A Voice Apart

NEW UPDATE: P.S., A couple of days ago, we had an inquiry from Detroit, Michigan USA. With Aubrie’s permission and encouragement, we submitted Aubrie’s phone number and e-mail address to the person who happened to be a singer with a quite-noticeable tremor on the bottom of her throat. That tremor was clearly on its way to becoming what’s known as the  Spasmodic Dysphonia  voice disorder… When we inquired with Aubrie whether or not the above-mentioned person contacted her, we have learnt that she never did. After conveying that back to Aubrie, we got a text from Aubrie stating: - “I know… Lord, she better get with it! But, no doubt, I’ll convince her of her ( honest to God ) last hope!!” _________ Aubrie M is ready and standing by to reassure you that coming to us in Toronto to fix her voice was the best thing that had happened to her. Not only that she acquired a healthy voice and had gotten rid of the constant sharp pain in her throat, but s...

Is Spasmodic Dysphonia always the cause of a spasming and/ or generally-malfunctioning voice, or could it be just multiple - and very nasty - symptoms induced by the injury(s) occurred within the vocal anatomy? Over many years, I have been tending to numerous of people with the diagnosis of Spasmodic Dysphonia (SD) . I would like (down the road) to present to you (my reader) several cases with different causes, treatments and outcomes after all of the above: About the latest case of Tanya G, you already know in general that Tanya came to us to Toronto, Canada all the way from New Zealand in hopes of the complete recovery of her voice from her Abductor SD. Let’s examine what the very specific instruction and treatment process actually entailed and whether or not it was possible to achieve a complete cure of a generally-incurable voice disorder within only 50 hours of instruction and treatment. In a nutshell, below is Tanya’s story: Tanya told me that before such occur...

- Holistic approach to a person as a whole - Case study of our present student of Indian descent. G.B is our present student - a male of 27 years of age.  5 years ago, he came to Toronto from India to become a student in one of our colleges to take a business program. Prior to that, he attended a college in India (computer engineering) and successfully graduated from both programs - in India and in Toronto, Canada. You would think, my reader, that with two colleges under his belt, so to speak, he would be now a successful employee or even an employer of any of the companies/businesses of his choice. However, instead of the latter, he ended up being employed here in Toronto as a truck driver… Why? - you, my reader, may ask. My answer ( given 16 hours of my work with him to date ) would be: Somewhat voice delivery problem, Pretty heavy accent. And, nonetheless… overall insecurity. Let’s examine why he enrolled in our program which is called “ The Total Comm...

“We offer 'Cadillac' quality of voice/vocal coaching and voice repair.   Our services are classy, timely, high-end & simply unprecedented.” What exactly do we mean by the above statement? The Royans Professional Vocal School, aka, The Royans School for the Musical Performing Arts, was founded on February the 15th, 1984. Originally, it was designed to be a local music and vocal school. But in 1987, after the partner of the school passed away, the school took a different turn. Since I have always been specializing and highly educated in voice, I decided to turn The Royans School for the Musical Performing Arts into a professional vocal school; and thus discontinued offering any lessons pertaining to musical instruments. So now, my institution became a ‘vocal boutique’ specializing in voice and voice only. Those years, people were able to appreciate the quality and were able to make the differentiation between the “Walmart” or “Honest Ed’s” (Discounted...

I must have given not million, but billion singing, speech and voice repair designated hours, serving at least 20,000 clients for over 31 years running a professional vocal school. For the last three decades, I have been mostly specializing in Non-Surgical Voice Repair more so than the regular singing or speech lessons . It appears to be that more and more people are ruining their speaking and singing voices , not knowing how to properly use their voices, let alone knowing how to take care of their voices. Usually, their lifestyles are quite unhealthy – diet wise, fitness wise, and enormous stress wise. They live a very strained life, so to speak. Naturally, a lot of them, ( speakers and singer s ), are pushing and pulling their voices while concurrently gripping their voices into their necks, thus paving their way to what’s called Muscle Tension Dysphonia. While having these symptoms, naturally these people affected by them, are thinking of going...

Approximately a month ago, I received a student from the US who has been a professional singer all his life, but for the past while, he had begun experiencing some vocal problems ; like a loss of high range, a raspy/hoarse voice and a collection of excess mucus in the throat, coupled with minor acid reflux . He was experiencing fatigue with his voice and could no longer sing for prolonged periods of time. That made my client very insecure and resulted in him refusing and cancelling upcoming gigs. He originally arrived to me, per-registered for 20 hours of non-surgical voice repair sessions, but ended up taking 30 hours to learn the new vocal technique and to lose the bad habits adopted for the last 40 years being on stage.  The voice repair was actually complete within 10 (maximum of 15) hours; the rest of the sessions were dedicated to mastering the actual singing performance . It was not easy, as I told him, jokingly, even before we started, ...

When yesterday I came home after a hard working day, I, as usual, tuned into CP24 - our most popular Toronto breaking news station.   For many years now, I established a habit to wake up with CP24 news and go to bed with the news update for the past day. I really like to know first what has been happening in my city and then embark on the international news. My husband, however, a native Torontonian, likes to know what’s happening in the world first and then maybe what’s happening in his city. Go figure! I guess, to each their own. Anyway, out of all the Mayors for the last 35 years that I have been living in this city, I precisely liked two of them, Mel Lastman and Rob Ford.   Both have been very useful for the city and also have had very entertaining personalities. Rob Ford in particular, has been “entertaining” Toronto, and nevertheless, the whole world at large for the last several years. I often felt really sorry for him, as the media really ...