A Voice Apart

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 or...

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...

About 7-8 years ago I was to publish my second book which would be called “Vocal Science – Flight from the Virtual Music to Reality”.  I did not end up publishing it, but I got it written and even illustrated by the same artist who illustrated my first book “ VocalScience – Flight to the Universe ” which came out in February of year 2000.  One of the chapters I named, “Vocal Labour – Vocal Delivery” .  At that time I was referring to a difficult singing student who had not much vocal talent and who had difficulty to release old habits and adopt new ones.  This time I would like to speak more about my voice repair clients, and more so, speakers rather than singers. As I mentioned in one of my recent blogs, it is evidently much harder to work with speakers than singers, as speakers are just ordinary people who by chance have lost/damaged their voices; whereas singers have been much more aware that there is a huge task and demand being put on t...

I would like to introduce you to one of my former voice repair clients, “Davey Dee” (a.k.a. David De Giuli).  David’s dream always was to become a singer .  He has tried various teachers trying to learn how to sing and even went as far as Nashville.  He spent a lot of time, energy, effort and money and instead of learning how to actually sing, he ended up with the obvious voice damage.  His speaking voice was so raspy that in times it was not easy to understand what he was saying, let alone singing.  But, David was very determined to recover his voice and to become a singer.  He took quite a few hours of my instruction and consumed quite a bit of natural herbs which also played an essential role in David’s voice restoration .  To date he recorded two (2) original rock songs - “I Got It Bad” & “The Other Side” - and just recently sent it to me.  I was more than pleasantly surprised!  Not only now he looks great, bu...

When the vocal disorder occurs, whether you are just a speaker, (regular person), or a singer, it is always a devastation to say the least.  For those who are not singers, it appears to be even more devastating than to the actual singers who have lost their singing voice; sometimes their speaking voice as well, and possibly, at least temporarily, lost their singing career, which a lot of the times they have been working on all their lives for. You would think that the process of voice recovery would be easier for people who just lost their speaking voice, but interestingly enough, it is exactly the opposite. The fact is that to recover your voice out of any voice or vocal disorder, takes a lot of strength, a lot of energy, sometimes quite a bit of time and money as well. It is a very tedious process, syllable on syllable and word on word. Especially those with muscle tension or spasmodic dysphonia seem to be suffering the most. They have drawn their voices in a very low...