A Voice Apart

Has Your Voice Been Compromised Due To The Above? You had a stroke… and luckily, you survived! In a lot of cases, after the stroke occurs, either the right side or the left side of the body ends up to be paralyzed.  Also, in a lot of cases, the speech centre is also greatly effected, and thus the survived-patient’s speech is very much so compromised. In some cases, it is still recoverable, but in others, unfortunately, the speech remains to be permanently impaired.  For those cases where I could use an alternative approach to voice mechanics , the recovery is still going to be a slow and tedious process, which will require a lot of patience from the person in question and myself.  Usually, a stroke survivor has a very slow and quite slurred speech, not to mention usually pretty faint. Obviously, there is not much enunciation, pronunciation or articulation is precent in those cases. So in order to enhance the above, a lot of special speech exercises have to be admini

Had Your Voice Been Compromised Due To The Above? Unfortunately, after being diagnosed with such a nasty disease like throat cancer and then, as a consequence, having to undergo chemotherapy and radiation treatments, the voice could be very easily compromised and the vocal anatomy could also end up damaged.  The medical doctors, in this case, are usually trying to convince their patients to be grateful that they survived (never mind their damaged voice or anything else which ended up being damaged for that matter).   They usually say: “ Be grateful that you are alive and don’t worry about your voice ”. It’s easy for them to say, but the person who use to speak (or even sing) with a normal voice, feels quite inadequate, as he/she has a communication breakdown via a raspy/hoarse voice , or sometimes, even no voice at all. Nevertheless, that person is affected with everyday life challenges, not to mention work challenges and… even the loss of the latter due

Hardly finish your tour? Does your throat hurt after performances? Voice sounding hoarse? If your answer is yes, the above are the symptoms of an overused and abused vocal anatomy. The worst part is if you continue doing it without changing your manner of speaking and singing, it will lead to the need for a serious voice repair and not necessarily a non-surgical one. By that time, if you attempt to attain the non-surgical voice repair, it might be too late. Then you are facing a laser or a scalpel operation, which could result in scar tissue, which by itself could be more detrimental than the original damage... This could be your worst nightmare. The reason I am writing this blog is to prevent you from that possibility. The prevention is definitely far better than dealing with serious vocal damage . What does prevention entail, you may ask? Learning the proper skills for speaking and singing before you embark on any performance or that nasty tour which m

Intimate and interactive: " Alex Norman of illScarlett   (Sony BMG Music Canada)" For those who wanted to know how it all came about, we decided to disclose the "intimate" details of how The Royans Professional Vocal School (a.k.a. The Royans School for the Musial Performing Arts) got conceived, was carried and had been brought up on this Earth for its existence to nowadays. ---   I came to Toronto, Canada from Russia (Leningrad/St. Petersburg) in 1980. In 1984, my partner (common law husband) and I were able to open a school named (at the time) The Royans School for the Musical Performing Arts.  This school was donated to me by an older Polish Canadian philanthropist. This gentleman overheard me singing and playing piano, and while congratulating me on my talent, he asked me why I am teaching singing and piano in other schools, but not in my own? I did reply that I was still a new immigrant and, at the time, my daughter was barely two years old. To