About

VocalPractices.com was created by Boston based vocalist April Hall. Hall’s vocal coaching is centered on bringing every song and student to life by exploring emotional interpretation, phrasing, breath mechanics and developing a solid vocal technique. Her teaching style is rooted in vocal and breath mechanics, and using those mechanics to inform vocal phonation choices like style, resonance, and pressure. Practicing safe and progressive vocal techniques will allow the student to obtain real technical and artistic growth. Hall believes that every vocalist can benefit, from an ongoing, safe and consistent vocalise practice.

With over twenty years of teaching, Hall has developed her own brand of vocal coaching, combining her knowledge and experience with both vocal technique and live performance into a scaleable, safe, vocal practice, personalized for each individual students vocal goals.  She has a passion for helping vocalists achieve the type of fluidity with their instrument that every singer desires. This passion has led her to share these techniques online through vocalpractices.com.  “I believe it’s important for all artists to pass along what they know and what they’ve learned to the next generation.  It’s imperative that this collective knowledge is shared, and I believe sharing with professionals and students alike is important.  That the arts are important.  Vocalists are important.”  

Hall looks at each singer with fresh eyes considering what can be fixed right now and what can be fixed with committed practice. She works with the student to come up with a clear set of vocal goals. Hall jokes, “being a singer, is being a professional hyperventilator. Not totally true, but it does give you and idea of how hard your body needs to work to sing well and to sing safely. Being a professional singer, is like being a professional athlete. Can you sing casually? Of course, but to sing safely and effectively over your whole life time, takes discipline, practice and thought.”

Her approach is simple, teach each vocalist how to care for their own voice, how to feel what is going on with that voice both physically and mechanically, creating vocal awareness. Once they have consistent vocal awareness we can then develop “tools” to help them navigate their voice, and to understand how to control, manipulate and enhance their voice through proven vocal techniques. The end goal is to give each singer, more “tools” in the vocal toolbox, so that they have more artistic choices, regardless of genre. Hall coaches students in many genres including pop, jazz, broadway, country and R&B, but points out that even though vocal techniques may vary slightly from genre to genre, that core technique is the same. Good vocal technique is good vocal technique. Great vocal technique equals unlimited vocal choices.

Traditional voice lessons have fundamental gaps which Hall has filed with her own private voice studio and vocalpractices.com. These gaps include lack of microphone instruction and teaching continual vocal adaptability to venue, stage, and ensemble, as well as teaching vocalist how to self analyze their voice on that day, for that particular performance. Each performance is unique and knowing how to approach that performance and to adapt for that moment, is paramount to any vocalist consistency. Hall explains, “I’m sharing information with my students that will shorten their search for vocal solutions. The benefit of studying with a performing teacher, is that you are the gaining information, that only performers can tell you. Experiences, that only a performing teaching can share with you, so that you don’t have to waste time, with trial and error. Simply put, it’s faster, it’s authentic, and it’s immediately applicable.”

Hall believes in teaching her students to self analyze and to self adjust, rather than in an endless round of lessons. “I prefer a period of time of information exchange (our lesson) and a period of post study (students practice time and peformance time). Once the basic mechanics of vocal practice have been learned, and have become a physical and mental habit, then the necessity of frequent lessons become less critical. The bottom line, is the performing vocalist, should be performing. Vocal practice is made solid by performance, and performance grants the body and mind the repetition of technique. You need both. The growth of the voice is intrinsically linked to the singers ability to implement those techniques as often and early as possible. A healthy vocal practice is one that is a planned cycle of study and performance. “

Hall graduated from Berklee College of Music, where she received the prestigious Louis Armstrong Performance Award. She has done projects for Atlantic Records under the direction of Arif Mardin, for the likes of Chaka Khan, Melissa Manchester and Bette Midler and has performed with artists such as Rosemary Clooney, Al Jarreau, Billy Joel, Helen Cornelius and Dinah Shore. Hall performs and records with New England’s finest musicians, including Tim Ray, Gray Sargent, Les Harris Jr., Tom Hall, Joe “Sonny” Barbato, Jerry Bergonzi, John Lockwood, Marty Ballou, Mark Poniatowski, Marshall Wood, Jim Gwin, Kenny Hadley and New Orleans's Amadee Castenell. She served as Executive Producer for ImprovLive 365, a daily webseries dedicated to exploring spontaneous creativity and improvisation, and co-produced the Brandeis University Improv Festival, featuring Milford Graves.

Hall is an award winning songwriter and her music has been featured on Boston's "Women in Music" series, on "The Coffeehouse”, WGBH’s “Eric in the Evening” and the nationally syndicated "Jazz After Hours" with PRI's Jim Wilke. Hall’s jazz recordings have topped national and international jazz charts, and “Room for Two” was named one of the top 50 Jazz Albums of 2012 by Jazz Times Magazine. In addition to her ongoing performances, Hall also continues to work with students both privately and across the country, holding master classes and clinics in modern vocal and microphone techniques and on the subject of "Songwriting in a Free Society”. Hall has been teaching private vocal students for the past 20 years, and has taught voice, vocal ensembles or master vocal classes at Brandies University, University of Maine, Milton Hershey School and Boston’s Performing Arts school, as well as Franklin School of Performing Arts. Hall also teaches Musicianship (ear training), Jazz and R&B Ensembles as well as Music Theory for Vocalist at Boston’s Berklee College of Music, where she is currently a faculty member of the Voice Department, teaching private lesson, Groove Ensembles for Vocalist and Live Sound and Microphones for Musicians. For April Hall’s full performance biography please visit: www.aprilhall.com, to inquire about studying with April, please visit our lessons information page.