If you’re looking for a vocal coach in the Los Angeles area to improve your technique, tone, range and interpretation, Jeff Paris is your guy. Jeff is a platinum award winning songwriter, experienced performer and most importantly, has first hand experience singing in “real world” situations on tour and on stage. Jeff was trained for five years by legendary vocal teacher Ron Anderson.
Jeff’s unlimited stylistic range makes him the perfect voice teacher when style and content coaching is required, whatever your genre demands – straight singing or gymnastic, clear or colored tone, vocal “shredding,” R&B licks and riffs, Jazz, Pop, or Rock. Jeff’s addresses cultural and style needs of all languages.
Two Types of Coaching:
“Like any athletic activity, singing requires preparation in the form of a warmup. Pro athletes wouldn’t dream of competing without it, and setting the voice up for performance is key if you want to sing your best that night, and be in shape to sing your best the next night and every night after!” So Jeff’s sessions are organized with a focus on both 1) Warmup and Technique, and 2) Content and Style (in which the demands of a particular song are addressed). “Beyond good tone and dynamic control, a singer’s artistic tools – – inflections, slurs, bends, “cries,” licks, falloffs and ad libs — that’s where so much of the fun is.”
Jeff teaches students how to tell a story with song interpretation by getting inside the words. A master improviser, Jeff breaks down the art of “chorus out” ad libbing, scat, and R&B riffing.
Jeff demonstrated singing talent as a child, and received a good “legit” vocal education from choir teacher Margaret Pasella in middle school and LACC’s Robert V.Altheuser in addition to his own self created daily study regimen of classic soul and rock singers.
But it was Jeff’s training with vocal coach Ron Anderson over a five year period that provided the game changing, voice saving technique that now forms the foundation of Jeff’s coaching strategy. “My experience with Ron was identical to the “Karate Kid” character Daniel, who needed to learn to defend himself , as did I…in my case, from bad vocal habits! In the movie, the teacher, “Mr. Miyagi,” subjects him to a series of tasks until in frustration Daniel shouts ‘I came here to learn Karate, not paint your fence.’ And Miyagi throws him a series of punches that Daniel blocks effortlessly. Ron conveyed key concepts to me in just that way.”
“At a certain point, my training kicked in while I was on tour in a sudden reflex as I went for a high note. From then on I became interested in every detail of my vocal instrument…the anatomy, the muscles, the resonance cavities, and the maintenance. As I’ve worked with singers as a songwriter, producer, and fellow band mate, I’ve developed strategies, building on Ron’s, to extend range, improve tone and above all preserve the voice.”
Jeff teaches Voice at The Academy of Music for the Blind (AMB) in L.A. The experience has been an enriching watershed in his work. “My AMB students have an exquisite connection with sound and it is they who are teaching me. I’ve learned to listen better than ever before.”
He’s also taught songwriting and blues guitar stylings at the Los Angeles Music Academy (LAMA).
In the Beginning:
Singing has been the prime touchstone of Jeff’s musicality since birth.
“My first memories as a toddler were hearing my parents singing and by the time I was two I could’ve done a 30 minute set of standards. “In the Still of the Night”, “Three Coins In the Fountain,” “You Gotta Have Heart,” and all the songs from “South Pacific.” They taped me on a Revere reel to reel …still got the tape!”
It didn’t hurt that the family lived in an apartment below that of Frank Sinatra composer pal Jimmy Van Heusen. Jeff’s mother told him: “My god, Jimmy kept us up all hours of the night banging on the piano. Then Sinatra would come by with an entourage around 2am and the drinking and partying would start.”
Folk singer / guitarist / teacher Irene Naftulin taught Jeff to play and sing in group lessons, and forever impressed on him the concept of filtering instrumental performance through the voice. In other words, “sing through your instrument.” Later, classical piano teacher Eloise Reeves advised him “bring everything you know about the piece you’re performing to bear on each moment you perform.”
“Use ALL of your knowledge, Jeff.”