Solutions for Singers: Tools for Every Performer and Teacher [Hardcover]

Unlike his other book "the Structure of Singing", which covers all the same points, in this book he presents questions that people have about various techniques and explains the difference between them and why one or the other works better or less effectively while singing.

As I would say with all books on singing, you can't learn to sing reading a book, however, you would get closer to good correct singing with sound principles using his books than any other. He covers everything from vowel modification, to proper balanced release and attack (things seldom covered in any meaningful way in most books, especially those dealing with "becoming a singing star" for modern singing), posture, everything. He has many exercises that help discover the truths behind healthy production (but not as many as he has in his other books).

It is not always interesting reading, and he does nothing to whet your appetite for gossipy back stage stuff like some singing teaching writers do. If he has worked with many singers, you would have no clue about it, or who they are. No name dropping in any of his books like one finds in so many books on singing (all for the purpose to brag about the author's abilities, or to sell you on the fact they know what they are doing because Mr X and Miss Y were former students, or he coached with them once). All you have to sell you on the principles in his writings are the facts and the explanations to help you understand what good singing is all about.

All the books by Richard Miller are excellent and informative, actually overly packed with information (you can read them a million times and find stuff each and every time, and see more in what you read before than what you originally thought was there), and this one is no different. I feel everyone, teacher or student, who is really serious about singing and singing well for decades to come (not just because an "American Idol" for a year or two) really should study these books. I feel they should be recommended readings at all university vocal music departments. Get the facts and understand the physiology of the voice, and you can go a long way. There is no "new improved scientific technique to create great voices." Why, you may ask? Because anyone who preaches that sort of stuff is selling you a bag of air. There are no new and improved scientific techniques to teach voice. We may have a better understanding, scientifically, of what happens when someone sings, but we have no idea how to create what we see or even why the folds do what they do, they are involuntary actions of our brain which we control only by the desire to sing a certain pitch. The vocal muscles cannot be manipulated like that, they aren't like developing muscles for lifting or running. None of Miller's principles are based on just what we see the voice box doing while singing; rather they are based on centuries of what worked, and what the masters through the ages discovered produced good sound quality in the voice. His explanations of things and how the voice works, are the clearest and most detailed I have ever read, and the most useful when it comes to understanding the voice.

Being based on a question-answer approach, this book may surprise you with the sometimes unexpected answers to the questions asked.

However, do not expect this book to have the answer to each and every question about singing you might have ever had. Miller himself advises you that it doesn't.

This book is more than simply a vocal technique book. It provides food for thought galore. I felt very fulfilled by some of the reading I did of this book.

It would be good if R. Miller attempted including more information in each chapter, in each answer, should this book have a second edition, which I surely think it deserves.

This is a book for those who, like me, can never get enough of singing, vocal technique and so on.