Vocal History

Dean began performing at the age of 3 and professionally at age 9 in Salt Lake City, Utah. He started singing in bands by age 13 and although he had a good ear all he really knew about singing was that if you screamed louder you would get a higher note. For 6 years he proceeded to "blow his voice out" singing for dances and parties. He always wanted to develop his voice and extend his range without pressure, but found that all voice teachers required him to study opera which he was not interested in.

At the age of 22 he was introduced to Seth Riggs who had become a voice teacher of renown in Los Angeles. Seth had studied classical voice while growing up, but had never found a technique that could give him the range and ease he was looking for which could be used for all styles of music. He then set out to combine the best parts of all the techniques that he had learned, combining them with what he felt was the purest form of singing (Bel Canto) and adapt them to popular styles of music.

Dean was very interested in this approach and became Seth’s personal accompanist for 9 months. While working for Seth, Dean sat in on Seth’s lessons 8 hours a day and watched this master teacher develop voices. Dean also took lessons from Seth and his associate Roger Love during this time to connect up his own vocal "breaks" and extend his range.

Within a few months Dean was singing through 3 octaves without a break and without pressure for the first time in his life.

Dean moved to back to Salt Lake City, Utah to share with the people there what he had learned from Seth. All his life he had sought for this technique and information and wanted to make it available to others who had also been searching and had not found what they were looking for in current Classical approaches.

Within a few months of teaching, this "new" style combined with Dean’s ability to convey difficult concepts into simple ideas, Dean had become very popular teacher with a long waiting list of students. He works with all musical styles, but prefers mostly popular styles such as Pop, Rock, Jazz, Country, R & B and Musical Theater, because as he says, "there are so few good teachers working with popular styles of music." He has since trained other teachers in his methods, but they can never keep up with demand.

Dean has continued his association as a Seth Riggs associate and is one of the few Seth Riggs associates of Speech Level Singing in the world. He is a guest lecturer and instructor at Seth’s SLSI Institute in Los Angeles each summer. His students have performed on Broadway, and every major theme park in America, TV, movies, and have signed record deals with numerous record labels. He currently is the head of the Jazz Vocal and Music Technology departments at Westminster College in Salt Lake City, Utah and is in demand as a lecturer and performer.