So you've heard about Speech Level Singing, commonly known as SLS.

This Aussie quadragenarian had the 'pleasure' of having an SLS vocal coach in the early 2000's when I was in the thick of my own vocal training.

I'd been taking singing lessons casually for a years at that point, and I was kindof up against a brick wall.

My local teacher had shown me every trick she had in her bag, and even she was at a bit of a loss why I just wasn't getting any better - because I was practicing like MAD every single day and taking lessons every week for months.

Don't get me wrong - she was lovely, and a great singer; but she definitely wasn't in the business of turning beginner singers into rock gods, if you know what I mean.

And I saw an add for a new teacher teaching some crazy 'new' method that I'd never heard of before.

Speech Level Singing - SLS.

The ad was something like "you find it easy to speak, so make sure you sing the way you speak!" 

And it just spoke to me at some visceral level - "holy shit, I really DO find it easy and natural to speak..."

So I paid my first $50 or so to go and see this fancy new SLS guy.

And we did exercise after exercise after exercise.

Crazy exercises that I had never heard of.

We even had the conversation a few times about how classical technique 'sucked' and I just wasn't going to get a contemporary sounding rock voice with a classical teacher like I had been seeing.

I was hooked big time.

Now, before we go any further: my disclaimer here is that I'm not a spokesperson for any of the methods I'm about to mention, and this is all just my own personal experience and opinion. I'm just a passionate voice teacher and singer who has been at this for over 20 years, and coaching professionally for over a decade.

Pages of exercises, pages of drills - forget technique, terms and all that confusing shit, just make SURE you sing exactly the same 'easy' way that you speak.

This went on for months before I realised I was digging myself further into the mud, spending HOURS practicing GUG and MUM and KOO and TATA and ZEEDEEMAI over and over again.

I'd recently began noticing some issues with my speaking voice - just speaking throughout the day, and for a short while I even worked in a call centre (yes, I come from humble beginnings!) and had to quit because my voice started to get SORE and hoarse even just casually talking on the phone.

It took me a little while to put two-and-two together and realise that all those consonant based vocal exercises were literally boiling my vocal folds alive from the inside out - but I was in so deep at that point having spent hundreds of dollars with this speech level singing coach who admittedly sounded really great when he sang; but again couldn't tell me what was actually going on with my voice other than "you need more GUG and MUM and TATA" to skirt your consonants and achieve better closure.

And against my better judgement, I kept taking lessons with this guy.

He was a nice dude and all, but in hindsight - none of this training was about "me" at all, it was all a marketing approach that was designed a little bit like a cult.

Many years ago I actually taught a former Speech Level Singing SLS coach how to REALLY sing, and at the risk of a lawsuit, I can say for certain that he didn't need to be a good singer to get certified as an SLS coach, he didn't do any special training, hell - he didn't even know the absolutely basics of how the voice really functioned - he just submitted a recording of how he was doing the SLS exercises, paid a handsome yearly fee to join and "bam!" all of a sudden he could start changing his students $50, $60, $100, $200 dollars an hour because he came with the SLS tick of approval.

Anyway, that might be a conversation for another time.

Getting back to what we were originally talking about, I eventually got to a point where I realised that there was absolutely no basis for what my SLS teacher was showing me - and considering what I eventually learned about how Speech Level Singing worked as a business, he did those exercises a few times himself, got good at them, paid his membership certification fee and "bam!" he was able to charge me $50 an hour to show ME the same exercises - and in about 2003 or so, fifty bucks an hour was highway robbery for voice coaching fees - that's about $400 bucks an hour in today's world.

Honestly - Speech Level Singing nearly cost me my voice and came close to causing permanent damage to my voice and ruining my life.

My little legal disclaimer here is that I'm not saying that SLS is going to ruin your voice, or that it doesn't work, or that there's no basis behind the approach - I'm just sharing my personal experience of SLS ruining MY voice, not working for ME and now as a voice teacher myself with over a decade of professional experience teaching singers all around the world that there was no basis in what was taught to ME while learning from a Speech Level Singing coach.

Perhaps you'll have a different experience, or maybe you're a natural singer who'll do fine with a bunch of consonant vocal exercises. 

But hey, go and buy that Speech Level Singing course and let me know how it goes for you... it PROBABLY won't ruin your voice, it PROBABLY won't be a waste of money and it PROBABLY doesn't lack merit.

To put this in perspective for you, I'm an Aussie.

Not exactly a young one, so with a pretty defined Aussie accent.

Hard consonants. Glottal stops. Nasality. An open Velarpharyngeal Port. Slurred articulation.

^ Absolutely the OPPOSITE of a great singing voice.

Because singing and speaking really are NOT the same thing.

Perhaps if you're lucky enough to have the 1% super special magically correct American dialect where everything is open for you and you're naturally a great singer - but I figure if you've read this far, this simply ain't the truth for you either.

So, singing "like you speak" is really a misnomer - and the 'original' Speech Level Singing approach from the 80's actually DID have some merit and basis in fact; the cult SLS of today is nothing more than a cult marketing approach that does. not. have. any. basis. in. fact.

Do you see any Aussie singers with four octaves of natural, powerful range singing with a thick Aussie accent?

Nope.

John Farnham - no accent.

Jimmy Barnes - no accent (plus, he's Scottish).

Sia - no accent.

And that's because it's simply not POSSIBLE to become a great singer if the basis of your technique is "speech" - think about all the different voices, accents, dialects and languages around the world; don't you think that there's just a few (million) variables in there that makes the concept of "speech level singing" a little bit daft?

And if you think the word "level" refers to larynx position, or even to volume - you'd also be wrong in both those cases too, the larynx actually DOES move to a different position when you sing, especially when you engage the CT muscles required for mixed voice and register connection; the definitely is literally Laryngeal Tilt, because the larynx tilts away from the speech position. And if you know how your resonators are centred and how the soft palate 'rings' your vowel overtone when you alter your resonant space, you'd realise that singing really IS a fuck ton louder than speaking solely due to the way you use your resonators when you raise the soft palate and 'place' your formant.

SLS is bullshit - my personal opinion, of course, for that army of SLS lawyers that are surely reading this.

Now, you've heard about my experience learning how to sing using Speech Level Singing, but what about the REAL approach that absolutely changed my life as a singer? How did I go from such a struggling singer who had to even quit their job because their speaking voice was toast - to the super professional voice coach and pro singer that you'll see in my "before and after" video below?

Was it cry? Edge? Twang? Compression? Open Throat? Ken Tamplin? Seth Riggs? Robert Lunte? Alaskan Monks? Aliens?

^ Not. Fucking. One. Of. Them.

You know for damn sure now that it was absolutely NOT Speech Level Singing - so you'll just have to watch the video below to find out. Add your details below the video to get a free copy of the Vocal Blueprint that absolutely changed my life as a singer: