Getting an iota of praise from American Idol judge Simon Cowell is about as easy as convincing your Dad that his totaled '65 Corvette just looked lonely sitting in the garage on your last night in high school. The Idol vocalists may be able to get on his good side more times than not, however, with a little help from vocalist extraordinaire Dorian Holley. Since the show was trimmed down to its top twenty contestants, Dorian has been coaching the guy vocalists every week to get them ready to face the judges and try to win America's votes to become the next American Idol. We managed to catch up with Dorian on his way home from the show to ask him a few questions about how he got involved with the show, what it's like coaching, how teaching transfers from the LA Music Academy to American Idol, and what it takes to be an American Idol.

I worked with Ricky Minor, who's the Musical Director, and they usually use [background] tracks, and they were previously having someone from London fly out once a week back and forth to do the tracks. He didn't want to let go of what he was doing there and have someone take his place. You're gone for a minute and someone else takes your place and then you find yourself spending years trying to claw your way back to the top. So, anyway, they hired Ricky as Musical Director, and they implemented live music, which is great — which also makes the show better. I've done shows like the Image Awards and the American Music Awards and Divas — you name it — so Ricky asked if I wanted to do it.... So, they hired me and another keyboard player and divided the teams by gender and that's what we've got.

Well, tomorrow, Thursday, for us, is like the first day of the week. They got their categories a week ago and have decided what they might like to sing. So, they come to me and Michael [the other coach for the guys] with three to ten songs. Usually they've got it down to a few — "these are my favorites." We'll listen to them, and they'll sing them and the kids pick the one that's best. It really has to be their choice. We don't pick them because we don't want to be blamed for it and have the kids get kicked off and then come back and say "he told me to pick the song and that's why I lost, so I'm suing you." So, we just try to help them without telling them what to select to try to help them to get the song that's the best fit. After we choose the song, we'll cut it down...and rearrange the song, by chopping the intro, maybe taking a B section off, or switching a section here or there, but you want the song to survive when you hear it. Hopefully, you believe you're hearing the full song. One of the things that's curious is when you have a really good song, in a minute and fifteen seconds, you feel like you've heard the whole thing. Most Stevie Wonder songs are that way…On Friday, we'll get with the kids after we've given the band our cuts and they make their arrangements and we spend a half hour with each kid just rehearsing the song and getting them familiar with it and trying to get it to fit better. They live with it over the weekend and then on Mondays we rehearse with the full band 2-3 times. And then we might tweak the arrangement and might find something's not working — that happens in the smallest percentage of the time — and fix that. But, Monday's really the day for them to rehearse and feel it with everybody. Then we come in on Tuesdays. Tuesday morning we go over it for camera blocking, for the director, for the lighting people, and everybody does that once maybe twice. 2 or 3 o'clock we shoot a dress rehearsal full out in front of an audience — not the same audience for that night. And they'll shoot it and use snippets of that for the show that night. Then we break again and come back at 5 o'clock and do the hourly show live.

Well, there really isn't time for technique, but if someone's doing something that's wrong or that hurts them, we try to steer them away from that. There's no time to teach them technique but we might work on points or on ways to help shape the word this way so they don't have to scream. The real big task is they try to not to get them to yell because there is a lot of yelling on the show because you've got people that are largely untrained. And the hard thing is that I found that in a competition the kids kind of naturally think that if I sing louder or if I sing higher, as in if I'm running faster or jumping higher, then I win. In vocals, it's translated as loud. So, we try to help them without changing them because trying to change them at this point when they have to compete in two days could probably hurt them more than it would help. So, you try to help them with what they're already doing and try to help them do it better and try to steer them in a more sane direction.

Curiously, it's very similar to what I do at the LA Music Academy. I do try to help them with the performance. But I try to help them with it in ways they're already doing because you don't want them looking like a fish out of water. So, you see what they're doing and try to play to their strength and say if you're bending over, you try to get them to stand up straight. If you're at loss for what to do, you try to give them something. It's really a delicate thing because you're trying to not have them do what I would do but you're just trying to bring out what's already there or helping them loosen up or to have fun if they're thinking about it too much. So, to answer your question, yeah, I am helping them with their performance but it's kind of difficult to describe I think.

Again, the speed with which you have to learn a song...you know, the LA Music Academy students get graded hard for this kind of thing. [The Idol contestants] have even less time to learn a song than the kids at the LA Music Academy do. But just to get them to focus, to get them to do the hard work first. In other words, don't wait. We cut the song down now, learn the song tonight so that tomorrow you'll be putting the icing on the cake. The next day you'll be able to pay attention to your performance because you're not worried about forgetting lyrics. Because you know, they don't use teleprompters...you're on your own when you're on the stage. It's just you and the audience and 31 million viewers, not to mention Simon, Randy, and Paula, which is — oh man — it's brutal, just brutal. Because you know that if you make a misstep, you know you're going to be insulted. So, it's just similar in that you've got a song to learn very, very quickly and you have to look like a pro overnight and look like you're having fun and that it's natural and that you belong on the stage.

I think the most common denominator is the limited knowledge of music. I may have been this way when I was that age but I think I had a pretty wide taste of music. But a lot of these kids' knowledge is limited to the kind of music they like and so when they're faced with some of these categories like musicals or the theme is 70's disco songs, some of them are terrified because they don't know much about it. I think you can become famous for doing nothing now. But I believe that twenty or thirty years ago, the requirement for doing a record meant you had to have some musical knowledge. It meant you had to have a good voice. I don't know if you saw this guy named William Hung. He cut a record because they knew they make some money selling the record. Not to say that everybody who cut a record was Donnie Hathaway or Frank Sinatra. But you know the entertainment machine is just so much larger now that they try to feed it with everything that they can. I think another thing is that one of the things that rap or hip-hop music has done. When I was a kid, to be a star was kinda like the other side of the world or another planet. There was a certain way you dressed and certain education you seemed to have to have. But rappers dress like the guy across the street and I think that adds to — and this is a positive thing — I believe it makes anyone believe they can make it, which is good, but the negative part I think is that a lot of people think they don't have to do anything or learn anything. They just think they have a right to be famous. If Britney Spears has the right to be famous, I certainly do. I think that's good and bad. It's bad if you think you don't need to study or learn about music at all.

Geez...Learn a lot of songs inside and out. Pick every kind of song you can think of. And don't just try to do it yourself. Ask people who are not in your generation, people who don't necessarily share your musical tastes and just learn songs. If I had a kid who was 10 or 11 and wanted be a singer, I would say "ok, what we're going to do for fun is learn a new song every week." I would get in a church choir. One of the things that was very surprising to me when I started working at the LA Music Academy is that the large majority of kids knew nothing about harmony. Just singing with other people. For me, my sister tells me I had the ability to harmonize with almost anything I heard from a really early age. I would listen to records and not only learn the main part but learn the background parts. I just love harmony. I love singing with other people. I think one of the greatest musical educations you can get is in church. I would find a church that has a great choir and get in it and be devoted and serious. Then, by the time you're fifteen, sixteen, eighteen, you've got a musical education that you might not be able to explain, but it's already in you.

Well, I just sang on Stevie Wonder's new record and Patti LaBelle's new record, which had a lot of background singing on it, which doesn't happen much nowadays. Hopefully done with my CD next month — fingers crossed.