh, your voice sound it is so beautiful, and
the audience was totally with you, like they were breathing
with you. Yeah, you have to just kind of like
surrender to what the place you're playing wants to give you.
And that night, I think sometimes you just get struck
(26:40):
by a little bit of lightning, and that night had
some lightning in it, and it felt really amazing. I
often will be on stage and I'm kind of singing
with them. It's something that I think Bruce Springsteen had
that I really admire and love. And it just feels
like you're part of the people in like a really
like kind of a small town way. And I always
like to think about it that way, right, I get
(27:00):
that I almost think of you sometimes when I've watched
you and this sounds really odd, but I think of
you is kind of a healer because when I've seen
you with that audience, I see the look in your
eye and the way they react to what you're doing.
And I think I told you the first time I
really saw that was it Radio City, right, because that
was many years ago, that was early on when we
(27:22):
first started working together. No, that doesn't sound ought at
all funny that you said. I think that if I
wasn't doing music, I'd probably be studying holistic medicine and healing,
and so that lives really deep within me. So that's
actually really sweet. I feel like you've never told me
about the healer thing. I guess I haven't, but I
always think about it. It goes back to that show
(27:43):
at Radio City. I remember thinking to myself, Wow, he
is really playing with this audience, and the best way possible.
You know, you would do the thing when you would
get really really soft and there was that soft moment
and you'd get them to quiet down. Then you get
louder again. They'd get louder again. Don't, don't, don't, So
(28:09):
that's sorry, that's sorry, right, And I remember thinking, he
really understands this. He's creating an incredible evening for these people.
(28:30):
They are really enjoying this, and they're gonna go home
and talk about it, and they're gonna remember it and
they're gonna be inspired. Thank you. Stick around after the
break for this week's vocal tip and more with Seawan Mendez.
If you want to do this exercise with me, you'll
(28:51):
need a small bottle half filled with water and a straw.
Don't forget to press pause while you go find him.
Let's dive into this week's vocal tip. A lot of
people feel anxiety before going on stage. I'm going to
(29:13):
give you a few suggestions that will alleviate some of
that stress before you even start to warm up your voice.
If you're someone who likes to meditate, then meditate for
a few minutes. If you're someone who enjoys yoga, then
do some poses and stretches. Sometimes journaling can be very cathartic,
so try writing in a journal. You can either write
positive affirmations, or you can write what you're feeling and
(29:37):
what your fears are. Or if you have any anxiety
about singing, write that down too. Get it all out
of your system and free yourself from it. Before you
start to practice. Do whatever starts to relax your body
and take you away from the stress of the day.
It's always worth taking a few minutes to do. Now,
let's loosen up your body. Stand up slightly, bend your
(29:59):
knees to take the pressure off your lower back, and
just hang forward from the waist. You want your upper
body to just be hanging forward like a rag doll.
Let your head and ar hang loosely and freely. Take
a deep breath in. You might even feel your back
expand as you breathe in, and then just blow out.
Let all the tension out. When you do this, take
(30:21):
another deep breath in, and then this time as you
blow out, make a hissing sound as you slowly roll
up into a standing position. Once you're in the standing position,
take a deep breath and sigh ah. Just let all
the tension and the tightness of the day out of
(30:42):
your body. Next to tilt your head forward and just
do a gentle face shake. It's just to shake your
facial muscles loose and free, but make sure it's gentle
so you don't tense up your neck. Then you can
really shake your entire body loose by shaking your hands
(31:04):
and your legs and your face altogether. Now let's work
on your voice. You heard Sean mentioned that his favorite
exercise is the bottle exercise, where he sings through a
straw blowing bubbles into water. Singing to a straw helps
put your vocal cords in the best possible position in
(31:24):
shape to create the vibrations that produce a free singing tone.
Teachers explain this technique as setting up the most efficient
way for your vocal cords to work. By singing through
a straw, you will be automatically training the muscles of
your larynx without trying to manipulate them physically. If you're
looking for the technical term, it's often referred to as
a semi occluded vocal track exercise because your breath is
(31:48):
partially blocked, which creates a helpful back pressure in the
vocal tract. But really, seriously, you do not need to
understand any of that to have it help you. Just
try it. Put a straw into a small bottle or
a tall glass half filled with water, and you'll see
how helpful it can be right away. Let's blow some
bubbles and get started like this. Now you do that,
(32:14):
blow some bubbles into that water. Next, sing through that
straw your turn. You can sing a simple arpeggio, try that,
(32:42):
or really any musical pattern of notes that you like.
You can also try this on a song that you
want to improve on. It can really help the song
if you do it, sing through the whole song. Singing
through that straw into the bottle. Now there are straws
made especially for this, and also bottles we built in straws,
(33:04):
but you can experiment at home with this with just
a regular straw in a bottle. The size of the
straw will increase or decrease, the amount of resistance you feel,
and how far you put the straw into the water
will also make a difference. You'll feel what works best
for you. By the way, you don't always have to
sing into the straw in water. You can also sing
(33:25):
into the straw and just feel the air flowing out.
Put your hand about two inches away from the opening
of the straw, and you should feel a steady stream
of air blowing onto your palm. Then you'll really start
developing that muscle memory of keeping the air flowing forward.
And as you heard Shun say in our conversation, one
reason he likes singing through the straw into water is
(33:46):
because it muffles his voice so he can start his
vocal warm up freely without judging how his voice sounds
at the beginning, which I think is a great idea.
I always tell people when you begin warming up, the
way your vocal chords feel is far more important than
how they sound. If you want to try out the
vocal tip from this episode, I'd love to hear it.
Or maybe you want to share a bit from your journal,
(34:08):
or even a picture of the spot where you like
to do yoga or where you like to meditate. Use
the hashtag Backstage Pass pod on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, or
wherever you like to post. I can't wait to see
what you do with this week's vocal tips. I'll be
back next week with another interview and another vocal tip.
(34:28):
Talk to you then, maybe maybe, maybe maybe maybe. Backstage
Pass with Eric Vitro is written and hosted by me
Eric Vitro and produced by Morgan Jaffee. Katherine Giardo is
(34:50):
our managing producer. Emily Rosstech is our associate producer. Mixed
and mastered by Ben Polliday. Additional engineering help from Jacob Purski.
Mia Lobel is our VP of Content Director's Development. Justine
Lange helped create the show. Thanks also to Jacob Weisberg,
Heather faine, On Schnars, Carli Migliori, Christina Sullivan, Eric Sandler,
(35:13):
Maggie Taylor, Nicole Morano, Daniello Lacan and Royston Bazzer. Original
theme music by Jacob and Sita Steele for Premier Music Group.
We record at Resonate Studios. Fred Tlackson does our videography
and the photography is by Ken Sawyer. Special thanks to
Michael Lewis for his inspiration, his friendship, and the best
guidance anyone could ask for. Backstage Pass with Eric Vitro
(35:37):
as a production of Pushkin Industries. If you like the show,
please remember to share, rate, and review. I mean that really.
To find more Pushkin podcast listen to the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you
(35:57):
were going to write an autobiography today, what would you
title it? Falsetto okay? I said, we say falsetto okay
ironically because I had the hardest time learning how to
sing false head. Now you don't, and now it's in
this that's that's that hard word. That's what I would
title it. What would you title it? That's what you
(36:18):
would title Yeah, Um, I don't know what I would
title it. I really don't know. Must mean I'm not
ready to write it yet. Yeah, I guess not. Well,
you know, there's a lot more to come, but yeah,
Pushkin, Are you ready to do a vocal lesson? I'm
ready to do a vocal lesson. Why don't we start
with a little me me me? Yeah, make me sing
the one I'm most scared of, me me me me
me me me me me. I guess it's that, but
you would go all the way up right, Yeah, do
that again? Me me me me me me me me
(00:36):
me all right, I don't know what you're scared of,
because you made that sound so easy. Me me me
me me me me me me. Yeah. It's really hard
to do though, because I'm hyper focused. I'm like hyper
focused on being relaxed on a e vowel where I'm
feeling like I'm less open. I start to kind of
trip myself up even just doing it there. I had
(00:56):
to be like, all right, we're gonna do this, but
you gotta relax, man, you don't have to be so tight.
This is backstage pass. I'm Eric Metro, and this podcast
I'm inviting you into my studio to hear how some
of the most successful and famous singers work on their craft,
(01:18):
the art of singing. They also happened to be students
of mine, so I have to say I know them
pretty well. We'll talk about everything, their vocal process, their careers,
how their emotional life affects their voice, and how it
all intertwines with their lives. That was me talking with
Shawn Mendez. He'll know his songs like Stitches, Mercy, treat
(01:38):
you better If I can't have you, There's nothing holding
me back Wonder and also Spotify's most dream song of
twenty nineteen, his duet with his girlfriend Camila Cabeo called Senorita.
Now don't worry, You'll get to hear from Camilla Cabeo
in a future episode later this season. Sean's really close
(01:59):
to his family. In fact, they were his earliest audience.
I remember the first time I sang for my mom
and my family. He was The Climb by Miley Sara.
I went into my kitchen and I played the music
and I was shaking because I was like singing in
front of my mom and my aunts and my cousins,
and I sang the whole song with my eye clothes
(02:19):
and I opened up the eyes and I'm pretty sure
my mom was crying and everyone was crying, and I
was like, wow, it was really sweet. So she still
tries to get me to do that in the kitchen.
Sometimes some day you've got to record that for her
as a gift. You know what I did from Mother's Day?
I recorded her favorite song as Fast Car by Tracy Chapman.
I was away because of the quarantine, so I recorded
that for her. You've got a fast I've got a
(02:49):
ticket to anywhere. Maybe we can make a change. I
remember when I first started learning guitar. I picked up
the guitar and she's like, just learned this song from me, please,
And that was probably like the first or second song
I ever learned on guitar. Too. It didn't take long
for Sean to figure out what he needed to do now.
Even though he got his and innovation and quite an
(03:10):
emotional response from his kitchen audience, Young Sean decided to
move his performances to a somewhat wider audience. On Buying
Fine no longer exists, but for those of you who
don't know or had forgotten, it was a platform where
you could share six second long videos like this one
Hallo from me or this one which got millions of
(03:34):
views from every second other day and a Jeans Girl
they were doing like a viner's meet up in downtown Toronto,
and they asked me to come and just be there.
So my parents were like, should we come? I said, no,
no one's gonna know who I am there. I don't
really think anyone's going to know me. And then when
(03:54):
I got there, I kind of was walking up the
subway to like the main area undonea square, and I
remember just like Mayhem started and I finally found my
way to this stage and got to perform for like
a couple hundred people, just with a mic and an
acoustic guitar, and I remember this feeling of like performing
for people and with people they were singing along. I
(04:25):
came home freaking out to my parents. I was like,
you're not going to believe what happened, Like all these
people were listening to me singing songs. And when I thought, okay,
you know what, I want to be a performer. I
want to be an artist. Was that very first time
in Toronto, and I was lucky because I got to
do it in front of people who knew who I
was because of this social media platform, and it was
(04:47):
this like such a great first experience for me. I
guess like ever since that moment when I like really
got to perform for people for the first time with
no lights and no cameras and just an acoustic guitar.
I was kind of in love right off the bat.
And there's a couple hundred people cheering and they're super excited.
There's this obviously this confidence boost you get and you're like, Okay, well,
(05:08):
if a couple hundred people are liking this, than maybe
a couple hundred thousand people will like this, and maybe
a couple of million people will like this. And I
think that it only takes a couple to kind of
ignite that flame of I'm going to take this all
the way. Did you feel that way right from the start? Yeah?
I think I always had this grand vision of where
things can go. And I owe a lot of that
(05:29):
to my parents for being so you can do anything,
you can do absolutely anything. And I feel really lucky
and blessed because I know that a lot of people
may not have the support that they necessarily need to
go the distance. And I feel like more support than
anyone even ever talks about or ever hears about, is
necessary for success. I got to see Sean play at
(05:52):
the Rodgers Center in Toronto. It's his home base, so
of course it was a really special show. I ever
see a person in this room. I watched the show
(06:19):
with his family and his friends, and of course Camilla,
his mother, was right in front of me. She looked
like every other teenager in the crowd, singing along, dancing
and enjoying the best concert of her life. I don't
(06:40):
know if she could have ever imagined just how successful
he was going to become, but I knew, and I
think on some level, Sean always knew. My favorite story
is when you said you used to walk around the
house with the ball between your legs when you're into
the soccer face. Yeah, I would have like a soccer
ball between my feet all the time because I was like,
this is either going to go to the World Cup
or nowhere. And that's how you approached the singing. It
(07:02):
was the same with the singing. When I say Sean's discipline,
do I ever mean it? I'm already singing in the
lesson ten minutes before we start a lesson. I'm doing
my pre warm up warm up. I know. I love that, though,
and that's just you right totally. I think the truth
(07:23):
is like everybody has a different real like passion and
a real desire within them and not everyone's going to be,
you know, as obsessive about singing as I am, but
they're going to have something. And I think the trick
to success in your life is finding the thing that
you really love and putting all of your energy into that,
(07:44):
because that is when you're going to get real reward
from what you do. The truth is, you have to
practice really really hard, and you have to work really
really hard, but you also have to be really really
patient because things that are great take a long time.
I think in every single profession there's so many times,
especially when things get bigger, where it's really hard and
(08:08):
really exhausting, but there's always this kind of flame that
can't burn out for what you do and this love
for what you do. And right right, well, I like
the fact that you did have an obsession before singing,
and that was with soccer only because it's showing that
you really got to find the one thing that you
really love and it might change along the way. Yeah.
(08:28):
I mean I played soccer, and I played hockey, and
I played baseball. I played a ton of sports and
I even took like a drama like acting class where
I was like I played Prince charming in a play
when I was like thirteen and I was testing all
of the waters out before singing and playing guitar came along.
(08:49):
And there's a very clear difference between something that you
like to do and something that is your passion, because
when it's your passion, you start doing it and then
four hours go buying and you wonder where the time went.
I think that anyone who has a passion will know
when I talk about this little tingly feeling that you
get when you're doing the thing that you love to do.
And even if you get five seconds of like euphoria
(09:12):
through your body because you sang it one certain way
or you played a chord a certain way, you're whatever
you're doing, you're painting, you're doing anything. That little five
seconds of euphoria makes a lifetime of work really exciting
and desirable, you know what I mean. And I also
think it's really important to say that if you feel
like you haven't found your passion and you've tried a
(09:32):
lot of things, it doesn't mean that one of those
things won't end up being your passion because you kind
of have to grow to figure out what it is
that you do love to do. Sean's completely right about that.
For me, it wasn't until I saw Ed Sheeran and
him playing an acoustic guitar and him singing the way
he did that I thought, you know what, I can
do that. I never really thought I could be justin Bieberan.
(09:53):
I never really thought I could dance like him and
be like him. But I can play guitar and I
can sing like that. Ed to me, was the most
exciting musician there was because the guitar was his third
arm and he was like using it as a real
piece of him. And I love the way he played,
I love the way he wrote songs and sang. He
really inspired me. And sometimes it just takes a minute.
(10:14):
It's waiting for the right time to kind of present
itself to you. Ed was actually one of the first
musicians who I ever met. And I flew out to
la the first time with my mum and he was
performing on a show called The Voice, and we went
there to meet him and he was so kind. I
was backstage with him and he said to me, look man, like,
(10:35):
what do you want to do? And I said, well,
I want to do what you do. I want to
play guitar and sing and be a singer songwriter. And
he was like, then, you have to put an insane
amount of effort and work and love into what you do.
And he's like, no matter who you meet, no matter
how many people you meet, you have to show them
so much love and you have to work really hard.
And I think that his advice. I'll always remember. I
(10:57):
met you in two fifteen, I believe. Do you remember
where it was? I think it was at the Staples
Center and Camilla introduced us. He's talking about Camilla Kabao,
who was already one of my students. Yeah, we were backstage.
I was talking to her. You came over. You were
smiling this big smile, and she said, this is my
voice teacher, Eric Vitrow, And do you know what you said?
(11:21):
I don't remember. All right, Oh, okay, I got a
few questions for you. He started asking me about voice immediately,
and the whole time we stood backstage, that's how we
did about it. Yeah. I remember thinking, Wow, he really
is interested in being great, like he really desires to
get better. Yeah, which was pretty impressive. And after all
these years Sean's dedication, it's still impressive. I spend most
(11:44):
of my time preparing myself to do vocal lessons with you,
preparing myself to how I'm going to feel after a
vocal lesson. Am I gonna have to meditate? Am I
gonna have to meditate before? Am I gonna have to meditate?
Somewhere in between? So I guess a lot of meditation
really ranks high in your life, super high. But I
need the meditation right right. Sometimes I need the meditation.
(12:04):
Sometimes you have to meditate before our lessons. But Sean
didn't always meditate in journal. When it actually started taking
it seriously and discipline myself to meditate daily for ten
minutes at least, that was life changing because it's not
about the act of meditating for ten minutes. It's about
the moment of being in the vocal lesson and being like,
(12:26):
let me just take a deep breath. It's the attitude.
It's the motto of meditation. You know. I wake up
in the morning. Something that really helps me kind of
not go into an anxious state of thinking right off
the bat. Is like getting straight into a cold shower
and breathing and feeling my body and being like, all right,
here we are. I get out of the shower and
(12:47):
I go downstairs or outside, I find myself to someone
where there's some light and I can see this guy,
or put my feet in the grass or something, and
I do the Whimhoff breathing technique, and then maybe I'll meditate.
Maybe I'll have a coffee. And even as I'm having
my coffee, like I'm doing this all very mindfully, sitting
there with the coffee, and I'm not letting myself check
(13:08):
my emails or my Instagram or my Twitter, because this
morning is for me, it's not for everyone else. And
I think that that morning ritual of really letting myself
be there and for myself really helps. And then I
guess at some point later in the day, I'll find
myself journaling and meditating and it's really helpful. Yeah, you
(13:29):
know what I've never said to you. I thought it,
but I've never said it. I've always been dying to
stay as a joke, but I didn't want to put
it in your head. But now you're so far beyond its.
Like I told you someday this meditation thing would work out,
because I used to say, and you remember what you
used to say to me. I can't meditate. I can't
do that. No, like you get really acting. Oh, I
used to get so and used to tell me to journal.
I journal every day. Now, yeah, did you journal today?
(13:51):
I didn't, but I will, I will, I will do it,
and I never did. And I could see that look
in your eyes, like, ask me one more time, and
I'm gonna you can be so anxious you can't meditate, Like, yeah,
I get it, Oh my god. Yeah, but look at
how far it's come. And you know you were You
were telling me to meditate and journal the day I
met you. Yeah, I was telling him from the day
(14:13):
I met him. But I'm so glad now it's a
part of his daily routine. Sometimes I feel like we're
in lessons and I'll be sitting on the floor kind
of closed eyes, cross legged and meditating for five minutes
and you're just patiently waiting for me to come back
to being human. But it's part of the process. And
we've had tons of breakthroughs, and when we have a breakthrough,
the most important thing to remember is that this will
(14:34):
not be the last breakthrough. It's gonna come around, it's
gonna happen again. You just have to be open to
the fact that it's always changing and you can't do
anything about that, and that's kind of the beauty of it.
Comparing Sean from all those years ago when I first
met him and knowing him now, I definitely see him
as being much calmer and much more grounded. And I
(14:55):
have to believe a lot of it has to do
with the journaling and the meditation. I rest my case now,
don't go anywhere. Sean and I have even more to
talk about backstage. Pass will be right back. Welcome back.
(15:18):
Let's keep going with Shawn Mendez. I think it's time
to talk about his favorite vocal exercise, the bottle. Don't
get me started about the bottle. You're gonna have to
explain that it's not drinking the bottle. It's not whiskey
or vodka. It's basically like a plastic water bottle with
(15:38):
a straw attached to it, and you sing into the
straw and you're blowing air through the straw, and you're
kind of making bubbles in the bottom, and you're doing scales.
And I think the reason I love the bottle so
much it makes my voice feel better. But I think
the bigger actual reason is because it frees me up
(16:00):
from judgment and critique. At the beginning of the lesson.
You know, I can't really hear myself very well because
I'm being muffled through water. So I'm okay with it
if I miss a couple of notes and it kind
of frees you up. I think there's a lot of
insecurity with singing when you have a lot of people watching.
(16:23):
Sometimes I get so into it having to be perfect.
I stopped hearing my voice and I start making up
what I'm hearing, and I'm like, Eric, it sounds scratchy
and it sounds bad, and I'm missing the notes. I
have to sit down and kind of collect myself. Otherwise
we're not going to be able to move forward with
this stuff. So it's taken a lot of work. When
(16:43):
I first started working with Sean, I used to worry
about his anxiety and full disclosure his anxiety gave me
a lot of anxiety, but not anymore after all these
years of observing him, I now know he always pulls
out of it. You know what's hard for me is
doing mimes in a scale like really chill and really
(17:04):
quietly just going up, even like at the beginning of
the lesson, when you asked me to go m like
doing that stuff I get so freaked out about doing
because I'm like, well, if you crack on one of
these little simple things, you just suck. That's the real truth.
If you ask me what we do in those lessons.
(17:25):
Sometimes I black out some days. It's really hard, literally
word for word. I've said to Eric over and over again,
I don't know why, but I can't sing, and it's
a scary place to be. And I think this subject
goes across hundreds and hundreds of different types and ways
it could be for people, But for me, it's this
feeling of like I've forgotten how to sing, or maybe
(17:47):
I never even knew how to sing, or maybe I'm
just getting away with this big trick. Maybe I'm not
even a good musician at all. Sometimes I'm always like,
if one day Eric was just like, I'm not doing
lessons anymore, I'd be like, well, I can't sing anymore.
And there's this big spiral that happens within the course
of twenty seconds, and Eric sees it in is this
(18:09):
they start to cross. Okay, So sometimes it is my
job to get people out of their heads. Make that
quite often my job is to get people out of
their heads. It's an occupational hazard. Some singers find singing
scales up and down or singing major arpeggio's really easy,
So I'll throw in a minor one because when they
(18:31):
start focusing on how to sing that unexpected minor note
and tune, they can't pay attention as much to the
quality of their singing voice, So then their voice can
really open up. Or I'll have them do a variety
of physical gestures so they completely forget about their voice
because now all they can think about is all the
ridiculous moves I'm making them do. Like for me, I
(18:52):
go through this thing, I'm like, well, why can't I
just sing because I can speak when I wake up?
But you're doing vocal gymnastics and you really have to
warm up otherwise you can really hurt yourself. But yeah,
I still haven't learned that lesson. Well, yeah, because if
you start listening to yourself with that afectionistic ear right
from the very beginning of the warm up, it puts
(19:12):
you at a disadvantage because you're not going to sound
great at the beginning of a warm up. That's the
whole purpose of warming up, and sometimes it doesn't even
sound great at the end of the warm up. Sometimes
it takes doing a vocal warm up and then even
taking thirty minutes of like resting your voice, or thirty
minutes of just eating some food or anything, and you
come back and you're like, oh, wow, I am warmed up.
(19:32):
It's just you're a little bit too inside of the practice.
And I think the hardest part of singing is getting
out of your own way, is dropping the ego and
like just being a kid about it. Like when you're
a kid, you just sing. When you're an adult, you're
like singing, but at the same time also like critiquing
and judging and like afraid. And one of the most
(19:53):
amazing leaps we made as a duo was the day
I was like realizing I was like not letting you
tell me what the real objective thing was because I
was so afraid and so anxious, and I was like
no, no no, no, yeah, yeah, I don't want to hear that.
I don't want to hear that. I wasn't listening to
(20:14):
my teacher. I was like, I just have to get
through it out of so much anxiety. And then you're like,
I really think you should trust me. That was not
long ago, and I feel like once I really like
started to just like trust you and trust the process
and trust me, my voice started to open up more.
Not only your voice, but don't you feel better as
(20:36):
a human being? I mean, like I said, it's parallel
to like to life in general. I love when we
are just like cruising, like I think for me, it's
become a meditation too, because I put my phone down
for an hour. I just basically have headphones and I
can only hear you in the piano, and I can
(20:57):
be so focused on just the notes and my breathing
and very present in my body, and you and I
are very just zoned in and calm. It's a beautiful experience.
I find a lot of the time I end up
leaving the vocal lesson calmer. The whole thing was a
very zen moment, even in the silence when we're breathing.
(21:19):
I love those moments because that feels like the only
hour of the day where things move that slow and carefree.
Oh wow. Yeah, when people can let go, it makes
all the difference in the world. And like you said,
be able to open your mind and go all right,
So tell me what to do and I'll do it,
and I'll trust it, because if you can't trust your teacher,
(21:40):
then who can you really trust totally? I mean, I
think singers are so emotionally attached to their voice that
sometimes we'll be backstage at an award show. We'll spend
fifteen twenty minutes warming up, and then another forty minutes
just talking about the heart and calming down and getting
into the right frame of mind to be able to
do this. Even in our lessons, you end up accomplishing
(22:00):
more when you're in the right frame of mind than
doing an hour worth of scales stressed out and frustrated.
And I think being a vocal coach it's much more
than going through scales with someone I always call Eric
my vocal coach slash therapist, because you're never like just
doing one thing. That's what you are in my phone.
(22:21):
Your bio is voice teachers, last therapist. Well, someone did
say in an interview once I was their vocal life coach,
It's true, you really are. I love that phrase, vocal
life coach. I thought that was one of the biggest
compliments I'd ever gotten, because my lessons aren't always about
vocal placement. Sometimes the most important thing is helping a
(22:43):
student get mentally ready for a show. Something that helps
me a lot is that I say to myself before
a vocal lesson. I say to myself before a performance
at the Grammys that this is just play. It's art,
this is music, this is love. This is something that
was created to make people feel. It sounds crazy, but
sometimes the pressure and a vocal lesson that I put
(23:05):
on myself is equivalent to the pressure backstage at the Grammys.
And it's because they're the same thing. To me, You've
got to sound perfect. Working on that on kind of
toning that perfectionism down has been a really big part
of my life. Yeah. I would actually say, you're more
nervous than our voice lessons then you are at award shows. Yeah, totally.
(23:25):
At an award show you kind of have no choice.
But at a voice lesson, I can be like, I
can't do this, I can't do this today, and then
I get more nervous. I can psych myself out a
little bit more. I'm already I'm even sitting here right
now being like I'm talking too much. I'm gonna be
tired for our vocal lesson in an hour. So I
find even if I'm doing a lesson. The thing that
helps me the most is that if I'm three warmups
(23:46):
in and I'm starting to feel myself get that perfectionist
kind of vibe going on, my tunnel vision is going in,
I just kind of shake my body like crazy and
I go, I'll start like whatever, like to like laugh,
to get myself out of that little thing. It's like
snapping myself out before I go into that perfectionist place.
(24:08):
I say to myself in that it's just fun. This
is just play. Let's just have fun, you know. I
always get the sense that a lot of times people
in their mind think, well, when I or if I
become really successful, if I make a lot of money,
if I get a certain amount of success, if I'm
number one on the charts, then I'll be happier. Then
I'm going to feel really good. Yeah. I mean, this
(24:28):
is a very touchy, a hard thing to talk about
because when you say that money and success doesn't bring
you happiness, and maybe a bunch of people would jump
to say, oh, switch lives with me, and I'll tell you,
you know, and I'll be happy, you know, if I
had the money you had. Money does a lot of
amazing things, and success does a lot of amazing things
(24:49):
for you, and it makes your life comfortable and easy,
and it's the biggest blessing in the entire world. And
I think you have to be aware of that. But
at the same time, you have to be happy before
you play the stadium for the stadium to make you happy,
because you're not going to get on the stage and
walk off that night and lay in bed and be like,
(25:11):
now I'm truly happy because I've played in front of
fifty thousand people. You can maybe make the ego happy,
but I'm talking about the real heart. It has nothing
to do with the fifty thousand people. How did you
feel when you were on the stage. Did you feel
that you were being an honest, kind of real version
of yourself And did you feel like there was love
in the room and was this thing very real? Then
(25:33):
that's really what's going to bring you happiness. So it's
just true happiness comes from within and not from outside success.
Some of the most fun shows of my life have
been in front of like fifty people that you're like
sweating and everyone's screaming the lyrics as loud as you can,
and there's this insane amount of excitement in the room
and the pressure is down, and it just feels so
(25:56):
intimate and close. And those have been some of my
absolute favorite shows Mine too. One of my favorites was
at the Grammy Museum Me Too. That was one of
my favorite shows ever. And that was such a small
(26:18):
audience and it wasn't the same as a huge arena
with everybody laughing and screaming and dancing and carrying on.
But oh, your voice sound it is so beautiful, and
the audience was totally with you, like they were breathing
with you. Yeah, you have to just kind of like
surrender to what the place you're playing wants to give you.
And that night, I think sometimes you just get struck
(26:40):
by a little bit of lightning, and that night had
some lightning in it, and it felt really amazing. I
often will be on stage and I'm kind of singing
with them. It's something that I think Bruce Springsteen had
that I really admire and love. And it just feels
like you're part of the people in like a really
like kind of a small town way. And I always
like to think about it that way, right, I get
(27:00):
that I almost think of you sometimes when I've watched
you and this sounds really odd, but I think of
you is kind of a healer because when I've seen
you with that audience, I see the look in your
eye and the way they react to what you're doing.
And I think I told you the first time I
really saw that was it Radio City, right, because that
was many years ago, that was early on when we
(27:22):
first started working together. No, that doesn't sound ought at
all funny that you said. I think that if I
wasn't doing music, I'd probably be studying holistic medicine and healing,
and so that lives really deep within me. So that's
actually really sweet. I feel like you've never told me
about the healer thing. I guess I haven't, but I
always think about it. It goes back to that show
(27:43):
at Radio City. I remember thinking to myself, Wow, he
is really playing with this audience, and the best way possible.
You know, you would do the thing when you would
get really really soft and there was that soft moment
and you'd get them to quiet down. Then you get
louder again. They'd get louder again. Don't, don't, don't, So
(28:09):
that's sorry, that's sorry, right, And I remember thinking, he
really understands this. He's creating an incredible evening for these people.
(28:30):
They are really enjoying this, and they're gonna go home
and talk about it, and they're gonna remember it and
they're gonna be inspired. Thank you. Stick around after the
break for this week's vocal tip and more with Seawan Mendez.
If you want to do this exercise with me, you'll
(28:51):
need a small bottle half filled with water and a straw.
Don't forget to press pause while you go find him.
Let's dive into this week's vocal tip. A lot of
people feel anxiety before going on stage. I'm going to
(29:13):
give you a few suggestions that will alleviate some of
that stress before you even start to warm up your voice.
If you're someone who likes to meditate, then meditate for
a few minutes. If you're someone who enjoys yoga, then
do some poses and stretches. Sometimes journaling can be very cathartic,
so try writing in a journal. You can either write
positive affirmations, or you can write what you're feeling and
(29:37):
what your fears are. Or if you have any anxiety
about singing, write that down too. Get it all out
of your system and free yourself from it. Before you
start to practice. Do whatever starts to relax your body
and take you away from the stress of the day.
It's always worth taking a few minutes to do. Now,
let's loosen up your body. Stand up slightly, bend your
(29:59):
knees to take the pressure off your lower back, and
just hang forward from the waist. You want your upper
body to just be hanging forward like a rag doll.
Let your head and ar hang loosely and freely. Take
a deep breath in. You might even feel your back
expand as you breathe in, and then just blow out.
Let all the tension out. When you do this, take
(30:21):
another deep breath in, and then this time as you
blow out, make a hissing sound as you slowly roll
up into a standing position. Once you're in the standing position,
take a deep breath and sigh ah. Just let all
the tension and the tightness of the day out of
(30:42):
your body. Next to tilt your head forward and just
do a gentle face shake. It's just to shake your
facial muscles loose and free, but make sure it's gentle
so you don't tense up your neck. Then you can
really shake your entire body loose by shaking your hands
(31:04):
and your legs and your face altogether. Now let's work
on your voice. You heard Sean mentioned that his favorite
exercise is the bottle exercise, where he sings through a
straw blowing bubbles into water. Singing to a straw helps
put your vocal cords in the best possible position in
(31:24):
shape to create the vibrations that produce a free singing tone.
Teachers explain this technique as setting up the most efficient
way for your vocal cords to work. By singing through
a straw, you will be automatically training the muscles of
your larynx without trying to manipulate them physically. If you're
looking for the technical term, it's often referred to as
a semi occluded vocal track exercise because your breath is
(31:48):
partially blocked, which creates a helpful back pressure in the
vocal tract. But really, seriously, you do not need to
understand any of that to have it help you. Just
try it. Put a straw into a small bottle or
a tall glass half filled with water, and you'll see
how helpful it can be right away. Let's blow some
bubbles and get started like this. Now you do that,
(32:14):
blow some bubbles into that water. Next, sing through that
straw your turn. You can sing a simple arpeggio, try that,
(32:42):
or really any musical pattern of notes that you like.
You can also try this on a song that you
want to improve on. It can really help the song
if you do it, sing through the whole song. Singing
through that straw into the bottle. Now there are straws
made especially for this, and also bottles we built in straws,
(33:04):
but you can experiment at home with this with just
a regular straw in a bottle. The size of the
straw will increase or decrease, the amount of resistance you feel,
and how far you put the straw into the water
will also make a difference. You'll feel what works best
for you. By the way, you don't always have to
sing into the straw in water. You can also sing
(33:25):
into the straw and just feel the air flowing out.
Put your hand about two inches away from the opening
of the straw, and you should feel a steady stream
of air blowing onto your palm. Then you'll really start
developing that muscle memory of keeping the air flowing forward.
And as you heard Shun say in our conversation, one
reason he likes singing through the straw into water is
(33:46):
because it muffles his voice so he can start his
vocal warm up freely without judging how his voice sounds
at the beginning, which I think is a great idea.
I always tell people when you begin warming up, the
way your vocal chords feel is far more important than
how they sound. If you want to try out the
vocal tip from this episode, I'd love to hear it.
Or maybe you want to share a bit from your journal,
(34:08):
or even a picture of the spot where you like
to do yoga or where you like to meditate. Use
the hashtag Backstage Pass pod on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, or
wherever you like to post. I can't wait to see
what you do with this week's vocal tips. I'll be
back next week with another interview and another vocal tip.
(34:28):
Talk to you then, maybe maybe, maybe maybe maybe. Backstage
Pass with Eric Vitro is written and hosted by me
Eric Vitro and produced by Morgan Jaffee. Katherine Giardo is
(34:50):
our managing producer. Emily Rosstech is our associate producer. Mixed
and mastered by Ben Polliday. Additional engineering help from Jacob Purski.
Mia Lobel is our VP of Content Director's Development. Justine
Lange helped create the show. Thanks also to Jacob Weisberg,
Heather faine, On Schnars, Carli Migliori, Christina Sullivan, Eric Sandler,
(35:13):
Maggie Taylor, Nicole Morano, Daniello Lacan and Royston Bazzer. Original
theme music by Jacob and Sita Steele for Premier Music Group.
We record at Resonate Studios. Fred Tlackson does our videography
and the photography is by Ken Sawyer. Special thanks to
Michael Lewis for his inspiration, his friendship, and the best
guidance anyone could ask for. Backstage Pass with Eric Vitro
(35:37):
as a production of Pushkin Industries. If you like the show,
please remember to share, rate, and review. I mean that really.
To find more Pushkin podcast listen to the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you
(35:57):
were going to write an autobiography today, what would you
title it? Falsetto okay? I said, we say falsetto okay
ironically because I had the hardest time learning how to
sing false head. Now you don't, and now it's in
this that's that's that hard word. That's what I would
title it. What would you title it? That's what you
(36:18):
would title Yeah, Um, I don't know what I would
title it. I really don't know. Must mean I'm not
ready to write it yet. Yeah, I guess not. Well,
you know, there's a lot more to come, but yeah,
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