Thx for taking the time to find out... who is Monica Millar?
I've been teaching singing since 1990. As being a daughter of a musician, I was raised with (Latin American) music since I was born. My first instrument was the piano.
I started singing in my twenties and basically taught myself to sing due to the lack of a pop, jazz teacher. I had only classical singing lessons at the conservatory which was very frustrating because I didn't know how to translate classical technique into pop and jazz!
I taught myself singing by everyday recording my voice for hours and listen back and try again and again and again....
until there was that moment that I heard myself and thought ....okay I'm heading in the right direction now.
I was going in the right direction indeed but...I had no clue what I was actually doing. How did I produce that sound? I just couldn't tell.
In the year 2000 I was participating a course in Estill Voice Training (EVT). It only lasted 2 days but in those 2 days I literally learned more then the 5 years in the conservatory!
After those days my journey in EVT started. I went to the States twice to study and in 2005 I had my diploma as a Certified Instructor of EVT. I was then the first in The Netherlands with this diploma.
Now many years later I have developed my own system based on EVT and a lot of experience in general.
What is Estill Voice Training?
EVT looks a bit like physiotherapy or even fitness. You'll learn what to do with your larynx and surrounding muscles to influence and enrich your sound.
I call it "Vocaltools" which you'll learn to master from within the first lesson.
So it works right away and it's a very effective way to teach and receive singing lessons.
The techniques used in EVT are categorised in a system which is comparable with a menu. A menu consists of recipes and recipes consist of ingredients.
An ingredient could be "tongue position" or "lowering the larynx". If you put some ingredients together you create a recipe which could be "Speech singing", "Belting" or "Opera".
If you are already somewhat experienced with singing but you would like to change your sound, then the EVT system provides easy to understand "Vocaltools" to adapt your sound in a way that it's more your taste. You'll learn first to understand what you are doing with your voice at the moment and then we'll work on how to adapt your sound.
The founder of EVT was Joe Estill. A very brave and ambitious lady who went to the extreme to make her own voice available to science. Many singing teachers worldwide are well known with EVT. I sill benefit from her fantastic work every day!