Emily: So here today on Creative Spotlights, we’re featuring Steven Memel, a celebrity vocal and performance coach based out of L.A. Steven has worked with many singers including Adam Levine and Jesse McCartney and also actors Drew Barrymore and Justin Long, Isabella Rossellini to say the least.

The goal of this interview is to get your perspective as a coach on what it takes for a music artist to express himself fully and get the success they seek in the entertainment industry.

My first question is what pulled you to become a coach and help others in the entertainment industry?

Steven: Good question, well people wanted my help. It’s a strange thing. I say sometimes it “chased” me down. I had a rather auspicious beginning as in I needed to graduate from college and I needed two extra units. I had already been singing for a couple of years, I was 19 and so I took a beginning voice class. On the first day, I sang and the teacher said, “Okay, what are you doing in this class?” Well, I was honest and I said, “I need the units.” She knew my teacher. She said, “Okay, you can stay in this class if on the day that I split up the men and the women, I’ll take the women, I’ll give you the classroom and you teach the men.”

Emily: You teach the men? Great!

Steven: I know, yeah. I got my own classroom and a bunch of students. That kind of thing kept happening. I studied with an acting teacher and they’d say, “Do you teach voice?” My voice teachers that I had worked with, they’d say, “I want to send you my overflow students.” So I guess people were seeing something and so I kind of fell into it like that.

Then I left it for a while. And then, several years later (ten years later or whatever), somebody started really asking me again and I just went, “Okay…” I yield. I hung up my shingle and the rest is history.

Emily: Wow! Okay. That sounds really amazing. Tell me about your ‘Science of Switching On’ technique and how it attracts artists to you and just anything you want to share about that.

Steven: Sure, the ‘Science of Switching On’ – well, let me backtrack and say that the only thing that drew me to teaching was not this fortuitous stuff. It was also I had a real love of seeing the underlying structure of things. And so if I really look at it, it was always a leaning of mind to break things down and explain them to other people. I think teachers just have that desire.

And so, the ‘Science of Switching On’ kind of came to me when I was 21, but I didn’t really codified it and called it that until many, many years later.

I’m involved in so many arts. I’m a dancer. I’m an actor. I’ve directed. I’ve done film/television, and recorded in the recording studio. I’ve done voiceover. I’ve produced. I mean, you name it, I’ve done it.

What became extremely clear is that there’s really one set of principle that lead to mastery. The channel just is different depending upon what discipline you’re involved in.

So in singing, which is where I originally made my mark as a coach. In singing, the voice is the channel. And therefore, having an understanding of the channel and the mechanics involved and the ability to removing obstacles towards its greatest expression of not only your feelings, but it’s created an expression of color and tone and dynamics, that is an important piece.

But also being equally versed as an actor and a director and having studied an enormous amount of psychology, spirituality, personal development with being a movement person because I have been a dancer, all these things came together and I saw that there were these elements that were inextricably unified to be able to be a master at any discipline.

Now because you have to make an entry somewhere, since I was teaching singing and since I was coaching performance of singing also, that’s where I decided to originally begin. The differentiation of what I do in the ‘science of switching on’ is most people have a big understanding of performance or acting or they have a big understanding of real deep skill set at the technical aspects and a moderate understanding of performance.

Because I come from where they are completely unified, inextricably linked, then that’s the uniqueness of the work I do with singers and performers. There is really no clinging separation line between the technique and the inner work, between the outside and the inner.

The simplest demonstration of that is asking the question, “Is your body going to be in the same state when you’re standing in front of a teacher, in front of a piano and you’re doing vocal exercises that it’s in when you’re in stage in front of a thousand people? Of course not.

Is it in the same state during that moment when you’re in front of the teacher as when you’re expressing anger, when you’re expressing joy? No, the body is consequently in a dynamic state.

Therefore, to practice technique only as a mechanical attribute, then it’s not the same because intention needs to move the body and shift the body and shift the physiology and shift the mind.

And so these things have to be brought together as a unified whole to really have that extraordinary “it” factor/hit the zone/lose the self/become the character, whatever it is.

So that’s the ‘Science of Switching On’.

Emily: Wow. Thank you. That’s an amazing explanation. It definitely sounds like the artist needs to have an extreme self-awareness, a sense of self-awareness on -like you mentioned, their intention with their technical gifts or skills, to create that creative performance for themselves. And also, the environment is really important.

Steven: Exactly. And not only that, over the last couple of years, my intention was always to develop it in the arts, but then move it into business and expand into other areas.

I’ve been working with entrepreneurs and business owners and just people in all walks of life bringing the same principles together of mastery. The principles that enable one to become a high-performer, a top performer in the arts, those are the same principles that enable people to become a high-performer in any area of endeavor, human endeavor.

Emily: Right. Even in a professional setting as well.

Steven: Yes, because if you even think about what are the levels of communication, “Am I communicating authentically?” if it’s about my business, if it’s about my brand, what is my voice, what’s the story that my voice is telling, is it that I’m a powerful person while I’m talking about power or is it communicating some undermining other impression that, “Oh, he’s got a weak voice,” you know?

Emily: That’s great because it explains your philosophy. Right there was so philosophical on how you see the world spiritually, the inner energy and the outer stuff too.

Steven: We all as human beings (or most of us I should say) vastly dramatically under-estimate ourselves and undervalue ourselves. If we only knew how amazing we were, we would have so much more of that amazing at our disposable.

One of my basic philosophies and obviously, if somebody walks in my studio, I’m not going to throw this at them, we’ll start with the scales, but ultimately, whether it’s ever spoken or whether it’s tacitly understood through the sense of wholeness that one has when you finally embrace your ability, we are intrinsically so valuable that nothing we ever do in our life can add to that one bit and nothing we ever fail to do can detract from it one bit. It’s a done deal that they were born (and some would say, from the day before the day we were born).

So what life is about is owning that unbelievable vast value and that unbelievable understanding of the beauty of human life and our life and then saying, “While I have this time here on earth, what do I want to create? What do I want to make it about?”

If we can maintain that position, much better. What is not a joy can become a joy.

Emily: I want to ask you’re in L.A., you see the acting scene and music scene, how is it? What do you see going five years from now?

Steven: Wow! Yeah. Well, it’s the wild west. I like to say it’s the wild west.

Emily: Yeah, I’ve heard that before.

Steven: Yeah, I’m sure. The reality is that the acceleration of change is so intense that the one thing we have to become good at now is change and navigating our way through things that will not remain the same most likely and that are incredibly volatile and dynamic.

So the more capable we are of doing that, the better we’re going to survive the industry. And if you want to put it down to street terms, I say, “You got to be scrappy.” You just got to say, “You just got to be scrappy. How do I make it work?”

So ultimately, right now, it’s about people developing their own audiences, people building their fanbase. And when you have visibility, when people see you, then you have a good shot. But you need the other element of being a real hardcore entrepreneur. It’s not a day’s work where you can say –

I mean, some people still can walk into this. There’s no rule or anything, but it’s not the same way that most people can expect somebody to go and take them and then make it happen for them. You lucky if you get that.

But for most of us as artists, we have to be an entrepreneur at the same time. Know our business. Spend 50% of the time on understanding the business, understanding what impacts fans, understanding the channels you can use, being able to measure so that you’re not going on instinct.

“Well, I like doing this channel.”

Well, what’s the result you’re getting and are you able to convert that into hard cash because if you want to make a living as an artist, then you have to understand your sources of income and how to create them and turn your streams on for yourself. It’s not that it can’t happen any other way, but that’s the way it happen.

Emily: Love it. My final question is regarding legacy. At the end of the day, what do you want the people you work with, what do you want to leave behind for them? At the end of the day, how do you want them to remember your work?

Steven: Legacy, if we’re going from a general place, the legacy I want is to leave my son thriving and healthy. Of course, every parent would say that, but that’s the impact I would like to make.

And then on the world, what I’d like to leave is the impact of having contributed a set of tools to which I’m hoping there’s some originality or if not even originality, that it’s just another voiced thing in a new way that would affect people’s lives and help them achieve their goals in a powerful way. I’m sure you’ve heard this. This is:

\”To laugh often and much

To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children

To earn the appreciation of honest critics

and endure the betrayal of false friends

To appreciate beauty

To find the best in others

To leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child,

a garden patch or a redeemed social condition

To know even one life has breathed easier because you lived

This is to have succeeded…\”

That is the impact I want to leave.

Emily Correa is an entertainment writer and the Co-Founder of Creative Spotlights which focuses on inspiring those in the music industry. Soon to be published is her project In The Spotlight: Over 100 Voices in Music in February 2015. Living in Miami, she is also a certified life/business coach and CEO of Vida Linda Coaching which supports those in arts and entertainment on owning their creative power, getting strategic and going after their dreams.

Emily Correa is an entertainment writer and the Co-Founder of http://www.Creative.Spotlights.com which focuses on inspiring those in the music industry. Soon to be published is her project https://www.facebook.com/over100voices in February 2015. Living in Miami, she is also a certified life/business coach and CEO of http://www.VidaLindaCoaching.com which supports those in arts and entertainment on owning their creative power, getting strategic and going after their dreams.

Author Bio: Emily Correa is an entertainment writer and the Co-Founder of Creative Spotlights which focuses on inspiring those in the music industry. Soon to be published is her project In The Spotlight: Over 100 Voices in Music in February 2015. Living in Miami, she is also a certified life/business coach and CEO of Vida Linda Coaching which supports those in arts and entertainment on owning their creative power, getting strategic and going after their dreams.

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