About Meredith
A singer knows the potential is there, but may not trust that someone else can hear and nurture that potential. Voice teacher and vocal coach Meredith Colby is known for her ability to recognize and honor that potential - quickly and expertly guiding each of her students to bring out the best version of the singer they already are.
The author of Money Notes: How to Sing High, Loud, Healthy, and Forever, Meredith has successfully taught hundreds of professional and avocational singers to achieve healthy singing since 1989.
As a specialist in vocal technique for microphone-based styles like rock, R&B, metal, pop, and contemporary music theater, Meredith created and teaches Neuro-Vocal for Popular Styles. This ground-breaking voice training approach uses brain science to quickly achieve healthy technique that let's you sing higher, louder, and longer.
Described as encouraging, knowledgeable, and non-judgmental, Meredith’s steady, nurturing demeanor is the foundation from which she skillfully guides people through the process of vocal growth.
For most, the experience is almost magical.
People can experience many emotional and logistical objections when they consider investing in themselves as a singer. Making changes takes time and commitment, and that time and commitment pays off when you've got the right guide. It's beyond exciting, and deeply fulfilling to feel and hear your own voice stronger and more free than you'd dared to imagine.
Meredith’s path to pursue this work is personal.
Soon after she began to pursue singing as a full-time profession, Meredith’s voice was profoundly damaged because of voice lessons. Neither the lessons nor her teachers were bad, it's just that she'd been taught the wrong technique for the kind of music she was singing. Meredith had eight years of classical (opera) voice lessons under her belt when she began singing professionally. She found out the hard way that the technique she had learned was not only inappropriate for singing popular styles authentically but was actually dangerous to her vocal health.
Meredith's journey through vocal recovery and re-learning how to sing was the most difficult and transformative experience of her life. She took voice lessons with Fred Farran, a renowned Chicago teacher of popular technique who was a well-known studio and concert singer (with The Arbors). She was able to observe her own process through the eyes of an experienced singer. Realizing that her situation was not unique, she enrolled in post-graduate vocal pedagogy with Dr. Ron Combs at NIU before applying her ignited passion to teaching. Experience, humility, curiosity, and a dedication to service motivate Meredith to continually add to her expertise.
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She's been there. She gets it.
Meredith Colby has been teaching private voice for over 30 years, and spent 20 years as a busy, professional freelance singer, practicing what she preached. In that time she sang with touring bands, rock bands, big bands, jazz and society bands. She’s sung on cruise ships, at casinos, for fundraisers, and corporate sales events. Meredith has been a bandleader, was in the nationally touring accappella group The Hi Tops, has released Dream Girl, a CD of original jazz songs, and was the singer for the Nelson Riddle Orchestra as well as many other well-known Chicago bands.
Through The Center For Voice, a Chicago non-profit she co-founded, Meredith taught individual voice lessons as well as music and skills classes for groups. She has been the go-to Chicago voice teacher for record labels such as Sony, Columbia, and Island Def Jam, as well as for several area music producers. She's been music director for churches, church choirs, and several children's and community theater shows, as well as teaching both classes and masterclasses, both online and in person.
Meredith was graduated from the University of Miami with a Bachelor of Music – Studio Music & Jazz, and completed post-grad work in vocal pedagogy from Northeastern Illinois University. She gained certification from the Neuroscience Academy in Melbourne, AU in 2019. She is the author of Money Notes: How to Sing High, Loud, Healthy and Forever (WiseInk Publishing). She is also a member of the Voice and Speech Teachers Association, the National Association of Teachers of Singing, and The Voice Foundation.
Meredith broadcasts weekly from her facebook page. She has an active blog and YouTube channel. She writes regularly for the VASTA (Voice and Speech Teachers Association) Voice and Medium.com /@MeredithColby.newsletter. Meredith and her work have been featured on The Full Voice podcast, the WFMT site, the Chicago Tribune, and through the Speakeasy Cooperative. Meredith teaches groups about microphone singing and Neuro-Vocal though seminars and masterclasses, and offers a certification program in Neuro-Vocal for voice teachers and coaches.