A Voice Apart

When the person ends up with some voice/vocal disorder , his/her life is definitely altered in one way or the other. Just like a person who, after the tragic accident, became disabled, his/her life would definitely take a drastic turn. Now those people had to learn how to live their life in a wheelchair and adapt the use of even basic life essentials to their limited mobility. Conversely, the person who was using their voice a lot (and perhaps excessively loud), who also was very communicable and social and who is now (after the voice/vocal injury) unable to use their prime tool of communication (their voice) the way they had been accustomed to, will also have to adopt their life to something different other then the life they were used to. Sounds quite tragic, doesn’t it? For some people, it is a tragedy, indeed! The vocally-injured person is not only effected by the constricted/limited use of their voice, but is also effected emotionally, a great deal. For people who ...

Everybody knows that the private one-on-one singing or speech lessons are very beneficial to ones’ development.  All of the instructors’ attention is drawn to one individual and catered specifically to the person in front of the instructor. If the student is not a novice and has a strong personality, the private approach is the right way to start the voice/vocal development .  If, on the other hand, we are talking about a complete beginner who has never taken any speech or singing lessons, let alone any other instructional sessions in his life, the group approach to start with for somebody like that would be the right answer. Not only the above-described person will greatly benefit out of it, but will learn a lot to become prepared for the private, more intense sessions . I usually do not take more then 6 to (absolute maximum) 7 people in a group, to be able to provide the semi-private instruction within the group setting. Due to that fact, the ...

More and more, my practice seems to consist of non-surgical voice repair cases. The speakers, the singers and the wannabe singers, are pouring into my studio in Toronto as well as in my alternative location in UK. Nevertheless, people always had problems with their voices and perhaps not necessarily less than today. However, no doubt, the food and the air, i.e. environment overall, used to be much cleaner and more pure than today. Outside of the environment, people in the past were more conscious of the education in general and vocal training in particular. In the past, they appreciated the knowledge which was giving them confidence about the safety of the use of their voice. In the past, people had dignity and integrity and a lot of them were coming to me, with or without any indicative vocal problem and were saying, "I want to sing in a better and more respectable venue and not in a toilet bar." Today, they don't care how and where they sing, as long as they...

You are experiencing voice problems: Sore throat, hard to swallow, burning vocal cords, difficulty speaking/singing, etc. “Should I ignore all of this and hope that my voice will come back on its own and will be as good as before or better?” “Should I agree for a surgical procedure?” “Should I try to find a “magic” pill, which will solve all my voice problems?” Should you continue suffering, or should you do something about it ?  I am sure that the first thought that usually comes to your mind is,  “let’s go to the doctor and find out what’s wrong with me”. Then you get a referral to the ENT specialist. And after that, "if you’re lucky", you may be diagnosed with something not so serious, and most likely, you would be offered some kind of a medical drug, which usually is designed to knock down your gastric acid, regardless weather you have it or not. If you are "not so lucky", you may not be diagnosed with anything at all, or ...

This blog is my point of view on my non-surgical voice repair clients, who lately, I have no lack of... Yes, more and more people are approaching me with various voice disorders (speakers and singers). Some of them have tried everything, but nothing worked and they ended up suffering for years. That category (desribed above) is extremely difficult to attend to. First of all, because they had lost the belief that they will ever get better and regain their voice. Some of them have undergone two or three vocal operations; unfortunately, majority of them did not get any better but, on the contrary, they actally ended up getting worse. Needless to say that almost all of them have been traumatized and some of them were quite depressed. Obviously, when you have health challenges in general and the symptoms are not going away for some time, you become disillusioned and almost clinically depressed, if not, in some cases, even suicidal. Some of these troublesome people also have spent...

When I reached Canada in 1980 and almost right from the start began teaching voice (speaking and singing), I noticed that, in general, nobody per say paid attention to the way they were speaking/singing or, for that matter, even conducting a proper posture while trying to deliver a message. Some of them, while speaking, were literally falling backwards, arching their upper back to the wall behind them, rather than to me standing right in front of them. Needless to say that by doing that, they were throwing their speech backwards and the voice would be falling to the back of their vocal cords, which is quite deadly for the vocal health . Nevertheless, the words were coming out slurred and un-pronounced; thus, their enunciation was quite poor. A lot of them were complaining of dry and/or full of mucous throats. Some of them were complaining of the actual pain and discomfort in their vocal boxes. Today, 33 years later, the problems still persist. The difference is that I am not s...

A HOLISTIC Approach To A Person's Vocal "Instrument". What do we mean by that? Throughout the last 33 years, I have been bombarded with phone calls and e-mails from people who have experienced voice or vocal problems. Some of them thought that it had happened to them "out of the blue", so to speak; and moreover, without any indication (whatsoever...) of that happening. A lot of them had attributed it to some colds or viruses; and only some of them had agreed that their lifestyles had not been exactly "clean and shiny"... However, (and nevertheless) the severe cold, virus and especially strep throat, could be a trigger to a mild or even serious voice disorder. As it appears to be, those people tend to eat a lot of fast foods, tons of dairy (which produces a lot of mucus), consume a lot of salty and spicy foods, which affect the throat flora, and evidently, also indulge in smoking, drinking and even drug use. Some of them (on top of that) do...