Clicking on one of those little Google ads today – it claimed to be able to add an octave to a singer’s vocal range – I came across
Brett Manning’s site, and his ad for helping young singers.
The ad is written in that typical direct marketing style – the same sort of style that once ‘helped’ thousands of men to respond to the ad for becoming a man 
with muscles, instead of being the bloke who had sand kicked in his face.
You read through the ad and think: there’s no way anyone can ad an octave to their voice, especially not after a couple of lessons. But Manning is talking primarily to singers in the pop world rather than the operatic one. He talks about overcoming the singer’s ‘break’ – that point in the voice when you seem to have to switch from one kind of tone to another – and he says he’s not interested in helping classical singers. That isn’t his kettle of fish. He teaches people how to avoid fatigue with singing, amongst other things.
So you get the feeling that maybe this is all a bit of a have, and that the ad isn’t really going to change anyone’s singing career all that much. That’s if you only read the ad.
If you go to Brett’s site, or check out his name on the Web, you’ll find that there are plenty of people out there claiming he can do exactly what he says, and that he has done, for hundreds of recording artists.
It’ll cost you US$199 to find out whether what he claims is true. (Though he does offer a six-month money back guarantee.) He says he spent thousands learning all the ‘secrets’ from some old guru of a singing teacher. Why are there always ‘secrets’ in these ads? They seldom turn out to be secrets at all. It’s just that ‘secrets’ is a kind of magic word in direct marketing.
Could be interesting to try, nevertheless, when I’ve got a spare $199.
The thing that intrigues me about the site, however, is the picture of Brett Manning. He looks like a 24-year-old, yet he’s supposed to have been teaching for a decade – and was learning for years before that. Maybe the photos haven’t quite been updated?
