With the economy the way it is, one of the many things parents have had to cut from their children’s lives is music training. With all the shows on TV now like American Idol, Nashville Star, and America’s Got Talent, you can understand why kids want to improve their voice. Your kids may not even be reaching that high — they may just want to get a part in the choir or play. Private lessons have always been pretty costly, and depending on where you live, may or may not even be available.
Ariella Vaccarino has changed all of that. Ariella is an opera singer and an experienced teacher based out of Los Angeles. She is also the creator of Voice Lessons To Go. Voice Lessons To Go is a 4 volume CD box set. You can buy them as either a set or singly. Volume 1 is called Vocalize and Breath. It shows you singing warmups and breathing excercises. Volume 2 is Do Re Mi Ear and Pitch Training. It filled with vocal excercises. It will improve your sense of pitch by concentrating on scales and chords. Volume 3 is Pure Vowels. It is compiled of vocalizes seperated by ah, ey, ee, oh, oo, and i. Volume 4 is Stamina. This is a group of vocal exercises to challenge and strengthen your abilities. She also offers on her site the ability to submit your voice and receive a vocal assessment. For $9.99, you can submit one minute. If you spend $39.99, you are able to send 3 songs! She will give you her full assessment and recommend song choices and exercises. She’ll also get back to you within one week with that!
With the range of products and pricing, there is definitely something for everyone. This makes a great stocking stuffer or Christmas gift for the aspiring singer in your life. Since I think this is such a great product, I had a set of these sent to me to give away to one of my lucky winners! The winner of this giveaway will receive all four CDs! Here’s what you need to do:
1. Leave a comment on this post. I want to know why you want this or why you like the site.
2. Twitter about this contest. Please leave me your username so I can verify.
3. Stumble this post. If you don’t know what Stumble Upon is, please read Lori’s post at Blogging Cents. She explains it extremely well.
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This giveaway will end on November 25st at 8:00 pm and is available to US residents only. Good luck!
I am going to let you all in on a little secret that I am doing to do for Christmas this year. See the picture on the left? Those are stamps. I made them over at PictureItPostage and will be affixing them to all my Christmas cards this year. Tell me that isn’t the cutest thing you have ever seen? There are just so many uses for these stamps. You can do what I did and put them on Christmas cards. However, I can see them being used for baby announcements, engagements, holidays and graduations. You can’t make an invitation more customized and personal than this. Plus, you don’t see stamps like this too often. That makes it unique, and people will love it! You will be the talk of everyone you send these too!
How hard is it to make these? It is not hard at all. PictureItPostage allows you to either create these stamps on their site or you can download a program, and you can create them on your desktop. You can customize the background color and what color the text is on them too! It literally took me about 10 minute to completely put this together. Shipping took no time at all. I am 100% satisfied with this company and would highly recommend you use them also.
Also, they are having a “Get Real” Photo contest that starts October 31st. They want to see the best of the worst when it comes to photos. They want you to send them your worst pictures that you really don’t want to see the light of day. How do you enter? On October 31, head over to PictureItPostage and upload your photo. Beginning November 21, all visitors to the “Get Real” contest website will have a chance to vote for their favorite photos. The winners will be announced December 8. What can you win? They are giving away two Canon Digital SLR Camera and five PictureItPostage coupon codes good for 100 customized photo stamps. The ten first prize winners will each receive one PictureItPostage coupon code good for one pack of customized postage stamps. We all have horrible pictures — now have them work for you!
Well, the first question you need to ask yourself is how fast do you type? Personally, I type pretty darn fast (over 70 wpm). However, what Dragon Naturally Speaking does for you is allows you to talk, and it types what you say. You do need to “say” the paragraph breaks and punctuation. However, you end up with typing 150 words per minute! Most people I know cannot type that fast! It makes it much easier to generate more content in less time too. I know when I am composing a post like this I am actually saying the words in my head anyway. However, my head works faster than my fingers. That is why I love this product. Do you do podcasts? You can use Dragon to convert your podcasts into a transcript that you can also post on your site! There are just so many uses that I can come up with for this. I know people who use this and absolutely loved it including the New York times (click here for the NY Times Review of DNS10). Some other uses include people with disabilities such as dyslexia and even people with carpal tunnel who can’t type anymore. Heck, I’ve heard that John McCain doesn’t use the computer due to his injuries suffered when he was a POW. This is would even be helpful for him!
If you would like to see this in action, watch the videos below:
Don’t you want one of these to make your blogging easier?