A Voice Apart

Recently, we began hearing more and more about individuals' various voice issues and vocal problems... Some people have been suffering for years with the loss of their regular voice, speaking and/or singing .  The majority of those people, in the past, had already visited all kinds of doctors and ENT specialists and thus, had gotten diagnosed with all kinds of health problems related or, most of the time, not related to their vocal performance . Moreover, the loss of their original speaking and/or singing voice  often had been associated with all kinds of factors pertaining to the person’s internal health...?   However, some of the internal health problems, in fact, may be related to the change in the quality of one's voice.    For example: If the person maintains  some unhealthy diet i.e. consumes a lot of dairy or spicy products for that matter, that person most likely will possess a lot of mucus everywhere in the body, nevertheless, vocal anatomy included. If

Firstly, the answer for the question whether or not you can prevent a vocal surgery, in majority of cases would definitely be yes. We have seen and heard a lot of artists with great talents and beautiful songs , but the majority of those artists, unfortunately, did not have much of an idea about proper vocal technique, which actually would prevent those beautiful natural voices from, in some cases, severe damage. They’re usually picked up by the industry based on their talents, looks, and in some cases, well-written songs. Also, I will never forget, “until the day I die”, when I had an appointment with Sony Music Canada, and before starting the conversation about my own artist, the two Sony executives, almost, right away, when I sat down on the chair in their office, exclaimed: “Where have you been when we needed you last night? We flew over an artist from Vancouver and could hardly pull out any vocals out of him! It was more like we were pulling out our own

When you got any voice disorder, your life could change (and not for the better), momentarily...  Just in the recent past, you were a regular person like everybody else, and that one morning when you woke up, you felt that your voice is a little shut down and that you had to clear your throat extensively to bring any sound out to the surface.  "That was quite unusual" you might have thought, and hoped that all of it would go away soon.  You started thinking that your bedroom was quite dry and maybe, in the recent past, you had some cold, and maybe the new showed-up symptoms were just the residuals of the latter.  You went through your day, still feeling uncomfortable with your voice and even feeling that something just got stuck inside of your throat.  By the evening, you also started feeling a pain in your neck and shoulders, and overnight, your throat was 'literally' on fire, as the gastric acid began burning your vocal cords .  Due to that, so

Let’s suppose you have a car, and you know how to drive it. Does it mean that you also know how to teach driving, or how to fix the car if it’s broken? The answer is - not necessarily. You could be a very good driver, but when it comes to fixing the car, you probably would need a certified/professional car mechanic who specializes in technical issues of the matter.  In fact, when my child reached 16, she asked me to teach her how to drive, and pointed out that a lot of parents do exactly that. My response to her was; “My dear daughter, I definitely know how to drive, but you will not pay me a million dollars to teach you how to drive. I will leave it to a professional who would make sure that you will go on the road, won’t kill anybody and, yourself, come back in one piece. Similarly, when somebody claims to be a vocal coach, it should not be assumed that this person also knows how to fix the voice issue/problem, if such occurs. However, I have recei

When the vocal disorder occurs, whether you are just a speaker, (regular person), or a singer, it is always a devastation to say the least.  For those who are not singers, it appears to be even more devastating than to the actual singers who have lost their singing voice; sometimes their speaking voice as well, and possibly, at least temporarily, lost their singing career, which a lot of the times they have been working on all their lives for. You would think that the process of voice recovery would be easier for people who just lost their speaking voice, but interestingly enough, it is exactly the opposite. The fact is that to recover your voice out of any voice or vocal disorder, takes a lot of strength, a lot of energy, sometimes quite a bit of time and money as well. It is a very tedious process, syllable on syllable and word on word. Especially those with muscle tension or spasmodic dysphonia seem to be suffering the most. They have drawn their voices in a very low pos

What is Dysphonia, you may ask? Definition of Dysphonia: Voice disorders characterized by hoarseness, weakness or even complete loss of voice are called dysphonia.  There are a few kinds, known to man, of dysphonia... Muscle Tension Dysphonia (MTD) and two kinds of Spasmodic Dysphonia (SD).  The above-described voice disorders are quite serious (potentially dangerous) voice conditions, which possibly may be related to some underlying health conditions and therefore, those disorders have to be minded and managed with absolute seriousness.  The loss of voice is only a symptom (a printout of, so to speak, "disturbed software" containing a "virus"). The cause of it is much more complex and needs to be addressed in full detail. Through my experience, the majority of the clients, especially non-singers, came to my studio to get help with some emotional trauma that happened to them sometime in the past and even in the distant past... Throughout my many years