True “Trailblazing” in Vocal Development. History in the making.

The vocalrevolution is here, I said it finally to myself and to the world at large in 1994. I have been teaching voice since 1985 and teaching it my own way, in spite of an extensive 12 year education in the music field. 

While I have been studying in the Music Teachers College in Russia, Leningrad, I was offered to do rather strange things to supposedly develop my voice. After those vocal escapades, (I called them "vocabatics without a safety net"), my throat would hurt and my voice would sound raspy and low. It made me really worried and I begun to think about it night and day.

I also started rebelling during the private vocal lessons and during the choir practice, to the point that I got kicked out of the choir and almost got kicked out of the college. I was prohibited to sing in my last semester before obtaining the Bachelors Degree of Music Education and specialising in Voice and Choir Conducting.

Go figure!

I, however, graduated with the flying colors and the great marks for all subjects, except vocal… I hardly was able to obtain a B -, which is slightly below good.

How ironic is that!

Ever since my graduation in 1976, I had been officially employed as a singing/vocal teacher and brought the Public School Choir to the absolute victory in many occasions! When I got my first official job as a vocal instructor, I was still struggling with my voice until one day, during the group class full of teenagers; I sung for them a pop song that was very popular at that time and played many times on every radio station. 

When I finished, the teens remained silent and almost shocked staring at me with the big question in their eyes. Myself, I was also almost in shock, as while singing, I did not feel any pain or strain on my vocal anatomy, while my voice was literally soaring upwards and almost flying out of my physical body. I could truly call it an out of body experience.

That feeling was indescribable and very foreign to me. Evidently, to the kids in my class, it also sounded unfamiliar and quite unusual for their ears. When my students and I recovered from, so to speak, a quite shocking vocal experience, we stared at each other and tried to understand what just happened in that classroom.

The teens were exclaiming with absolute excitement that they never herd me sing like that. They asked me over and over to repeat that song and they were more and more amazed every time. The whole experience has puzzled me. That’s how the investigation for the future Vocal Science Technique had begun.

 

I was desperately trying to recall the whole experience of that day, but at first, it seemed like it had vanished for good. However, being very analytical by nature, and by then, quite educated, I knew that if I had experienced it once, it will never evade me for good, on the contrary, it will come back and it will be stronger than before and clearer than before. Nevertheless, it started coming back to me piece by piece, just like a puzzle.

I started teaching what I was experiencing, but at first, did not have a distinct explanation of what exactly I was doing. I just knew it worked. One weekend, in the year 1993, I saw the whole thing ‘in dream’ with précised explanations of my whole, newly found method of teaching. I woke up, sat down on my bed and said to myself, “My struggle is over; my vocal revolution and revelation is here and it is finally complete!” Now I knew exactly, and in the minutest details, what I was doing and how I was producing the finest voices and vocals.

I was thrilled, as I knew I was onto something big!

Many years later, the student from Montreal Canada, after experiencing with me 5 days and 10 hours of instruction, did exclaim, “Diana, you are a true Trailblazer”. He, like many others, took a lot of vocal lessons before he met me and, needless to say, had never achieved any desirable results.

Now, finally, his dream has been coming true. He became an owner of his voice and learned how to work his voice upon command and how to achieve the very much longed for, results.

The sky became the limit for him and also for quite a few more people who have been experiencing the Vocal Science technique for several decades onward.