So You Want to Sing Rock 'N' Roll: A Guide for Professionals

by Matthew Edwards

Rock 'n' roll is a style that was born out of the great American melting pot. An outgrowth of the blues, rock 'n' roll music combines driving rhythms, powerful chords, and lyrics that communicate the human experience to audiences around the world. Although rock singing was once seen as a vulgar use of the human voice and was largely ignored by the academic community, voice teachers and singers around the world have recently taken a professional interest in learning specialized techniques for singing rock 'n' roll. So You Want to Sing Rock 'n' Roll gives readers a comprehensive guide to rock history, voice science, vocal health, audio technology, technical approaches to singing rock, and stylistic parameters for various rock subgenres. Matthew Edwards, assistant professor of voice at Shenandoah Conservatory, provides easy-to-understand explanations of technical concepts, with tips for practical application, and suggestions for listening and further reading. So You Want to Sing Rock 'n' Roll includes guest-authored chapters by singing voice researchers Dr. Scott McCoy and Dr. Wendy LeBorgne, as well as audio and visual examples available from the website of the National Association of Teachers of Singing. This work is not only the ideal guide to singing professionals, but the perfect reference work for voice teachers and their students, lead and back-up singers, record producers and studio engineers. The So You Want to Sing series is produced in partnership with the National Association of Teachers of Singing. Like all books in the series, So You Want to Sing Rock 'n' Roll features online supplemental material on the NATS website.

292 pages, Paperback

First published October 16, 2014

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database. For more information please see Matthew Edwards

Equally at home in classical and Contemporary Commercial Music Styles (Musical Theatre, Pop, Rock, Country, R&B), Matthew Edwards has performed over 30 roles in musical theatre and opera with companies including Tri-Cities Opera, Ash Lawn Opera Festival, New Jersey Opera, Atlantic Coast Opera Festival, the Acadiana Symphony Orchestra, the Miami Valley Symphony, Dayton Philharmonic, Dayton Pops, Cincinnati Opera Outreach, Lyric Opera Cleveland Outreach, Tippecanoe Canal Days, Theatre Lab – Dayton, and KNOW Theatre where he was also Executive Director from 2008-2010 earning the Southern Tier Opportunity Coalition’s “Top 20 in their Twenties” award in 2009. He was a district finalist of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions in Oklahoma City and has also been a finalist in competitions sponsored by Dayton Opera, Tri-Cities Opera, and the National Association of Teachers of Singing.

His current and former students have performed on American Idol, on and off-Broadway, on national and international tours, in regional theatre, on cruise ships, at theme parks, and in bands playing throughout the United States. A leading researcher on the contemporary singing voice, his work has been presented at the NATS National Conference, the Voice Foundation Annual Symposium: Care of the Professional Voice, The National Center for Voice and Speech, The International Congress of Voice Teachers, the Musical Theatre Educator’s Alliance, and at the Southeastern Theatre Conference. He has presented workshops and master classes for the Duke Voice Care Center, Valley of the Sun NATS, Georgia NATS, Virginia NATS, Missouri State University, Mary Hardin-Baylor University, University of Northern Colorado, and Illinois Wesleyan University. He has written articles for The Journal of Voice, The Journal of Singing, American Music Teacher, NYSTA VoicePrints, and Southern Theatre. He has also authored book chapters for The Vocal Athlete by Dr. Wendy LeBorgne and Marci Rosenberg, and A Dictionary for the Modern Singer by Dr. Matthew Hoch. In 2014, Edwards’ book “So You Want to Sing Rock ‘N’ Roll?” was published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishing as part of a new initiative sponsored by NATS.

Edwards holds degrees from the Cleveland Institute of Music and Louisiana State University. He is a former faculty member of Hartwick College and SUNY Cortland. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Voice and Voice Pedagogy at Shenandoah Conservatory where he has developed their one of a kind Pop, Rock, Country, and R&B curriculum for the musical theatre program. During the summer, he serves on the faculty of the Contemporary Commercial Music Voice Pedagogy Institute at Shenandoah Conservatory where he teaches Somatic Voicework™ with Jeanette LoVetri to voice teachers from around the world. Affiliations include: New York Singing Teachers Association, Music Theatre Educators Alliance, the American Guild of Musical Artists, and the National Association of Teachers of Singing for which he serves on the Board of Directors as Treasurer for the state of Virginia.