Behind the Red Curtain

Scarcity and abundance: this is something I'm very passionate about. I really had to learn this at a young age. This is how I learned to use it to my advantage.

This week, we check back with my good friend Regan Goins. This time, we talk about jealousy and rejection in the acting industry!Do you have more questions you'd like Regan to answer? Join our Facebook support group for Music Majors and Professionals: https://www.facebook.com/groups/musicmajortomusicprofessional

What would you do if you could go back? Today, I interview one of my dear friends and co-teachers Regan Goins. Regan has had a successful career in acting and has made a huge impact spearheading several productions in the music school.

Learning a whole two-hour opera role in 11 days... is it possible? I don't know but I'm motivated to try this! I'll be learning Norina from Don Pasquale.Watch the video version on my channel: https://youtu.be/szKkiKK6E1M

I recently had a chance to reconnect with the places I was before, and it made me reflect on what I would do differently if I got the chance to go back to college. After going full circle, I want to reflect on my college days, and I hope you learn something along the way!

How do you approach difficult music and put it together? I've had the honor to do quite a lot of new music and world-premieres of pieces from modern-day composers and here are some tips and tricks that I've learned along the way.How do you tackle the challenge of new contemporary music and approach difficult music in general? Do you have tips that I missed or things that worked for you? Let me know in the comments!

Imagine, for a second, if you there was a day where you didn't have social media. What would it look like? What would you be doing? This episode, I sit down with my dear sister Cayla, who is not on social media at all, and we talk about what life is like.

It's musical season—here are a few things to do and NOT to do in your rehearsals!

One of the things that I'm passionate about, especially lately, is helping people with transitions. Specifically, a transition from going from a music major to becoming a professional. Whether it's as a singer, performer, or teacher. Here are some of the things I've learned from my own experience.

This week, I sat down with Calvin Strachan, speaker and coach, to talk all about how to be your best under pressure. He is very passionate about teaching techniques for preventing freezing up during your big moments!

How do you know if your students are improving? Sometimes even us teachers can feel insecure about our skills. When self-doubt and self-sabotage rears its ugly head, we don't want to feel like we aren't qualified to teach the students we care for. This one's for you music teachers out there!

In this special episode of Behind the Red Curtain, I switch places from being the interviewer to the interviewee. One of my good friends Jake Gadomski interviews me in this episode about music, balancing multiple hats, career, and more.

I am super excited to introduce our guest today. Today, we sit down with Taylor Arco, certified life coach to talk about self-sabotage and working through it.

I am so excited to share this video with you! I've been working with so many wonderful old and new friends, colleagues in the music business and amazing professionals to present a compilation of advice that we all have for music majors and recent music grads. This was a group effort and I thought this would have been super nice to have something like this when I was freshly graduated... and so what we can do is we can offer this for those that are doing it now!

This week, I am joined by my husband Paul as we talk about the struggles we noticed about transitioning from a music program to a music career. You get an inside ear into the false sense of security in going through that transition and our thoughts on that, based on our own experiences.

Let's talk about confidence and why it's important for everyone to have the confidence that they deserve. Trust me, it would make your life so much more fulfilled! It started off when I needed that confidence in being a performer... but it carried over to confidence in being a mother and a teacher. Here are three simple steps to having more confidence.

Today, I want to talk about if you or your student is considering going into performing, whether it be vocal performance, or musical theater... those types of things. I want to give you some tips and tidbits on what to prepare for, and some things that I wish someone would have told me when I was starting out.

What are the most important fundamentals for teaching young singers? Is it even appropriate to teach music to young children and give them music lessons or voice lessons? Today, we talk about some tips and tricks to help you with delivering the voice lessons to younger students who might be a little harder to deal with.

Music majors are some of the most amazing people that I've come across. This is based on a question I've had people ask me several times, which is why do I care about music majors so much?

How do you have more confidence and manage your performance anxiety? Here are some tips you can use to beat that stage fright.

Tune in to our special guest today for the podcast, Katherine Rosenfeld! Katherine is a middle school choir teacher from Arizona who is known for her unique approach toward her profession: by creating TikTok videos and Instagram Reels. She also runs her own private voice studio and sings professionally in church.

Teaching versus performing: Is it one or the other? How does it work? This is one of the things I'm really passionate about, because I believe that you can do both and you can do whatever degree that you want. There's a misconception in the music community about the routes you can take after college. Let's talk about that.

With Black History Month this February, Justin sits down with Chelsea to talk about black history month and all things in between this week.

One of the reasons why I’m really passionate about sharing all of these tips and support in my content is because I have had a few rough transitions in my life. There were a lot of times where I felt very overwhelmed, stressed, and lost in a way. Deciding not to move to New York City and do the grind over there, I made my own path and created my own success, and I want to share what I learned with you.

What do you do if your young dreamer isn't motivated to practice? It doesn't seem like they're enjoy it as much anymore, or maybe you feel like maybe there's some kind of block getting in the way and they're just not into it as much as they used to... what do you do?

There are lots of unkind people like this out there. I saw one comment on one of the dear people in my life and it inspired me to go into this spiral of, "Hey, people who I care about, this is how you deal with negative comments, this is how you win against the negative noises. We can't change them and how they think, but we can change how they respond.

I'm going to pivot a little today and talk to parents, guardians, or supporters of students looking to pursue a career in music. There can be a lot of questions and overwhelm for someone supporting a student and I want to start that conversation with you. Let's start with a question that you can be asking them to clarify a lot for you.

Today, our truth monsters are going to come out. Let's get a little real: today we are going to talk about the truth about performing, and what they don't tell you in university.

Have you ever felt jealous of someone else's success? Has someone else ever gotten something that you really wish you could have gotten, or maybe you felt like you deserved? These are all common things—jealousy, competition—they are all around us in the world... and especially in the world of performing. In this episode, I talk about some tips and techniques that can help with those feelings of jealousy and competition.

What do you do for your date nights? In this episode, you get an exclusive, behind-the-scenes look at what goes on when we have time without the kids.

We’ve all had some embarrassing moments in our lives. Especially for performers, we’ve had our fair share of embarrassing moments. Or if you haven’t, you’ve at least had some daymares or nightmares about what could go wrong.In this episode, I talk about my most embarrassing moment performing onstage (Spoiler alert: It happened twice.)

Sometimes, we do things differently when others are around because we’re worried about what they think. Sometimes, we’re so worried about cracking, or making a bad sound that we’re not really able to think about the music that we’ve worked so hard on and we absolutely love. In this episode, we go a little deeper to discuss people pleasing, and the art of embracing people pleasing.

Some days are awesome, and some days are just freaking hard. And we need some tips and tools to be able to handle that. We can love the good times but we have to be able to embrace the bad times too. In this episode, I talk about what to do when you’re at your breaking point, and some techniques to help alleviate some of the stress.

Today, you get to listen to a master class done by a wonderful amazing singer and colleague and just a wonderful person in general. I met Natalie when we did Ohio Light Opera together in the summer. Since then, Natalie has done amazing things and I’m really proud of all the hard work that she has done and I’m excited to share some of her thoughts with you.

Practicing can definitely be a struggle—and I hear you. I hear you, because I struggle too. Sometimes it’s just a general motivation that we need, a general kick-in-the-butt. In this episode, I talk to you about some of the struggles that we have with practicing, and some tips that can help with those struggles.

Being a performer during a pandemic is incredibly challenging. I feel extremely grateful to have the music school, because I know that some of my colleagues who are just performers are waiting for an unemployment check every month. In this episode I will talk about what it’s like to be a performer during the pandemic from my personal experience.

Sometimes you might feel guilty that you’re not doing the very best work that you could do. Sometimes, you might be frustrated that you’re not being the best parent, best spouse… but how can you possibly when you’re trying to do it all, all of the time? In this episode, we talk about balancing kids, work, career and parenting.

With everything else shutting down and so many tragic things happening in the world, it can be easy to get into a pitfall of negativity—and that's okay. In this episode, I talk about how you can pick yourself up from that downward spiral, and turn negativity into opportunity.

We practice our pieces a lot. And sometimes in practicing our pieces so much, we get sick and tired of them. In this episode, I talk about what to do when you get tired of your piece, and an effective practice method that I teach that can be very helpful to truly make leaps and bounds with your progress.

Being a music teacher is a beautiful blessing, and I have gotten so much fulfillment from teaching. In this episode, I talk about the history of my teaching and how I became a music teacher and how the music school came about, as well as some of my favorite moments with students.

Chelsea Hart-Melcher, an opera singer, music teacher, and mom of two, gives us 15-minute glimpses of the daily life of a musician and music teacher and how to take control of your life and your time. If you're a musician, performer, parent, or student who wants to learn more about how to integrate music in your life, then this show is for you!