Connect
To Top

Meet Sara Leib of Voice Studio LA and Voxercise in Mid-Wilshire

Avatar photo

Today we’d like to introduce you to Sara Leib.

Sara, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I have always loved music and I come from a musical family. No one else is a professional musician, but everyone in my family plays an instrument and sings. As a kid, I remember one day when I didn’t want to practice the piano, my mom told me that I didn’t have to become a concert pianist, but I did have to practice. She said something to the effect of: ‘In this house, we study History, Science, English, Math and Music. When you leave this house you don’t have to study music anymore’. I wasn’t pleased at the time, but what that impressed upon me was that music is an educational pursuit. I tried my hand at a lot of instruments, but really found my favorite when I started singing.

I am lucky enough to have had pretty much the best music education available. I went to a junior high school with a great music program and chose Hamilton High’s Music Academy magnet program here in Los Angeles for the same reason. So in high school, I got into the GRAMMY In The Schools High School Jazz Program, which earned me my scholarship to the Berklee College of Music, which I later leveraged for a scholarship at the New England Conservatory. And after performing and touring and teaching for a while, eventually, I got a full teaching assistantship for my Masters in Music at USC at home in LA.

I pretty much wholly buy into the Gary Vaynerchuk school of thought (I was even on episode #494 of his Wine Library TV before he was huge) that if we don’t change with the times, the times will change without us. And I entered Berklee in 1999, the same year that Napster came out. So, the entire music industry was falling apart around us and as students, we didn’t really have any idea what was going on. We still bought CDs. We were living in our bubble, learning and practicing, performing and honing our craft. When I graduated, the industry had failed to keep up with the digital marketplace.

I eventually came to teaching. I found that I really loved teaching, got a lot out of it, and was good at it, so I started thinking of myself more as a teacher. I still performed, but not as my main gig. And once I started thinking of myself as a teaching, all of the angst of how I expected my life to go just fell away. But I found myself beholden to what the institutions I was teaching at were doing with their curriculum. Some of it was great, some of it wasn’t. So in 2010, I decided to leave one of the colleges I was at to open Voice Studio LA, my own teaching studio. It’s been open three days a week since 2011 and doing really well. I have some novice clients, some well-known singers and actors and some pro studio singers as my clientele and everyone in between. I believe that everyone should have access to high-quality education and not everyone lives in LA or can afford lessons. I had some people coming to me with questions about things they learned on YouTube. All were innocent questions, but some of the stuff they were asking was just plain misinformation, so at the same time, I opened my teaching studio, I decided to start my own YouTube channel/Website, called Singing TV (and SingingTV.com). While I never monetized that, we still to this day have about 10,000 YouTube subscribers.

As if running Voice Studio LA, raising a toddler, two adjunct faculty teaching positions and a YouTube channel weren’t enough, about four years ago I had another dream. I had spent years emailing MP3s to people so that they would have vocal exercises, warmups and music to practice along with. So as a fix, I looked online for an app that was both easy-to-use and educational that helped singers warm up their voices, and came up empty. There were a few, but for the most part, they either don’t function properly, look terrible or don’t have much in the way of an educational or musical component. So, I decided to make my own. I used the apps I like, irealPro and DrumSchool by Technimo (done by Massimo Biolcati, a classmate of mine from Berklee) and Tempo by Frozen Ape as guides for how to do an app right, and set out on the mission. It took me three years, investors and a whole team of people do it and it was more work than I thought possible, but I released Voxercise, the vocal warmup app for singers, this past February 2018. It’s downloadable for free with a demo for both iPhones and Android Phones and offers several warmup packs by a technique for $4.99 or a full Packs Bundle for $13.99 as in-app purchases. It’s pretty exciting and some singers I really like and admire are currently using it, so now it’s just about spreading the word.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
For the most part, running Voice Studio LA and Voxercise have both been hard work, but rewarding. When people grow as singers, invite me to their concerts or write nice notes of gratitude, that means everything to me. What I’ve found is that doing something great isn’t enough. You have to let people know about it. Luckily, Voice Studio LA runs solely on word of mouth. I don’t advertise, but I’ve made enough of a name for myself as a teacher/coach I guess that I get enough clients. Voxercise, on the other hand, is this wonderful thing I’ve created and now, I have to get the word out. So 2018, is all about marketing and PR for the app.

Please tell us about Voice Studio LA and Voxercise.
I’m a voice teacher and vocal coach. I run Voice Studio LA http://www.VoiceStudioLA.com. It’s my teaching studio for my private clients. And now, I run Voxercise http://www.Voxercise.com, the vocal warmup app, as well.

I suppose what sets Voice Studio LA apart from others is that most of what I do and guide my clients to do isn’t about my own opinions necessarily, but about helping my client get the sound they want efficiently. So singing breathily isn’t a particularly efficient use of air. So, I teach people how to be more efficient with their air. People should sing breathy because they want to, because it’s the sound they’re going for, not because it’s the only way they know how to sing. I suppose I have a few specialties. Jazz, R & B, and improvisation are one. I teach people how to improvise. My training and work as a performing/touring jazz singer lend itself really well to showing other people how to do it.

I’m also known for helping singers develop a strong “mix” or “middle” register, or a way to sing utilizing the laryngeal musculature that’s dominant for the functions of both the lower “chest” and higher “head” registers. A lot of singers like to just use their “chest” or “lower” registers to sing because that’s what we hear a lot lately on the radio. That can work for some strong belters, but most folks want to develop their entire range before deciding what works for which song.

And lastly, without even really trying, I became known as the vocal coach who can help instrumentalists develop singing chops. A lot of drummers, guitarists, bass players and keyboardists who work backing up well-known artists get asked to sing. Many are really afraid of having to do so, so they come to me. I think I’m as much a technic to show them how the instrument works as I am a confidence-builder.

As far as Voxercise goes, I pretty much do it all. I make sure the app works, manage all music production for the exercises, manage all of the video production, hire and oversee any development that needs handling, hire and oversee all of the design work and I handle all of our social media, marketing and am taking Voxercise to several music festivals and conferences in 2018 and 2019. It’s a tough job doing it all, but I’m looking forward to the payoff. Plus, I get a lot out of the fact that the app helps people. I love hearing from artists who use it to warm up before their gigs, and singers who find that they’re growing vocally from regular use of the app. Plus, we give 5% of what we net to music education non-profits, so it’s a real win-win for everyone.

Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
I loved it when I practiced piano well enough to put both hands together. You know, practice one hand’s part and then the other’s. Where it got exciting was putting both hands together. That and Sundays. My family used to go out to dinner on Sundays. Basically, we’d drive East and drive around everywhere between Koreatown and East LA and find the place that had the least English words on the menu and eat there. We’re an adventuresome bunch, especially when it comes to food.

Pricing:

  • Voice Studio LA Lessons are $95/hour
  • Users can download all available exercises, instructions, and videos as an in-app purchase in Voxercise for $13.99

Contact Info:


Image Credit:
Aris Alexandra, Richard Wright, Voice Guru, LLC

Getting in touch: VoyageLA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.

Related Items

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

More in