Vocal Release Review

Vocal Release is an innovative downloadable home singing course that seeks to change the way people go about learning to sing.

The author of Vocal Release is Eric Fray, whose musical background includes college-level voice lessons, singing in rock bands from the age of fifteen, and is now a full-time vocal coach. If you’re curious about Eric Fray’s vocal chops, you can listen to several full-length songs he’s recorded on his website.

The Vocal Release course is a culmination of over 20 years of Eric’s singing experience and research into how the human voice works. Its main focus is to enable voice students to sing as naturally as they speak by using cutting-edge vocal techniques and exercises that were compiled by Mr. Fray. While it’s a complete singing course, it doesn’t necessarily cover all topics quite as extensively as some of the other vocal training courses reviewed on this site.

Features

Here’s a breakdown of the Vocal Release course:

• The Vocal Release Manual
• 39 Audio lessons with exercises
• Bonuses

Manual:

Eric advises his students to read the entire Vocal Release manual before starting on the audio lessons. If you don't want to read a 300-page PDF in front of your computer and have enough paper, we suggest that you print it out.

The manual contains some interesting material such as best singing practices, lots of music theory, explanations on how the singing parts of the body work together, and other ins and outs of singing. More topics include several couple performance tips like how to work the microphone properly, and how to deal with a common enemy of all singers – stage fright. There are some exercises presented in the manual as well, but of course, they are a little bit more difficult to work through if they don’t have accompanying audio files.

While reading the Vocal Release manual, you’ll quickly realize that Mr. Fray is a rather opinionated and outspoken individual when it comes to his views and recommendations. Some people may be turned off by this while some may enjoy his matter-of-fact writing style. I suppose it’s a matter of personal preference for everyone.

Audio Lessons:

Vocal Release’s 39 audio lessons are divided up into 7 sections and are meant to be gone through in a period of eight weeks. A menu chart is included to give you the outline of the course. We recommend you print this out so you always have it available for reference when trying to find the next audio file. Eric Fray has a pleasant voice and is easy to listen to. Audio quality is good, though I personally thought there was a wee bit too much reverb put into the lesson audio mix.

The audio lessons are the heart of the course. You’ll find out how to properly warm up your voice before singing and how to warm down. You’ll also learn about the different registers, and how to move your voice through them seamlessly. There are plenty of singing exercises to help you build vocal strength, quality, and resonance.

Bonuses:

• Song Writing Guide: This 36-page document contains lots of good tips and tricks for both writing song melodies and lyrics. Nothing earthshaking, but a good read.
• Rhyming Dictionary: This appears to be nothing more than a .pdf scan of an actual rhyming dictionary. We can’t speak to its legality, but these kinds of aids can be a real help when trying to come up with your own lyrics for a song.

From a usability standpoint, Vocal Release could have been designed a bit better. The naming conventions on the filenames are not always consistent and some are downright cryptic, which resulted in me having to spend more time than necessary looking for the right lesson. You also need to use the reference chart to determine what audio file comes next in the lesson, as they aren’t numbered. This wouldn’t usually be a problem, but the Vocal Release course contains almost a hundred different audio files. Lastly, for some internet users, the size of the course (430MB) could also pose a problem.

The overall course quality is only slightly better than average, but the course material makes up for this fact.

Support

If you have any other questions about the Vocal Release method, you can phone or email customer care on the Vocal Release website. We’ve found they usually respond within 24 hours.

As one of the bonuses included with the lessons, Eric Fray offers customized 1-on-1 help and support for his students, should they need it. This is a support feature that most all of the other singing programs do not offer.

Ordering Information

Even though Vocal Release sometimes references and shows an image of the physical version of the course on their website, it is no longer available for sale. Vocal Release is currently only obtainable via download.

On Vocal Release’s website, you’ll find seventeen different guarantees that Eric makes about his program. The crux of the matter is that if you aren’t completely satisfied with the course you can get a refund if applied for within 60-days of purchase.

Vocal Release accepts both PayPal and major credit cards.

Conclusion

Priced at $97, Vocal Release is surprisingly one of the cheaper music courses out there. It has many attractive qualities, though we wish the production value of it was higher. Still, with unique and well thought-out singing techniques, Vocal Release makes a good alternative to the popular Singorama course which has a similar price tag.