Vocal Study Product: Singer's Advantage by Seth Riggs

I understand the desire to capitalize off of the American Idol brand. But attempting to get singers to embrace their own unique sound all the while carrying the label of the single most conformist (artistically speaking) program to ever be on the air puts me off just a bit. That being said, I have not yet run across a vocal training product that was worthless. Indeed, most things I review are usually quite useful. I wrote a few quick observations for Amazon.com and decided to re-post them here, just in case you wanted to read. 

The pros first:

There is a male and a female version, something that I really wish existed in other SLS products. The exercise routines are fast-paced and provide a fairly gentile but at the same time challenging routine. Its much more affordable than other products but for what you get (the four CD's are almost identical) it should really cost half of what it does. If the cost were to drop in half, I would highly recommend this product to every singer to keep and have in their arsenal, when they need a quick vocal workout. 

The cons:

There is no explanation of how to access the "head voice" the way Brett Manning's course teaches - therefore; it might be very frustrating for a singer who is unfamiliar with "damping" their vocal chords. Supposedly, each routine is selected based on a self-diagnosis, but truthfully 90% of each track is the same as the previous rendering the diagnosis sadly superfluous. Last, the extra CD's containing an "intro to SLS" is really more of an infomercial with next to no theory explaining how it works, and "5 Secrets to mastering any song" are "secrets" only if you have been living in a cave your whole life. 

All in all, the singing community does owe a lot to Mr. Riggs - he really was the first to bring out a method for teaching contemporary vocals, but he seems to have developed very little beyond his original findings. A fact which renders SLS as really just a high-priced brand-franchise, which is a shame, because I think that if it developed further, it would really have a lot to offer the vocal pedagogy world as it is today.

If you would like to purchase the product, you can visit Amazon.com and type "Singer's Advantage" in the search query.