A Voice Apart

Attending to clients who were in desperate need of voice repair for so many years, I have never seen so many people who not only had their voices compromised, but also their whole lives (their mental and emotional state), had appeared quite challenged. Some of them, of course, were more stable and more present then others. Those whose mental and emotional state was, to say the least, quite shaky, had a much harder time achieving the holistic transformation of their emotions; and, nonetheless, also achieving their altered way of thinking.  Nevertheless, they even had a hard time accepting their newly sounding v oice, as some of them had completely forgotten how their real voice actually sounded before they discovered that they had acquired a voice/ Vocal Disorder .  So...  somebody just lost their voice…?  So what, you may ask? “Let’s find a way to bring it back and make everybody happy”, you would think!   Unfortunately, it’s not that easy at al...

Do not ever give up hope! Do not ever listen to the, so-called medical professionals prompting you to accept your voice condition and learn how to live with it! How pathetic is that?   Those medical professionals do not offer any solutions and could not care less that you had spent most of your life on stage singing and do not know, or want, any other lifestyle, but the one you like and love. One of our former clients (throat cancer survivor) was told exactly that and was encouraged to be thankful to be alive. Meanwhile, that very client had spent over 45 years on stage playing guitar and singing in a rock band. After C hemo and R adiation, his fingertips lost the sensation of touch and his voice was forever raspy and hoarse, (both speaking and singing). How frustrating could that be? My answer would be : A bove and B eyond !   Even though my client was suggested to accept it and “ be happy to be alive !"   H e certainly did not want to follow that guidance. To his...

This Holiday season, we wish you the best of voice and the best of health and prosperity for this upcoming New Year, and always! For the last 42 years, I have worked on a lot of voices; fixing them, restoring them, or just turning amateur speakers and singers into professionals . I have noticed that, o ver the last decade, the attitude of all of those people who were seeking my services ha s vastly changed. Before 2005, people in general were happy-go-lucky, so to speak. They were gladly making commitments to work on their voices (to whichever degree it was needed), gladly kept their appointments and happily paid for our professional services . Needless to say that, in the past, the music scene in Toronto was pretty much thriving and was attracting a lot of wannabe singers. There were a lot of bands formed at H igh Sch ools and even M iddle S chools, let alone Universities. Those guys and girls had a goal in mind; they wanted to become well-known singers/perform...

The voice disorder such as a paralyzed vocal cord is definitely “not a picnic” to put it mildly. Usually, this condition occurs due to a related or non-related surgery. It occurs very often during the thyroid extraction or spine fusion, where the neck is involved. It actually could occur in any surgery where intubation takes place. The fact is that majority of the hospitals here in Canada and in the United States are the teaching hospitals. What that means is that these kind of procedures are not necessarily conducted by the appointed specialist(s), but are being performed by medical interns or even by medical faculty University students. Those young doctors to be are obviously still learning and do not have experience how to insert those tubes correctly. Thus, the occurred mistakes, which could cause the patient a severe damage of their vocal box, could be crucial to one’s life.   So the patient who went in to the operating room with a perfectly good voice, woke up...

Last night, we happened to catch a concert which originated in Paris and the venue held, no doubts, over 60,000 people! It was truly packed. To the credit of all those people and the two well-known bands, in spite of the unstable political situation, the concert went on and actually, to my surprise, was very well received.  While watching the concert, I became more and more scared that singing (off key, off tone and off tune) is becoming our standard.  I originally came from Leningrad, (St. Petersburg, Russia), and was deeply enrolled from the age of 6 in all sorts of music. Education in Russia is taken very seriously; so I spent 12 consecutive years, 7 days a week doing music and, specifically, singing.  I, apparently, possessed ‘perfect pitch’ which, I am not sure right now that I still have.  I have been teaching singing since I was 17. That makes it close to 42 years now and 32 years in my own school here in Toronto.  ...

By the common opinion, they hardly, if at all, can restore a speaking voice, let alone a singing voice. Usually what brings speakers and, moreover, singers in trouble, is overuse and improper use of the voice which could, no doubt, lead to a mechanical problem within one’s vocal anatomy. And thus, the voice, (speaking and or singing), becomes dysfunctional. The Singers especially need to recover their voice mechanics and none of the registered and non-registered speech therapists had been trained to do so.  However, lately, (must be due to the recession), those troubled singers are having wild fantasies of using their (or their spouses’) insurance, trying to appoint a speech therapist to work on their SINGING VOICE!!! Clearly, their upset minds do not allow them to think straight and the only thing they could think of is how to save money, instead of how to spend money wisely to get what they are after - their new healthy and rejuvenated voice and the knowl...