Paul Pampinella

"I see my job as being a tour guide to the student's own voice, rather than coaching them in any particular style of singing. It's often the case that students simply don't know how to fully operate this instrument that they carry with them."

"A lot of people here are trying to be performing and recording artists. If anybody ever asks me questions—what is it like to do this, is it hard to travel, or how do you keep your voice in shape while you are traveling—I have an answer to all of those questions. Voice technique became very important to me when I was singing six nights a week. While I was at Berklee, I studied voice but I really wasn't hard core into technique until I had a need for it. Then I got really good at it, just being out on the road."

"I try to make the material interesting and useful, so that it has as many real-world applications as possible, something that relates to other activities that they might be asked to do professionally, not just this academic thing that you have to learn 'just because.' In my estimation, there is no 'just because.' Everything that I teach has some sort of application. I enjoy teaching classes and labs in the Voice Department because they are designed to have legitimate uses outside the classroom."

"One of the courses I teach is Microphones, PA Systems, and the Singer, teaching singers how to deal with their equipment. I don't want singers walking around with the end of a mike chord in their hand saying, 'Where does this go?' When they show up for a gig, I don't want singers having to rely on the guitar player or the keyboard player to plug in their stuff and set levels because it really adds to that characterization of the dumb singer."