A Voice Apart

Ever since 2002, I have been religiously watching all the reality TV shows concerning vocal performances. It started with American Idol , then it was followed by Canadian Idol and then, we got The Voice and almost right at the same time, we got X-Factor . Some of them are better than others, but all of them are quite entertaining. Sometimes, actually, they are almost too entertaining... What I mean by that is that the entertainment part is overshadowing the vocal performance part. In some cases, it looks ridiculous, as not every vocal performer is strong enough to offset the very good and strong dancers, not to mention tons of effects and "fireworks" on stage, so to speak. It does not actually help the artist to showcase their vocal talent. On the contrary, in my opinion, it is pretty distracting for the artist and for the audience. Also, especially this year, the quality of the vocal performance by the remaining top 10-12 participants has quite deteriorated

In this article, I would like to talk a little bit about how to deal with voice problems. As much as I wish it wasn't the case, most untrained singers put unnecessary strain on their vocal cords and will as a result damage their voices. This is especially true for rock 'n roll singers who often strain to hit high notes to cut through the sound of distorted guitars and heavy drums. I don't know how many times I've heard amateur singers say that their throat is sore for quite a few days after a practice. And the problem is actually worse for professional but untrained singers; they go on long tours and have to sing every night in a smoky environment. These are the singers that you hear about having to cancel tour dates because their voices are giving out and hurting to the degree that they simply cannot perform. It also concerns professional actors, who act 24-7 and have to use their voice nonstop. Very often they require the same services as professional singers because,

I have been running the Royans professional Vocal School since February 15th of 1984.  By the way, at that time, it was called the Royans School for the Musical Performing Arts. We opened it at first as a regular Italian neighborhood music school. Outside of myself, we had 6 or 7 junior instructors and not just for vocals, but for the variety of musical instruments we taught. Almost 29 years ago now, there was a vastly different world. We had over 100 students and over 7 teachers and a huge demand for our services from both children and adult populations.  For each musical discipline, we had a certain curriculum, the certain set of hours attributed to each of them, and definitely, a set price for each and every course we were delivering. Those were the days when we had a rotary phone on our desk, and a tape answering machine. And a few years later, we even acquired a typewriter, as strange as it sounds today. My assistant, who is to date 25 years old, while writing this

Being a vocal coach/consultant and non-surgical voice repair specialist, I fixed and restored a lot of voices in my span of 38 years of teaching. Granted, all of these singers and speakers came either with broken voices or with their ordinary voices, which I was able to bring to the new heights. I never in my practice, took a person with an already good voice and natural talent and tried to make him or her anything else, but what the God gave them originally. If it ain't broken, why fix it? However, I see several artists who were discovered on various talent shows and who were absolutely fine, until some vocal coaching took place and then, their voices became unrecognizable. Let's take a look at Susan Boyle's discovery If you compare to how she sounded while singing the famous "I Dream a Dream" song during Britian's Got Talent in 2009 and then watch her on the Oprah show where she outright choked on her own voice, and then, even after the fact, she n

The voice is your spirit. It's also an expression of who you are and it also identifies the state of your being. That said, it is as unique as you are. The fingerprints and your DNA identify your being. The voice does the same. Some people have naturally unique sounding voices, sometimes just speaking or just singing, sometimes both. Sometimes, at the glance, some people are not sounding any different than anybody else, speaking and/or singing. Is it possible, though, to create their identity by making their voices identify with their beings? Can we directly connect, especially the singing voice, to the one's identity? The answer from where I sit, is a BIG YES. How so, you may ask? To answer your question, many years ago, I developed my own unique approach to voice mechanics, which I named the Vocal Science Technique and Method. While instilling the wholesome vocal mechanism into one's psyche, anatomy and physiology, I engage very deeply and also con

I've been religiously watching all of the available American and Canadian reality shows concerning vocalists. And now, finally, I stumbled upon a show for children and teenagers right "in my own backyard" in Canada. I've been occasionally watching auditions, which are pretty much cloning the auditions for American and, used to be, Canadian Idols. However, I have to admit that to my pleasant surprise, the judges were very sweet and positive with all of the kids - the good ones and not so good ones. On the other hand, though, that superficial sweetness, in my opinion, cause them to make some misjudgements with respect of some kids talents. I found that those who they chose - the top six so far - were not necessarily the best ones I've seen auditioning. However, the worst was yet to come. Now, they were showing the "true reality" on topics of vocal coaching , choreography, makeup and fashion. It all began with vocal coaching. What was show

Lately, listening to the radio, we hear a lot of monotone sounds. Nowadays, artists, seem to be, do not have an ambition to show off their voices, like before when they were trying to reach the highest notes possible, or even the lowest possible, for that matter. It used to be their pride and joy to say that they own a three or four octaves range. Today, the whole world is "stuttering"on one, or maximum two, notes in a non-indentifiable range, instead of what was known before as singing, at least by definition. What happened, you may ask? Honestly, I don't know for sure, but what I do know is that I have stopped listening to the radio, even in my brand new car, nevertheless, fully equipped with the sophisticated audio  equipment. All the songs sound absolutely the same and almost plagiarized, via music producers who are trying to follow the trend. They think that if the particular style of the song has once or twice made it on the charts, then they should im