When most people picture a vocal lesson, they imagine a 70-year-old ex-opera singer sitting behind a baby grand piano demanding, "Resonate! You must resonate!" This vision makes Brad Chapman laugh. He may hold his lessons in a comfortable home in Tarzana (south of Ventura Boulevard, of course), but this room looks more like a recording studio - you're surrounded by microphones, headphones, meters, and a Roland keyboard. Obviously, there's something fresh and innovative happening here. It all centers around the man behind the equipment. What Chapman teaches goes far beyond vocal technique - in fact, to call him a vocal technician would be far more accurate.

Chapman's students "don't stand on an open stage and sing over an orchestra pit," he says. "They don't stand next to a ten-foot grand piano and sing. Any time they're doing anything that's important at all to them, the sound is either being projected by speakers in front of an audience or it's being projected through your home stereo via recording." In other words, Chapman gears his lessons solely for those who want to be successful in the record business. Some of the voices that have come to him are already successful - Anita Baker, the Bangles, and Kevin Cronin of REO Speedwagon, for starters.

The equipment Chapman uses is integral to his style of teaching. "Your approach to singing is entirely different if you're on a mic as opposed to when you're off a mic," he explains. So he has his students sing into a microphone while they listen via headphones. This way, the singer can accurately hear how his or her voice really sounds. It also helps singers learn to use their voices in ways that are most effective for the audio systems they will be dealing with professionally. Most teachers with whom Chapman himself studied did not understand this concept. He gives an example:

"One of the tings that was constantly being taught to me was lots of resonance - big voice! You put that on a microphone and it sounds horrible. It sounds good if you're on the stage [singing opera] and your audience is sitting 300 feet from you." He points out that at an arena, the P.A. does the work for you. "If you're at the Forum, the P.A.'s are massive. You can be the person in the last row and be plugging your ears, it's so loud."

Another way Chapman shows his students how to use their voices effectively is through the meters. They represent the actual sound pressure a singer is putting on a microphone. He gestures toward the needles. "If I sing a really loud tone, that meter will go crazy. If I make what I call an efficient sound - it's loud but efficient - the meter won't move that far. I'll demonstrate to the student: 'You're wasting your energy. The meter's blasting like crazy because you're blasting out your voice, but the human ear isn't really picking up any [difference]' And the engineers who record them like that, too," Chapman explains, because the recording will sound much cleaner.

When a student is learning a specific tune, the Roland comes in especially handy. Chapman has a TX7 attachment so that the keyboard can imitate the sounds of a DX7. This way he has any number of sounds at his fingertips that will give the basic feel of a tune, from the sound of a hard rock guitar to - yes - an acoustic piano.

"If you've got a student who's trying to sing heavy metal and you're trying to use a Rhodes piano, it sounds pretty bleak, it doesn't give the guy a feeling of support."