"I Survived About 10 Different Xmas Singing Events With The Chorus WITH NO IMPACT ON MY VOICE!"

This is an informative & educational story about Mary Ellen Stoll: Former Speech and Singing Voice Repair Client from Brockville, Ontario – Now an active member of the Brockville Barbershop Chorus (Thousand Islanders Chorus). "Hi Diana, I just wanted to let you know I survived about 10 different Xmas singing events with the chorus WITH NO IMPACT ON MY VOICE; and for some of those events, we were singing outside in all types of weather - (Christmas parades and Xmas tree lighting etc.)"   Mary Ellen came to us in the year 2017 soon after she retired from being a manager within the Government of Ontario. Interestingly enough, her husband had also retired from service in the Government of Ontario on the same day and in the same year. Even more interestingly, both of them were born on the same day… and the same year…!! A few days ago, they both turned 66 years old. Congratulations to both of you, Mary Ellen and Steve! Below is Mary Ellen’s story: Over 40 years ago, Mary Ellen acquired a nodule on her vocal cord which, at the time, was surgically removed. However, after this vocal operation, her voice never got back to normal - and moreover, she became extremely susceptible to numerous colds and repetitive / chronic laryngitis… Moreover (attributing it to being struck by lightning), Mary Ellen acquired a hearing problem and even the hearing disorder which is called tinnitus - a constant ringing in one's ears. So given all of the above, Mary Ellen decided to “take the Bull by the horns”. Once I solved her speaking problem and then, concurrently, taught her how to sing applying the same method and technique, she took care of the rest… She visited an audiologist and acquired a very advanced hearing aid which was supposed to help her to hear better and, nevertheless, drastically reduces the ringing in her ears. But the little bit we knew… So Mary Ellen, now being on maintenance with me while also perfecting her singing skills, paraded in my studio with brand new ($5,000-worth) hearing aids. We began our routine session with her wearing those devices and discovered that she could not sing with them at all…?  We both were puzzled until I realized that her brain gives a command to her voice at certain frequencies! In other words, let’s say I had trained her on “110 volts” frequency. Now, with the hearing aids, we increased the frequency to “220 volts”. So the brain and, respectively, the voice got extremely confused. ___   To confirm whether my observations were right, I asked Mary Ellen to take off the hearing aids. To our mutual amusement, we got Mary Ellen's voice back to normal in no time. All of the above was happening shortly after Mary Ellen started wearing her “state-of-the-art” hearing aids. So her brain, and her voice for that matter, had no time to comprehend the changes in the new frequency. Since Mary Ellen lives nearly 5 hours away from my studio and now being on maintenance, we have not been seeing each other too frequently. So a month later, when she again entered my studio for yet another session, we had a perfectly good lesson with her hearing aids on at all times. However, the following session after that, we had experienced what I called a “mixed frequency”. Throughout the session, we were putting those hearing aids on and off, trying to find the optimum solution for achieving the best results. And finally, a month ago, we had the last session of 2019 with those hearing aids in Mary Ellen’s ears at all times. They were working like magic! She finally had “broken into them”. The results of all of the turbulence and tribulations in the past were astonishing!   To conclude: The quote you are seeing at the beginning of this article, we had received yesterday.  IT SPEAKS FOR ITSELF!!