A Voice Apart

WE CAN HELP BY EMPLOYING OUR BEST EFFORTS - AND THUS, WE GUARANTEE THE BEST RESULTS POSSIBLE! With the above said, a good voice specialist knows about your voice disorder. A great one knows what is at stake (particularly for you), and, nevertheless, the  great  one does care about the successful non-surgical and non-invasive voice repair along with voice restoration and voice enhancement addressed to your specific needs. The Vocal Science™ Method and its revolutionary technique is, no doubt, truly engineered to amaze!  No doubt, it will give you today the experience of the 22nd century in voice/vocal innovation. The question is – Why are people with voice/vocal injuries sometimes hesitant and, nevertheless, “afraid” of being treated or cured? Are they, perhaps, afraid to “open up” to face their not-so-very pleasant past? We can definitely help because we advocate a holistic approach to voice mechanics as well as to the person as a whole. In fact, we are...

Nevertheless, I have been getting a lot of calls regarding the non-surgical voice repair program. The people who are inquiring are usually very desperate and very emotional, which is quite understandable. They're pleading for help and, at the glance, appear that they would do anything that would be required from them; would drop everything and anything (including their vocal and voice performances) and would rush to Toronto to fix their voices in order to continue their performances, recordings and whichever other careers which are directly connected to their voices' health and their overall well being. Some of them are diagnosed, some of them not yet, and some of them are hiding their diagnosis (to my dismay...) But what is more surprising is that a lot of them are till singing (more like faking) and thus being in denial, while at the same time, their singing (and voices in general) and quite compromised! Go figure! They are actually singing on their nodules and p...

Has Your Voice Been Compromised Due To The Above? You had a stroke… and luckily, you survived! In a lot of cases, after the stroke occurs, either the right side or the left side of the body ends up to be paralyzed.  Also, in a lot of cases, the speech centre is also greatly effected, and thus the survived-patient’s speech is very much so compromised. In some cases, it is still recoverable, but in others, unfortunately, the speech remains to be permanently impaired.  For those cases where I could use an alternative approach to voice mechanics , the recovery is still going to be a slow and tedious process, which will require a lot of patience from the person in question and myself.  Usually, a stroke survivor has a very slow and quite slurred speech, not to mention usually pretty faint. Obviously, there is not much enunciation, pronunciation or articulation is precent in those cases. So in order to enhance the above, a lot of special speech exercises hav...

My business, “ The Royans Professional Vocal School  and The Royans Institute for Non-Surgical Voice Repair ” use to be located in a quite prestigious area in the northeast part of Toronto, Canada. However, in the building where my studio was located, the washrooms were not kept up to standards, and the toilets, quite often, were backed up. To serve our clients better and provide them with safe and clean facilities, we had to contact the management of the building more often than we would have liked to. They fixed it…, and then, the saga began all over again... For the last 4 decades, I have been mostly specialising in Non-Surgical Voice Repair for speakers and singers. Quite a few of them had been coming into that very studio with shut-down voices and quite often, with, so to speak, shut-down bodies.  The memory brings one of my voice repair client's case: The person came from the US with a very low-drawn, hardly understandable, speaking voice...

Some singers who come to me for non-surgical voice repair are not necessarily the professional singers. Which means, that a lot of them have a daytime job or even their own businesses.  Some of the professions require speaking on the phone all day, running meetings, doing presentations, and what not.  After an 8-hour workday, the part-time singers would rush to their band rehearsal or even to an outright performance.  Perhaps being vocally very talented but not, per se, knowing about the proper application of their voice, they put the enormous pressure on their vocal anatomy. So let’s examine that: They use their speaking voice excessively during the working day and then even more intensely during the night through the late hours.  While they’re speaking at work, they primarily are doing it from the sitting position with a slouched back, thus drowning their voice onto the bottom of their throats and below.  They establish the low voice speaking habit....

Getting all these inquiries, it never ceases to amaze me that (especially) singers rely on ENT specialists to treat and cure their singing voices...! The majority of the ENT’s (or speech therapists for that matter) never sung a note in their lives. And if so, how in the world are they going to restore your singing voice and teach you a proper vocal technique - so that you would comply with the standards of singing (let alone, professional singing) and never would ruin your voice ever again? The majority of people are thinking, when something happens to their voice and they cannot speak or sing the way they used to, that the answer to that will lie at the ENT doctor’s office. Granted they could get some diagnosis (unfortunately, not always accurate) and the ENT specialists may give a suggestion for the invasive surgical intervention. There will be no other treatment, let along cure, provided. And that I can tell you, with absolute certainty. If it was otherwise, I, most likely, w...

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 ...

I had a lot of speaking and singing students (especially in the past) with quite severe lisps and some stuttering. It is a known fact that when the stuttering person begins to sing, the stuttering disappears. But the objective here is to reduce that stuttering not just during singing, but also while speaking on an everyday basis. Similarly, when the person lisps and pronounces “F” instead of “S” (for example, “Fnow" instead of “Snow”). Over the years, by osmosis, I discovered that the Vocal Science Technique eliminated that lisp practically on the root, as by “biting above the air”, it produces sound which puts the voice in complete balance when it enters the facial cavities, provided that the lift to those cavities is supported by the abdominal muscles. The enunciation and pronunciation become crystal clear due to all the vowels and consonants getting placed in the right set of muscles. So when the support, structure, placement and projection of the voice is accom...

Regain your voice and your confidence back!   Your voice… desired and deserved!   More and more professional artists end up with the vocal injuries . Nearly every week, we hear that various concerts and tours have been canceled and the lead singers (either a soloist or band lead singer) just about to undergo a vocal cord surgery . How sad is that? Sad indeed!   Why does it happen and why it happens to so many artists? Is it because they are overworked and over-stressed? I think that definitely the above are the factors.  However, if their technical merit of their singing had been intact, less tragedies and cancellations of their performances would take place. So, human being puzzle (in a manner of speaking), like any puzzle, has many components and pieces, which have to fall into the right places. Those singers’ lifestyles, naturally, are very active and filled with a lot of appearances, interviews and performances. Due...

Recently, we had an inquiry from a singer situated in Europe who had been diagnosed with Spasmodic Dysphonia. …………………………………………………………………………… “I was diagnosed with spasmodic dysphonia, and the doctor wanted to give me Botox injections, but I refused because the risk of not being able to sing well afterwards (I am a singer) was too great! So my question is, Can you help me get my voice or a better voice back? Is it possible to get instructions via Skype. I live in Amsterdam, the Netherlands!” …………………………………………………………………………… Below is my answer. Hi There, I have to note that it is a little unusual to be diagnosed with spasmodic dysphonia, when you are a singer. Usually, it happens to people who are not singers, but just regular (or professional) speaking voice users. But, nevertheless, it is a very serious problem and in conventional sense, cannot be treated, let alone cured. And yes, the only treatment they could offer is the Botox, which in majority of cases, will not work or ...

Do not ever give up hope! Do not ever listen to the, so-called medical professionals prompting you to accept your voice condition and learn how to live with it! How pathetic is that?   Those medical professionals do not offer any solutions and could not care less that you had spent most of your life on stage singing and do not know, or want, any other lifestyle, but the one you like and love. One of our former clients (throat cancer survivor) was told exactly that and was encouraged to be thankful to be alive. Meanwhile, that very client had spent over 45 years on stage playing guitar and singing in a rock band. After C hemo and R adiation, his fingertips lost the sensation of touch and his voice was forever raspy and hoarse, (both speaking and singing). How frustrating could that be? My answer would be : A bove and B eyond !   Even though my client was suggested to accept it and “ be happy to be alive !"   H e certainly did not want to follow that guidance. To his...