For all those out there who insist they do not have a note in their heads, good news. Ireland’s most highly qualified voice coach whose studio in Galway attracts clients from as far away as Belfast and Dublin insists that out of 10,000 singing lessons, he has only ever had just one client who couldn’t sing.

“He was definitely tone dead. But that was one out of many hundreds. I believe everyone can sing – of course not all will be brilliant,” Andres Martorell admits with a large grin.

Sipping peppermint tea on a rainy Wednesday afternoon – he does not touch caffeine as it interferes with the vocal chords – the Uruguayan reflects on how he has built a business from scratch in his adopted home, having moved here without a smidgen of English eight years ago.

A minor celebrity in his home city of Montevideo, the capital of the South American country, he was a member of the Urugyuan equivalent of Boyzone. Urban Boyz boasted six number one hits in the noughties and was the star attraction of Montevideo’s Carnaval festival.

He had been singing since he was 12 and sang in a variety of bands which specialised in the candombe and tango styles of music.
At 17, Andres got his first big break when he was invited to support blues legend BB King. He signed his first record deal shortly afterwards where he was introduced to the Cuban singer Eddy Peñalver, lead vocalist of Tropicana, who became his mentor and inspired Andres to write songs with a Latin-salsa/flamenco flavour.
But just as you would expect from a hot-blooded Latino, love got in the way.

He met a Limerick girl in Uruguay and went off travelling with her around his native country as well as Chile and Argentina. When she returned to Galway to study, she told him about a salsa band who were recruiting a lead singer and urged him to move over.
With the band’s success on the wane, he jumped at the chance of a life in the island nation at the edge of Europe.

He was astounded at what he discovered here.

“The thing I love the most is the culture. The music is everywhere. That doesn’t happen in South America. Here everyone plays an instrument or sings. I don’t have any friends from the barrio who play. Here people do sing so well, they’re very musical. They have so much music in the schools. I noticed it straight away. It’s fantastic for someone like me who loves music.”

By night he sang with Calle Latina, which later became Cuba Libre, which played residencies in Bar 903 and Massimos, regularly attracting 300 revellers on a week night.

By day he worked as a cleaner at University Hospital Galway in order to save money.

He yearned to improve his voice and become the best singer he could. He researched on the net the most famous voice coaches in the world and discovered the name Seth Riggs in LA, the man who trained Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles, Barbara Streisand, Michael Bolton and Michael Jackson.

He applied to take part in a ten-day summer school with the man they call the maestro and was accepted. The hefty €3,000 cost opened up the door to a new and exciting world.

“There were a lot of famous people giving classes there, the best teachers in the world were giving workshops. I became very close to Seth and after six months he offered to start training me as a vocal coach under the certification process.”

Riggs is the founder of the Speech Level Singing method.
Put simply, vocal cords are like muscles and with proper training you can get a lot more out of them. With age and use, vocal cords can become sore, developing nodules which could end a career.
Speech Level Singing (SLS) purports to train singers to get through these hazards to unleash all of their potential.

The end goal is to be able to keep the larynx from moving down as well as up. It should stay completely still as the singer ascends and descends the scales.

For more, read this week's Galway City Tribune.