A Voice Apart

I have been teaching and repairing voices for many years now. I have taught actors, professional media personnel, voice-over speakers, fitness instructors, and, of course, singers of all calibers. To survive in those described above professions, you need a strong voice, a voice which will never let down its user.  Those people’s livelihood directly depends on the strength, health and command of their voices. If the person, of any of the described above professions, would damage and/or lose their voice , their livelihood would be (very much so) in jeopardy.  Over the years, I’ve fixed the voices of quite well-known radio and TV personnel, public speakers, pastors, worship leaders, to name a few. All of them needed their voice back to the normal operational state and as soon as possible! So there was no time to just speak about it or feed them with promises of a future recovery — I had to get to the action and  to act upon it immediately! These people were despera

Let’s find out… Perhaps one day you woke up and felt that your throat is unusually dry and even somewhat scratchy. You probably did not think much about it, as it had happened before. So you started clearing your throat, trying to cough it out, but this time it was much harder to bring it to the normal state. You have tried again and again and instead of it getting better, it was getting worse. Now, probably there was a time for concern. At first, you thought that maybe you caught a cold or a virus, but you overall felt alright and not sick at all. Then you started to analyze your social behaviour and your conduct at work, trying to remember if anybody there was sick and had a virus or a cold. After that, another thought occurred in your mind and you started thinking... “Probably, I speak too much and too loud on an everyday basis, I speak on the phone all day and then go to a loud club or to my band practice…” Suddenly, you realize that you are overworking your voic

In this blog, I would like to speak about the human voice in general and the speaking and singing voice in particular. Many people, especially those who are not singers, have no Idea that something may happen to their voice. They get the odd cold or virus, lose their voice momentarily and for a short term, but then regain it fairly quickly and go back about their lives, as per normal. Unfortunately, they do not even have a clue that, at the time of the cold or when the virus occurs, they have to be extra careful and extra gentle to their, somewhat bruised, voice. Being quite unaware of what the consequences might be, they continue as before; speak a lot, speak loud, scream and sing. Then, finally, they get rid of the cold but, to their surprise, find out that their voice never got back to normal!   It still sounds raspy, low and actually, altogether hoarse, as it does not have its usual tone or resonation for that matter. That’s when, unfortunately, the ordeal

Quite often, I am getting inquires from people who are indicating that they are interested just in regular singing lessons. So, I quote them the price for just singing lessons , not suspecting that they are already having some kind of a voice problem . Usually, they never admit it over the phone or the e-mail, unless they definitely have been already diagnosed, and the hoarse sound of their speaking voice , is very pronounced. However, luckily, some singers with the vocal problems do not have their speaking voice affected.   Therefore, when I get them on the phone, sometimes, I cannot even pinpoint that they have any voice issues, as their speaking voice sounds completely normal. Then, they finally arrive to my studio and, after the first 5 minutes, I realize that they have actually enrolled in the wrong course – vocal lessons, (instead of a non-surgical voice repair course )! In reality, they needed a voice repair, and big time, in some of the cases. Their vocal tec