A Voice Apart

For many years, we have been attending to various people with speech problems, who were possessing some voice disorders like: Muscle Tension Dysphonia Spasmodic Dysphonia Polyps on the vocal cords Nodules on the vocal cords Cysts and lesions on the vocal cords Acid reflux & simply… strained vocal cords My answer to a question of "What do we mean by 'Speakaholics'?" would be to go ahead and beat all the bad vocal habits; and once it’s done, keep practicing (ongoing) the new adapted skills (instructed), the new adapted application of the speaking/singing voice, the new acquired diet/nutrition, newly acquired proper posture,  and  physical fitness in general. All of the above listed voice issues would cause the sufferer (to say the least) a hoarse and raspy voice, unclear enunciation and pronunciation and could even cause partial or total voice loss… Given all of the above described, these (listed above) and other voice problems suff...

In the previous years, I had worked a lot not only with professional singers but, also, with some amateur singers who, at the time, were labelled as wannabe singers. In fact, a lot of them were recognized by various talent scouts and agents, especially when they were appearing in karaoke nights or open mic events in a variety of bars and clubs. Once upon a time, one of my beginner students was brought up by her husband to a big karaoke club to show him what she had achieved with only 5 hours of instruction (by that time) with me. She told me that she was very nervous and, understandably, felt very insecure… However, she also told me that she remembered (what we still call to this day) to “smile and bite”, and, nevertheless, she also remembered to enunciate and pronounce her words with absolute clarity. Before she finished her song (to my memory, it was a song called “Time After Time” – by Cindy Lauper), she was helped down from the stage by a person who came up to...

Were you also, perhaps, ordered to keep your mouth shut and not to sing…ever…? For the majority of you, it was happening in your childhood, but had this “minor insult” really left your mind now that you are in your adulthood?  Not really… as it appears to be. More and more people are inquiring about singing lessons who had never sung before and, nevertheless, would dare to sing at all!  How so; you, my reader, may ask? Apparently, the majority of those people were traumatized in their school’s music programs, choirs, auditions for music plays and what have you; or even some family gatherings like Christmas caroling during Christmas time, etc. Now these traumatized individuals finally decided to find out the truth and to discover whether or not they could actually sing. Luckily for them, the Vocal Science technique is designed to give the gift of singing to practically anybody! Very recently, we were running a Healthy Voice/Vocal Workshop and one of our pa...