Cheryl Bentyne – HuffPost 9.27.13

Mike Ragogna: What advice do you have for new artists?

Cheryl Bentyne: Well…listen! Listen and work your craft. Don’t stand in line for three weeks to get on American Idol. Go home, take classes, go to college, learn an instrument. Piano is a great instrument, guitar is too. But I think piano is the overall best instrument to learn if you’re going to be a singer so you can at least read music, accompany yourself if you have to, work the voice, take lessons, go out and listen to singers, go out and start working the voice, work the craft. It takes years! It’s not going to come instantly. You need those years to build up the instrument. Take your time, be gentle with yourself and use the time wisely.

MR: That’s a beautiful answer, thank you. I think, in a lot of cases, when these kids are coming in, we have encouraged them so much to break the rules and innovate that they don’t learn the rules and then they never innovate.

CB: Exactly, and it hurts them in the long run because they’ve got nothing to fall back on. It also builds the spirit and creates layers inside from which they can pull musically. You can never listen to enough music.