I have worked with a number of artists in western Asia, including K-Pop artists and Multi-Platinum C-Pop artist (C-Pop is Chinese Pop including Canto-Pop and Mando-Pop) — some in-studio in Hollywood, Los Angeles and some via online voice training (Skype, Facetime, Google Hangouts, etc). A specialty of the midtown Manhattan studio is the big-voiced pop singers wanted by the K-pop and Chinese pop industry. In a strange twist of fate, due to some early success stories with such artists, about half my singing lessons and mentoring studio are Asian or Asian-American pop artists, many working in Hong Kong; Seoul, South Korea; and Taipei, Tawian.
Although I am often asked to keep who trains here under wraps (please ask and we can keep your studies on the DL), I have been kindly granted permission by several students to use their videos (and we will be putting more links to students as I have tie to put them online) – incuding the lovely and quintessential Ellie-Trained K-Pop voice Kate Kim, as Kate is a former client of Ellie’s, now signed and living in Seoul. Kate is very very clever in addition to training hard and being a force of nature type of talent and musical skill (singing, writing, and playing piano). Through brilliant strategy (and having trained hard to get grat skill) she co-opted her YouTube video into being scouted (how to do that is something we can discuss) and was flown to Seoul by the very popular Superstar K TV talent show – the largest and most popular singing talent show in Korea. Korean Pop is big and they have large sums of cash to do this type of thing. For those who are not familiar, the show is very similar to American Idol – a show which another of Ellie’s students was a Golden Ticket winner. In fact, after her stint with Superstar K ended, I was about to try to set her up on Idol when she was signed.
K-Pop, Canto-Pop and Mando-Pop all share a very emotional delivery style. K-Pop performers also (usually) need to be good dancers and Canto-Pop and Mando-Pop artists can benefit from this as well, IMO. K-Pop singing is really fun to work on as it entails a lot of the fun parts of US pop singing – especially singing cool high notes which you have to admit is super fun! – but also with an element of added drama. Plus you get to have cool hair which is a majour sales point as far as I’m concerned! American-born performers have an edge up in the English department, usually, as being able to sing and speak well in English is a skill the industry looks for. K-Pop is breaking out of Korea and it’s good to have English, if possible. Korean pronunciation is also important! Ellie doesn’t speak Korean (or Cantonese or Mandarin) so please bring in a recording of the lyrics if we need to work on Korean.
Check out Kate’s YouTube Channel for some sampling of the types of voices that are successful in K-Pop.
Here’s her latest, working with Kia:
Don’t forget to follow her YouTube and Instagram accounts!