Voice Lessons:
Personalized and tailored to your level of development and experience, and to your wants and needs -- voice lessons and preventive care for reliability, power, range expansion, breathing security, pitch consistency, healthy singing posture, projection of your voice, working around and releasing allergies/asthma/reflux issues, resolving nasal tone, stamina, mic usage, stage presentation, singing while playing an instrument, preparation for auditions/competitions/recording/performances, creativity -> your passionate performance... Detailed Warm-Up, Cool-Down, and Vocal Healing routines will be developed with you. Lessons for all levels and types of singers, from absolute beginners through advanced performers...

Rush Sessions:
When you have sudden needs for vocal assistance for immediately-upcoming auditions, recording sessions, and performances, Rush Sessions will concentrate on giving you the ability to ease and release your voice production quickly, creating tangible and immediate improvements right away.

Vocal Therapy Sessions:
Voice Therapy/Vocal Rehabilitation for helping you heal nodes/nodules, polyps, swellings, hoarseness, chronic laryngitis, bowed vocal cords, weakened vocal stamina, vocal strain or pain, and all vocal problems. Severe allergies, asthma, sinus congestion, esophageal reflux, body pain(s), and smoking symptomology issues and their effects on your voice and singing are addressed and ameliorated. While you are healing your voice, you will learn to develop healthy vocal technique and production, and then to strengthen your voice, and restore your vocal confidence and ease.

Vocal Performance Workshops:
We come together to explore and experience developing our performing ability, working on songs we've been studying and preparing in our lessons for auditions, competitions, recording, and/or performing. We work on building our newly-developed vocal production technique and healthy vocalizing into our singing and performing. We 'practice' singing for an audience, pulling ourselves out of our private lesson situations and our personal practice at home (and in our cars!) and our practice room work with our accompanists or bands, and step into the spotlight of singing in front of others. Here in our workshops, you'll be singing for and with peers - other Rak students who understand more of your issues than a regular audience and who are working on some of the same issues as you, yet are now experiencing you as a performer, and are learning to constructively critique and assist you in your learning..., and then, they step up and experience what you've just gone through -> this greatly accelerates our learning! We work on how to present ourselves as a performer, what our audience wants and needs from us as performers, song interpretation, projection and personality onstage, the “before” and “after” performance preparations and considerations, developing how to know when we are 'ready' to perform, voice care in the 'real' performing world, etc.

Vocal Technique and Voice Building Workshops:
Rak voice students come together to work in a group session on concentrated or focused areas of vocal production and technique development. The bonding and connecting with others who are working on similar issues and concerns helps accelerate each other's learning and depth of understanding. Getting to hear this development work in other voices besides your own and the teacher's helps you to relate it even more effectively to yourself. Hearing and watching how other students verbalize their learning can be very helpful to you. Hearing and watching others progress more easily in some areas than you do, and with more challenges in other areas than you do helps you to gain insights into your own modes of learning and explore your own potential for improving in various areas more efficiently.... I have found that students who attend these group sessions tend to improve in their own development about six times faster than those who do not share any sessions with other students....

Introductory Rak Vocal Care Workshops:
Introductory gatherings for singers to explore and experience some of the Rak Vocal Care concepts and teachings, and create some vocal improvements in themselves right away.

Vocal Toning Circles:
We gather to share in free toning, allowing our voices to go where they want, exploring the “healing powers of breath, tone, and music. ...tapping the powers that lie beneath the consciousness of the song. The song leads down to the chant, the chant leads down to the tone, the tone leads down to the breath, and the breath leads to the energy beneath the sound - the roar of silence. ...Our own toning sounds, not necessarily interesting, beautiful, or creatively organized for an audience, can vibrate, massage, and balance the body without any invasive methods. ...The energy underneath sound, the power that increases before a thought emerges and our ability to intuit information are the keys to an exploration into tone and vibration. How can we reach this unnamed potential ...” (Quoted material from THE ROAR OF SILENCE: Healing Powers of Breath, Tone & Music, by Don G. Campbell) We get to experience the healing powers of the voice with each other, and share in the awesome bonding of voices beginning to explore creative release and unfettered vocalizing, for the joy and mystery of 'sounding ourselves', individually, yet within a group...

Band Consultations:
Sessions about better band interactions, the musicians understanding the singer and the singer understanding the musicians and their needs, improving practice sessions, exploring set pacing and interaction with your audience, exploring what your audience wants and needs from you, improving performances and confidence

Alternative Healing Sessions:
Self-Healing modalities and techniques are taught, shared, and experienced, helping singers and others tap into their own abilities to heal themselves, and believe in their own healing and balancing abilities... EFT ( http://www.emofree.com ), hypnotherapy and meditational experiencing, and developing of empowering affirmations, and other modalities are explored for vocal development improvement and acceleration, for vocal healing, for releasing smoking and other unwanted habits, for increasing motivation and follow-through, for releasing stress and tension reactions, for self-belief and self-esteem improvement, for self-healing, for pain release, for healthier living, for more efficient decision-making and action replacing procrastinating, for increased creativity, for increasing expressive singing and performing, etc.
 

Endorsements & Vocal Success Stories of Rak Singers:
Kathy Sullivan, singer/songwriter of SISTER ENVY, says: “I perform for three hours a night and I haven't had a problem since I started taking lessons. I learned some great warm-up and cool-downs that have helped me.”
Laurie Roberts, singer/songwriter of SAPIENT, says that finding her core voice made all the difference in the world for her. She found that the basic “Rak Vocal Care System” is worth everything: “Almost immediately I was able to sing four sets a night without hurting, and with a voice that was fresh and strong.”
Mike Vester, singer/songwriter of FEEL TRIP and now, BROKEN VEGAS, says that Sheryl Rak helps you “find that originality that lies within you, capturing its purest, most untamed essence, and acquire the tools and confidence necessary to bring those qualities out and present them to your audience, all while keeping you -- your own instrument!! -- intact and whole.”
From his BROKEN VEGAS website, he writes: “I became the singer because we couldn't find one early on... I stayed the singer because I grew to love it! I worked at it all the time. And with the help of one Sheryl Rak, Vocal Therapist extraordinaire, I became the singer I am today. ... I rehearse with no effects on my voice so that I am not fooled by what I hear when we write or learn material. I think this helps me become a better singer, and makes those times when we play at a venue that knows how to use FX the right way an unbelievable experience.”
From a 2004 email, Mike says: “You've been my little 'beacon' of strength for many years [since 1992], (whether near or far), and now, I'm that for others. It is through much of the inner strength building that you and I cultivated together for me that allows me to be the one with the broad shoulders. You were truly a godsend to me... that return phone call in my hour of desperation, injured voice [diagnosed vocal cord nodules], and uncertainty. Who knew that the strong voice would mean a strong soul. You did! At a recent show, I gave thanks to the one person I credit with me being able to 'amaze' audiences (their word, not mine) with vocal range and emotional vocal expression. I credited you! I have many influences, many inspirations, but I've only had one person who showed me what I could do, saved my voice so I could do it, and has supported me through all of it. That's been you!”  http://www.BrokenVegas.net
Martin McCormack, singer/songwriter/bassist of SWITCHBACK, writes: I am a member of the band SWITCHBACK. We are full-time musicians that have for the last 13 years toured around the country, playing with and opening for such performers as the Moody Blues, Leon Russell, Sleep LaBeef, and John Hartford. I started working with Sheryl Rak in 1999, and can say that her technique of teaching goes way beyond that of an ordinary vocal coach. Sheryl has a deep grasp of what is needed to be a professional performer. She has no bias toward what side of the musical divide one may fall on, and has students from all walks of life and all points of development in their music. Personally, I discovered how my voice is a direct expression of where I am emotionally, physically, and spiritually..., not only in relation to myself, but those whom I work with in the music business. By opening up and embracing such an understanding, I have found my voice (and, incidentally, my career) to have expanded and grown. I think this is the secret of Sheryl's success and I totally encourage those who are committed to growth in their lives and who have a love of music to take the chance and work with her."  http://www.WayGoodMusic.com
Jesús Monarrez, singer in the Mexican Folk band PROFETAS MUSICAL, says: “I have learned from Sheryl how and why to warm-up, cool-down, develop supportive posture (from the feet to the head!). We really don't know how to breathe well for singing, and she teaches how to breathe - one of the best things she teaches. She teaches about being healthy and balanced. What she teaches makes sense, is real, works, and I am improving [5 months]. She is completely different from other teachers.... She speaks very clear, very plain, makes it easy to understand - even with our language differences. She finds different ways to say things, until it is understandable.”
Tracey Sage, singer/songwriter of SAGE, writes: “I just thought I'd give you some ideas of what makes you a unique teacher. (1.) Your extensive knowledge and preparation. All of the concepts that you teach are so well thought out and deeply researched, that it seems like, not only do you know everything, you have a million and one ways to teach it and explain it, if someone doesn't understand it. (2.) Your level of personal involvement with your students. You take such tremendous care to see that your students benefit the most that they possible can from your lessons. I have never seen a teacher spend so much time figuring out what the student wants and needs from lessons. (Some teachers have a tendency to project their own wants onto the student, and most don't have the vested interest in seeing the student succeed like you do.) For example, your lessons go into overtime free of charge, you send emails, print articles, lend materials from the “Rak library and video store”, take phone calls [consultations outside of sessions], send affirmations [often specially personalized], etc., just because you care so much about your students' successes. (3.) You help your students on all levels. You don't just teach a song and scales like other vocal instructors, but rather, you teach complete vocal technique while working to heal the voice, body, mind, and spirit. While your students are improving vocally, they improve their confidence, health, posture, diet, and overall well-being. (4.) Your passion for what you do. Because you have such a deep love and passion for your teaching, it compels your students to work hard with that same love and passion. This is why you come with such strong student recommendations, why your students remain loyal and often continue for years, and why your students improve so drastically. Your hard work inspires their hard work.”  http://www.Sage4.com