Workshop with Elene DEE

Voice Specialist 

ELENE DEE  

Vocalist – Composer – Arranger

My approach: I’m not a regular Jazz Vocalist.

WHO AM I ?

I build my voice technic by imagining that I am a piano.

I worked with passion (not counting the hours of days and nights).

I refused to work with a Voice teacher or a Music teacher.

I could hear the music since I was child, I played guitar then piano in a self-taught way. I wanted to find myself alone. I worked 10 hours a day on my vision.

I wanted to understand everything with passion and build my own interpretation, my own technic, with true and without limit of key or to give a name to my style of voice. To be free, and to compose.

I decided to work on the music of one of the best pianist: Bill Evans ’s solo. with  who I could build my voice, my range, my sound, my voice like his piano solo.

Even if it was a kind of impossible, to interpret his solo, I wanted to do it. Because when it’s difficult, you have to find the thing possible, a solution, a new style, a new breath, to build your charisma, your potential, your “me”.

I start this challenge . and I liked it. Even if I had to sing, to do again 400 times the same phrase because I was stuck, I continued until I found how to do it…and I did it.

MY ANALISIS and THE WORK:

Now since years I’m Elene Dee with my own technic, I perform and I teach in Europe, in Paris and in NYC.

My teaching is based on all my questions I had to answer to me. I am a pedagogue.

I like to give a lot of confidence  in themselves

Like: the obstacle doesn’t exist.

lo appreciate their own potential of expression and learn how to develop it

to learn how to find oneself, and learn to be independent with their daily work.

to build their charisma, build their own armor

I teach in detail on how to:

find their own voice, own sound, own projection, work their own column of air,

how to use their energy by perfectly controlling the dosages for this or that moment to interpret, how to be inside of them and to give outside of them,

how to protect themselves,

to subdue their sounds,, chase the fear, bring their voice or want as they want without doubting,

circulate it in themselves  from head to toe, from the ground to the sky, they must be an emitter of energy, to give happiness for their audience who will receive them as a gift

finally get into their character and know how to get out and reintegrate when they want,

Also know that everything can be acquired with integrity and remain integrated to escape their ego so that the benefit is always perceived with truth,

open to their audience, communicate, work their potential, discover

learn to use their body and their muscles to help their voice to tell their story,

learn to listen and to listen themselves, to listen to others and communicate with their group,

and be themselves, do not try to imitate, or only if its the subject.

I discover something very precious on my students with their sound which is often the sound of the family cocoon. A girl will have the sound of her mother’s voice or a son of her father

As a teacher we have to keep this and evolve it

the result is very therapeutic so comforting for the student

I could notice that it was a reassuring method that could blow them up, go very far in their artistic expression

all these questions were mine for my own technic.

ABOUT THE VOICE:

I had to look at the sound of the voice of each of them:

its provenance,

the spoken voice,

the singing voice,

the breathed voice,

the placed voice,

the voice screamed without making aphonia in a text to interpret or with the voice singing in power,

how to use their vocal cords for months, in tour shows without being aphonia,

and I understood so much about the voice for myself and for my students then

Aphonia is an alert like a fever or a side point

the body talks about what is wrong in the way of doing

I have a good command of this subject and I was able to teach it to people who had problems with the vocal chords.

And with my technique the vocal cords of these students have become normal again

I also work with my students on how to manage emotions and how to use them in the interpretation of their voices,

and finally even if for me the essential or even the essence for an artist goes through all these steps, I can finally bring them to a score of music to interpret,

My way of thinking is that you can not correctly interpret a piece if you do not know enough and if you build on a vacuum.

the important thing is to measure what we have and who we are and where we come from to be able to give something good.

Questioning helps enormously.

Building on a vacuum is possible but it exhausts quickly and it gives a return to 50% of its true potential.

With all my heart.

ELENE DEE.