Music careers

Vocal coach, Tracey Carmen, was raised in Beatles country, so it’s no surprise she’s made a career in music. She works for Liverpool’s Vox organisation, which provides vocal tuition and signing workshops. As a singer herself, she has provided backing vocals for major labels like EMI, Sony and Virgin and also coached the voices of Atomic Kitten into their first record deal.

YM: How did you become a vocal coach?
TC: I always enjoyed singing; I had my own band and got into recording deals when I was 19. I thought it would be good to find out about technique and add another string to my bow. I trained to be a vocal coach at a specialised place in Liverpool called Sense of Sound about eight years ago and then, about three years ago, I started working on my own.

YM: What famous singers have you worked with?
TC: I worked with Atomic Kitten just before they got their record deal. I did a lot of the backing vocals on their first album, ‘Right Now’, and wrote and produced ‘Be With You’ on their ‘Ladies Night’ album – it got to #2 in the charts in December 2002.

YM: With the amazing studio technology today, is it still important to be able to sing live?
TC: It’s never stopped being important to sing live. Even some of the greats like Madonna are getting slated now for not singing live. A lot of her show is live; she’s just taken some artistic license because she’s doing really heavy dance routines. In that instance, I thinks it’s OK, but generally, I just think it’s really shoddy to turn up with a DAT, mime and call that a performance. We’re on a backlash against it now, but in the last few years that’s what everybody did. If you didn’t do it you risked looking foolish, because obviously you can’t emulate live exactly what you do on a record. Atomic Kitten sang live on tour and the first time they played at GMEX [in Manchester] there were other girl and boy acts on the bill and none of them were singing live. There wasn’t even anybody at the sound desk! They were like, ‘What - you want microphones?’

YM: Can anyone sing?
TC: I think if you can talk and you are not tone deaf – which is extremely rare – then you can sing. As a nation we’ve lost the will to sing. If you go to Ireland everybody sings and the same in Wales. There is a really innate ability to make music work and I think that’s been lost in England for a while. It’s good to see organisations like Youth Music bringing in access to music where it wouldn’t normally be.

YM: Is it true that some foods are bad for your voice?
TC: Yes, you should avoid anything mucus making (yeuch!) like dairy products or even bananas!

YM: Tell us about the singing project you’re currently involved with…
TC: I’m running a project that was funded by Youth Music in St Helens at the Citadel Arts Centre called Use Your Voice. There are two programmes: one for the 8-13 yr olds and another for the older age group. It’s over 20 weeks, the first 10 weeks is an acapella project – finding out about vocal and breathing techniques, vocal maintenance and putting together a set of songs for a performance at the end of the course. The second 10 weeks is based around song writing and arranging. Focussing on how you can bring your songs to life just by using harmony to embellish them - how to use your palette basically. We’ve got some great kids who are really enthusiastic about singing, and some who’ve never ever had an experience like this before

YM: What kind of coaching will you be giving Merewen?
TC: Merewen is a very relaxed performer and a great little songwriter. I will just be explaining to her how she can look after her voice and to work on expressing her songs visually during the performance.

YM: Does playing an instrument help develop your songwriting and vocal skills?
TC: If you don’t play an instrument you have to rely on someone else to put your ideas across which can be frustrating, I use a computer. As a girl you go into studios and come up against this men’s “magic circle” – you ask them if they can do something and there’s a lot of chin stroking, but when you actually learn it – it’s not complicated at all. I would recommend that anyone learns some sort of medium to get their ideas out rather than rely on other people.

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