A Voice Apart

Since I am (looks like it) the one and only vocal specialist who is offering instruction and treatment via  non-surgical voice repair , I am getting a lot of inquiries via e-mail and lately, for some reason, more so by phone calls. People are writing to me general e-mails, complaining about the occurrence of their nasty symptoms usually associated with vocal damage, and, guess what my reader, they want me, via e-mail, or better yet, Zoom... to offer them a cure...? Then to some of them I offer to speak on the phone to clarify all their problems and issues. Those who agree to do so (while keeping me on the phone endlessly) are talking about themselves and their problems for hours, not listening to what I am saying or trying, for that matter, to have a two-way conversation with me. While others continue writing endless emails, and quite a few of them, are insisting on the Zoom conversation and, nonetheless, treatment or even cure of their voice/vocal problem. Go figure!  However, it

"Italy's Singing Nun Channels Madonna, Releases 'Like a Virgin' Cover" As I mentioned before, providing vocal services of all sorts for over four decades, I think I’ve seen it all and pretty much dealt with it all. However, the title (which speaks for itself) is even for me, still remains to be quite outrageous.  First of all, you my reader, may ask: 'What I mean by vocal “virginity”'?  To answer that question with more clarity, I will give you an example of a dancer who desperately wants to perform on stage, but has, so to speak, bad feet (flat feet with no arch), and also very tight hips, whereby the perfect turn out of the dancer’s body is very hard to achieve.  The above two components are crucial to the dance profession, even on an amateur or semi-professional level, let alone on a professional level. Similarly, I am receiving potential students with, at the glance, a very small mouth opening, very tight throats and quite dispropo

I've been running the Royans Professional Vocal School for nearly 29 years now. Ever since the beginning, to be exact, on February 15th of 1984, the business itself required a person (myself, my by now deceased partner, or somebody hired at the desk) to answer the phone and to explain what exactly we've been offering. As you all know, at the time we had just a rotary phone and hardly a tape-recorder-type answering machine. Strangely enough, looking back today at those precious days, the business actually was by far more efficient then it is today. How so, you may ask? Practically nobody had cell phones, which means they could not text any irrelevant questions and hide behind it to avoid a human voice communication. The computers were hardly present, with the exception of some profound law firms and other executive organizations, and of course, the government. So, the communication those days was live and actually very pleasurable, as people then (perhaps not bein

Teaching and consulting for over 37 years, I have dealt with a lot of different people from all walks of life. Some of them were already professional singers and some were just beginners. However, they all had something in common.... Almost every one of them was gripping on their necks and some more than others. Those, with incorrect vocal technique, and those who just did not know better, were looking very stressed and sounded not at ease at all, to put it mildly. In my books it’s called a complete “vocal suicide”. Why so drastic and so dramatic, any of my readers could ask? The fact is that in the real sense, it is very detrimental not only to your vocal performance, but also your overall health in general.  When the vocal performer tightens the neck, the veins supplying the oxygen also tighten and thus, the brain becomes naturally depleted of air. Many years ago, a Russian singer/actor dropped dead on stage for exactly the same reason. His neck turn