A Voice Apart

My business, “ The Royans Professional Vocal School  and The Royans Institute for Non-Surgical Voice Repair ” use to be located in a quite prestigious area in the northeast part of Toronto, Canada. However, in the building where my studio was located, the washrooms were not kept up to standards, and the toilets, quite often, were backed up. To serve our clients better and provide them with safe and clean facilities, we had to contact the management of the building more often than we would have liked to. They fixed it…, and then, the saga began all over again... For the last 4 decades, I have been mostly specialising in Non-Surgical Voice Repair for speakers and singers. Quite a few of them had been coming into that very studio with shut-down voices and quite often, with, so to speak, shut-down bodies.  The memory brings one of my voice repair client's case: The person came from the US with a very low-drawn, hardly understandable, speaking voice, and

My answer would be: “No, you should not.” With that said, if you want to learn something valuable from your coach/mentor, or your voice specialist for that matter, YOU are the one who has to be submissive to such learning and NEVER DOMINANT! For example.. during my session, one of my students/clients had been constantly trying to take over, so to speak. In general, I have always reminded them that one of us has to be submissive… and it ain’t going to be me! What do I mean by that? What I mean is that when I try to convey my message, and for many years (along with it), the tested, tried and proved curriculum, the student/client tries to impose his/her own way of running MY session; and therefore, no doubt,  interferes with the process of his/her own learning progress. I have been consulting, teaching and repairing voices for over four decades, but some of my clients, instead of listening and embracing my expertise and extensive experience, trying to prove their own poi

- Revised and modernized version from July 23rd, 2011 I've been teaching, consulting and recording vocalists for close to four decades. I've also been conducting group vocal interactive workshops and seminars for the longest time. It is extremely interesting to watch and experience the changes with each generation. What was happening before is history. What is happening today is reality. And today's reality is very confusing, and at times, disheartening. On one hand, people are much more advanced now than they've ever been. In what sense you may ask? Definitely technologically. Also quite definitely, intellectually, as the technology gives them access to much wider venues than they could have ever dreamt of.  Yet, physically speaking, it's another story. The Vocal Science ™  method, which I have been advocating for quite a few years, requires an integration and synergy between mental, physical, emotional and vocal components. Unless all of those compon

For some people, the loss of their voice is equivalent to a plane crash, nevertheless!  Obviously they would feel lost and confused, as (for most of the times) they are not even aware of what exactly happened to them and their voice for that matter… and why? They are desperately looking for answers. The singers usually could intuitively and predominantly feel that some voice problems may be coming their way; but the regular people who had lost their speaking voices literally experience the “crash of their lives”, as their communication with their inner and (needless to say) outer world, had become significantly compromised.  Obviously, in the case of the voice loss, the ultimate goal would be the restoration of the speaking voice and, when needed, the singing voice as well. However, it is easier said then done.  If the chosen approach for the restoration of the voice is surgical and if the vocal surgery is successful, the first part of the voice recovery is not that