Quentin Bouvier's Singing Voice Transformation Before And After With Phil Moufarrege

In this singing transformation you're going to see how Quentin dramatically improved his voice by working with me.

What Quentin has to say about his singing transformation

Before studying with Phil, I felt like just a typical average singer stuck with my vocal range and tone. My voice sounded OK but nothing special.

I was in a rock band at the time and always wanted to sing like Ronnie James Dio or Chris Cornell, but I couldn't sing any of their songs and had to sing all the high parts in falsetto.  Singing Dio in falsetto doesn't sound cool.

I took singing lessons with other teachers first, and while they helped me to an extent, my vocal range was still limited.  I felt like I had two different voices and was unable to connect them. I lacked confidence with my singing because all my energy was focused on my singing technique - so I'd do weird things live because my technique didn't match my ambitions.

The most frustrating was recieving feedback like "Your voice is ok but you should sing something more comfortable for you", "I especially liked your midrange but you should ask your band to play a little lower for you" and so on... That kind of feedback was honest, but I was extremely frustrated to work so much, and end up being told that the VERY THINGS I was training hard on were the things that weren't working.

As a result of this, I couldn't connect to my audience because I was totally focused on the fear of my voice cracking and was constantly bothered whether my technique was right or not...

But since studying with Phil, my voice improved dramatically in all its components: vocal range, stamina, consistency, tone, pitch, phrasing etc.

As a primarily rock and metal singer, most of my training was range focused, yet ALL the components of my voice improved while working with Phil: better tone, better pitch, better resonance, better phrasing. Even my falsetto improved despite never directly focusing on it.

Within two years of training, my voice started to feel very strong. I learned how to distort it without straining. I started with very small sessions, and in a few months, I was able to sing rock vocals in a band for three hours straight and be completely fine the next day.

Up to this point, I am no longer afraid to sing anything anywhere. I have the power and flexibility to produce the sound that pops in my head without freaking out about my technique. I have developed a strong, reliable voice. I have never been so confident with my voice, and the feedback I get from people now has drastically changed.

Before training with Phil, people would like my voice and appreciate the effort. Now, when I sing, I turn heads.  People instantly stop talking and start listening to my voice. You could call it a "wow" factor, and it comes from both technique and emotion - since I have enough technique and confidence that I can truly sing my heart out.

Before training with Phil, I would receive a lot of "you have a nice voice", "that was very pleasant", and now it is more "your voice is amazing, you have a gift".

How Quentin transformed his singing voice

Quentin studied with me through webcam back in 2014.  We did 2 hour lessons a week for about 6 months and then as he became more skilled the lessons became less frequent. Since about 2016 he was only taking a lesson every month or several months just to check in on some things or get help with specific things he was getting stuck with.

A big challenge Quentin faced was he was taught by his previous teacher that he needed to "bridge" into falsetto and "make it sound like it's chest voice" by using a ton of reverb on the microphone.  In our first lesson I immediately told him to turn the reverb off and had him working on stretching up his chest voice properly.  I had to show him how to do it without straining. It was a shock to him to learn that he was meant to sing those high notes in all those high rock songs in CHEST VOICE (to me chest and mix are the same thing).

His biggest challenge though was his French accent.  It caused him a LOT of constriction while singing and he'd get choked up and couldn't finish lines or hit high notes.  He would approach the words very staccato with a muffled tone.  I had to show him how to pronounce EVERY SINGLE WORD in the songs line-by-line.  We literally would sing lines from Hotel California and Eye Of The Tiger OVER AND OVER again.  HUNDREDS OF TIMES.  But he never complained ONCE.  In-between lessons he would practice up to 4 hours a day trying to get this right.  And he did.

He picked all of this up quickly and within 6 months he was able to sing songs that went up to high C's and even higher.

Phil Moufarrege