On the more well-stocked magazine racks, one can find Guitar, Modern Drummer, Bass Player, Guitar Player, Acoustic Guitar...but it's awfully hard to find The 
Vocalist, or Lead Singer, or Modern Harmony, or Rock Singer...
Okay, I pout every now and then because I feel like the market is influxed with information for the instruments that you hold in your hands, while there is a void in the market for the instrument you hold in your throat. Even in training, one can find instructors for any instrument, but if you want to be just a general vocalist, it usually means you have to take Voice in a college venue, and that means singing like Luciano Pavorotti or Beverly Sills when your voice is more suited to Billy Joel or Mary Chapin-Carpenter. Who says that vocal training has to be done in Italian? Or with a piano? I think that institutions of higher learning should know better. They should get with the program. Not everyone who wants to sing, is going to be able to learn how by taking Voice. And I wonder how many budding vocalists are discouraged or permanently lost because they were terrified of the formality of Voice classes?
So why aren't the commercial market people publishing more info centered around singers? I can just hear the musicians, now. "You don't need a whole magazine, for cryin' out loud! How many times can you write an article on how to sing?"
The most prevalent example (I'm sorry to say) of vocal support comes from the You Sing the Hits catalog, which is full of backup tapes. (Not all vocalists have a band, you see. That's because musicians are all reading guitar/bass/drummer magazines and taking lessons in the style they love best...(Was that caustic? )
Okay, is there a foundation to the argument that there's not enough material for a vocal magazine? Let's think it over. What would be included in a magazine like this? What would I like to see? How about: sections of sheet music with vocal lines and harmonies... articles on how to arrange those vocals... Articles about other singers and how they learned to sing, what they learned what they know about it, how they rehearse, warm-up, etc...equipment for singers, like microphones and stands, vocal techno-enhancer-box thingies, health care for singers, like what to do when you have to sing with a sore throat, what to drink and not to drink (herbal tea versus Zima, for instance--isn't it usually easier to find the latter in the places YOU sing?)... How about an anatomy lesson on just how the vocal chords work, and why I can't hit one of those heaven-splitting Ann Wilson notes? ...and how do I interpret a song? You get the picture. Those ideas were just off the top of my head. I'm sure many of you vocalists out there can think of other stuff.
Hey. Let me know, maybe we'll do a magazine ourselves.
