Of Elisabetta Branchetti
LAWN – Luca Del Sarto is a vocal coach, singer, vocal technologist and artistic producer.
After a car accident at the age of five, he became a very introverted and very sensitive child.
During his adolescence, watching singers perform, he felt a “call” resound within himself, an irresistible call towards the world of music. Even though he didn’t have an innate talent and didn’t even know where to start, something pushed him towards this new adventure.
From the first difficulties in finding his way in the world of singing, he learned the importance of study and constant research. This led him to also become a vocal experimenter, to know and understand what the voice could do beyond singing.
How did you delve into this adventure?
Thanks to meetings with nationally and internationally renowned teachers, I perfected my vocal technique and developed a unique and personal approach to singing by doing a lot of work on myself. Today my mission as an educator is to help others find their voice, not only in the literal sense, but also in the deepest sense of the term. My personal experience has certainly helped me in this endeavor, understanding those who have difficulty exploring the potential of their voice. Up to now it has been a journey marked by pain and joy, a personal growth to discover the transformative power of music in the lives of each of us.
Tell me your experiences
The most significant experiences to which I am most attached, beyond clearly being on stage, are the fact that for several years I have been a speaker at the biennial conference “La Voce Artistica” organized by Franco Fussi and held in Ravenna. I had the opportunity to bring my research and my way of seeing the voice and the relationship between vocal technique and technology in a very important event that unites the world of healthcare with the artistic one, a way to bring together phoniatrists, speech therapists and vocal artists.
In addition to this, I am also among the teachers of the “Higher Education in Artistic Vocology” master’s course, where I give my lesson on Vocal Technology. Again with Vocal Technology I was also at Mogol’s Cet to hold a lesson for the Tour Music Fest. In addition to all my work on vocal technology, my research experiences have made me experiment a lot with the voice, from vocal persussion, to overtone singing, to circle songs, to solo vocal arrangements with loop stations and much more. The voice can be a very fascinating journey if we have the open-mindedness to travel it.
Have you had the opportunity to produce artists?
Several years ago I was just teaching singing, a student of mine had written a song and asked me if there was a way he could create a backing track. From that moment on I also entered the world of artistic production, as I found it really beautiful to bring the music of an unreleased song to life. I did several songs by him and subsequently he also became part of the cast of Amici di Maria. A few years ago, however, I produced the entire album by Lee Handrow (Empty Roads), it was an even bigger challenge and one of which I am very proud because it was truly a great job, done from the heart and you can find the songs on the digital stores of the artist.
Have you taught singing while now you are only a vocal coach?
In the last fifteen years I have taught singing and only sporadically acted as a vocal coach. From this year I decided to stop teaching singing to dedicate myself only to the work of vocal coach and artistic producer because, as I have lived, this experience has changed the teaching sector so much that it no longer belongs to me. In my opinion, teaching is moving further and further away from the vocal art and the profession of being a singer, causing it to remain something very theoretical and at times almost abstract, experienced only as a pastime rather than seriously. I am speaking clearly in general, then there are also exceptions, but in recent years the educational sector has changed really a lot, perhaps it has lost contact with the Italian musical reality, especially pop and mainstream music.
What will your plans be in the future?
A very ambitious project will start in the immediate future, Vocal Technology Academy, an annual master’s degree to become a vocal technologist. After more than ten years of seminars and masterclasses in which I tried to spread knowledge about microphones, compressors, vocal effects, loop stations and much more from the perspective of the vocal coach and the singer, I thought that a completely new figure was missing compared to to a sound engineer who is not specialized in the artistic voice and above all today we cannot still think like thirty or forty years ago when we talk about modern music, otherwise the risk is that of not evolving in Italy not due to lack of content, but of “adequate containers” . A project in which I believe so much, in which other teachers who are experts in each of the disciplines that I will include in the program are also involved, because in my opinion working in a team always brings excellent results.
Despite the thousand problems, would you abandon music?
The music sector has changed a lot, especially in recent years. There are fewer and fewer places where you can do it live, people are no longer interested in it as a social aggregator and it has perhaps just become the background of their lives. You go to a concert perhaps more to say “I was there” and document it on social media rather than for the pleasure of enjoying the show without picking up your smartphone.
I’m just afraid that over time in the pop world it will become something that only the musicians who play it will listen to, which already happens a lot in some niches of the sector and I find this very bad, for me music is a relationship with the listener, but more and more I hear those who do it only for themselves, for their own personal pleasure, in my opinion this doesn’t lead to creating a relationship with an audience, it leads to being alone, that it’s fine to do what we like, but that’s how it’s destined to stay in their bedroom and make videos for social media, as has been happening for years now and then who goes to concerts? Personally, I might decide that I want to abandon music, but she would most likely never abandon me. As Friedrich Nietzsche said: “Without music, life would be a mistake”.
