Rita Ora Quotes

When I first started to sing, I just swung at it with an axe.

In every song, there is a vocal element that doesn't have any words. I wanted to play around with how emotive and expressive my voice could be.

Well, the teacher I studied with for nineteen and a half years was a man named Paul Gavert. He was a great lieder singer, so basically I'm a trained lieder singer because of that teacher. The teacher I currently study with - since 1995 - is Joan Lader, who also studied with Gavert.

When I had my first voice lesson I was 15 years old. And I had a really good teacher. This is what made all the difference. A good teacher will teach you the technique, but also how to listen to your voice.

It's quite hard to have your mom as a teacher - it's like, she's not necessarily a 'real teacher' for me. But she'd always teach me to really hear the music, and develop my ear, and to try and hear the harmonics of the piano.

In high school, I was Mr. Choir Boy. I had solos, I was helping out the tenors with their parts and our choir teacher would ask me what songs we should do.

I'm sure any vocal teacher that listens to me would rather cut my throat than do anything - I do everything all wrong - but I think for me that's the best - because I don't think I have a voice so I think what I project would be style - if I learned to sing I'd lose my style.

I'm a freak, everything has to be totally flat when I play. Ed Will, my jazz teacher, set up everything completely flat, and then you'd tilt your snare drum away from you, so I do that too. So my snare tilts away from me.

I started studying music at the age of five and a half. My older sister was taking piano lessons. When her teacher left our apartment, I would get up on the piano bench and start picking out the notes that were part of my sister's lessons.

The message of music was also the first thing what I learned from my first teacher. She was an organist too and she was very devoted to what she played, so she had a respect for every piece and she felt that she is not allowed to add something of her own.

Well, first I studied piano. I wasn't very satisfied because I though my teachers were dumb... and repressive.

Exene taught me how to bend my notes when I sing. That's her style. And I learned that from her.

I like to use my voice as an instrument and just play along with the music. That's really how I tend to my voice. The content usually comes after or during that process of just trying to be an instrument.

I love the challenge of singing something that's not that easy.

I consider myself a jazz singer. I think I stick to the roots of improvisation, singing in front of the beat, behind the beat, playing with notes and harmonies.

I suspect a singing teacher would have a fit with my diction. They'd probably think I was doing a very bad job.

I feel like I was always singing. Since I could speak, I could sing. It came very naturally. In school, I was always singing in choruses and choirs. I always loved to sing; it was something to fun to do.

Nobody told me how to sing, so I just thought I'd try and sing like Howlin' Wolf. It was like a bark; there was melody to it - but I would go off a bit and I wouldn't stick AutoTune on it or anything to make it in key. Even now, I couldn't tell you about harmonies. I couldn't tell about what notes I'm singing because nobody taught me to sing.

I've been singing since I was a kid, but I take my voice a lot more personally than my acting. I feel a lot more personal criticism when somebody tells you that you don't have a good voice.

The God's honest truth is that, being the singer, my body's my instrument.

Singing is something that I have learnt. I have given exams for it.

The biggest thing is to just keep your voice in shape so that when the emotion hits, it's there to have the colors to paint those pictures with the lyrics as well as the sound.

I never called myself a jazz singer. I just call myself a vocalist because I love to sing all kinds of things.

I've always been obsessed with the grain of the human voice. It's the ultimate instrument, there's this whole level of virtuosity and poetry, a sort of athleticism, of controlling your voice.

Where prominent writers are expected to have a socially, politically responsible voice, musicians sometimes find meaning only in the voice which produces melodies with vocal chords.