Vocal “Decathletes” – inside the hidden world of Session Singing!
Thursday 3rd July 2025, 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM (London Time)
What is a session singer? Officially it’s a freelance, short-term “singer for hire” brought in to be part of a live or recorded musical project. However, it’s more generally understood to be the “behind-the-scenes” singer who is regularly booked for paid recording work. The type of work (and pay) varies a lot. The following are some examples:
- Advertising jingles & station idents
- Singing on new material that songwriters have written - "demo songs"
- Backing vocals on tracks/albums and new shows, e.g. for cruise lines
- Lead vocal features on songs written by others for release - “feature vocals”
- Vocals for movie soundtracks and TV series
To be employable in this role, singers are best to have a generic rather than distinctive ‘signature’ sound, be stylistically very versatile (vocal “decathletes”), have a reliable, robust vocal technique, a great ear for vocal blending, quick melody learning & harmonising, a solid understanding of music and be able to thrive & deliver under tight time pressure in the challenging, unique performing conditions of the recording studio.
Session singing is a side of the music industry that is largely hidden from the public and isn’t easy to find out much about, even online. So, with 35 years of session singing experience, the presenter will cover around ten different types of session work, provide examples, outline what skill set is required for each one and give some advice on how to get into this sort of work.
As further background, here also are some videos on this topic featuring the presenter:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtpmH_zJ0WE
🏷️ Price £30 (UK VAT inclusive)
🎥 Recording automatically sent to all who book (even if you cannot attend live)
▶️ Rewatch as many times as you like
📜 Certificate of attendance available
Kim Chandler
Kim Chandler (MMus BMusEd) is a renowned contemporary vocal coach & session singer. She runs a busy private studio in Marbella, Spain, where she coaches an elite clientele of stadium band singers, including BRIT award winners & GRAMMY nominees, artists from a range of genres, professional singers and vocal coaches online.
Attend this course for as little as £22 as part of the Voice Professional Training CPD Award Scheme.
Learn MoreSorry, this is an archived short course...
We have plenty of upcoming short courses coming soon. See details of some of them below or look at the full list of short courses.
Thursday 19th February 2026
8:30 AM - 10:30 AM
(London Time)
It’s not a virus! Reconceptualizing and De-pathologizing Music Performance Anxiety
Rebecca Herman
Performance Anxiety is one of the most widespread and debilitating challenges facing musicians across all ages, nationalities and musical genres. Despite decades of research and the development of numerous interventions, we do not yet have an established way of supporting performers experiencing performance anxiety. Aimed at performers, teachers, researchers and students, this presentation will first summarise the current state of play in performance anxiety research, before exploring alternative ways to think about performance anxiety, drawing on new research outside of performance psychology...
Thursday 19th February 2026
1:00 PM - 2:30 PM
Thursday 26th February 2026
1:00 PM - 2:30 PM
(London Time)
Performing Pain: Vocal Health in Emotional Roles!
Louisa Morgan
How connected are acted emotions to our real-life emotions? Are they expressed differently? Do they feel different in the body? This 2-part course with Louisa Morgan looks at the potential impact of acted emotion on vocal health, why we should consider it as voice practitioners, and how to care for our performers needing to work with it.
Tuesday 24th February 2026
5:00 PM - 7:00 PM
(London Time)
Incorporating CBT principles within vocal health and voice care
Dr Luke Aldridge-Waddon
Join Dr Luke Waddon as he introduces the principles and techniques within cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) in relation to the voice and voice care. He will discuss psychological factors relevant to the development and maintenance of voice disorders and how these might be approached from a cognitive-behavioural perspective. He will describe theoretical concepts and therapeutic components often used within CBT and consider how these might be applied when working with voice users.