A Voice Apart

My Husband and I attended yesterday (October the 4 th ) Legends in Concert in Niagara Falls and really enjoyed it and loved it.  It was very well staged; in general, the performers were very look-alike to the original artists and also sounded quite close to the original acts. The absolute best, in my professional and personal opinion, was Tina Turner’s look-alike and actually, in my professional opinion, she was sounding better then the original Tina Turner.  As a Master Vocal Coach and Voice Repair Specialist with over 40 years of experience; teaching, consulting and repairing voices, I should say, that even I, could not improve anything in that act, singing or otherwise. Way to go Cookie Watkins ! As for the person that I could have truly professionally helped, especially with the high range and a better pitch, would be the Roy Orbison impersonator, Brian McCullough . In my professional opinion, his voice was quite low positioned while singing, and that sug

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

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, that

The Royans Professional Vocal School , (a.k.a, The Royans School For The Musical Performing Arts), has been in existence for over 30 years now.  We opened it on February 15th, 1984 as The Children’s School Of Music. But then, several years later, it suddenly turned into the Adult School of Music with only a few children on our roaster.  In 1987, it, literally, turned into an adult Rock School.  We had a galore of rock bands, consisting of guitar, bass guitar and drum players.  All of them desperately wanted to learn how to sing, as singing is truly a good asset for a band musician to have, and it also makes them much more marketable for that matter. Now we had “Big Children” in our roster, so to speak. And truly, when I was pulling out those voices that were often stuck in novice, (and not so novice) singers’ throats, necks and shoulders, the “little boy or girl” would practically appear in front of my very eyes, figuratively speaking, of course.   Interestingly en

Let’s find out… Perhaps one day you woke up and felt that your throat is unusually dry and even somewhat scratchy. You probably did not think much about it, as it had happened before. So you started clearing your throat, trying to cough it out, but this time it was much harder to bring it to the normal state. You have tried again and again and instead of it getting better, it was getting worse. Now, probably there was a time for concern. At first, you thought that maybe you caught a cold or a virus, but you overall felt alright and not sick at all. Then you started to analyze your social behaviour and your conduct at work, trying to remember if anybody there was sick and had a virus or a cold. After that, another thought occurred in your mind and you started thinking... “Probably, I speak too much and too loud on an everyday basis, I speak on the phone all day and then go to a loud club or to my band practice…” Suddenly, you realize that you are overworking your voic

When the person with a voice disorder is trying to live a (so to speak) normal life, he/she is definitely experiencing some difficulties in communication with others; nevertheless, at their work place and even in their family lives. They are usually very frustrated with their voice which is not, by far, sounding the same as before. They are also not very well understood and are, quite often, being asked several times to repeat or to reiterate what they were trying to say. That makes those people with voice disorders understandably very irritable and overall, very emotional. They feel like they are handicapped (in a manner of speaking), and understandably so. Some of them are so disillusioned that they carry with them a sign, advising the strangers that they have difficulty to speak. Others who have lost the hope to regain a normal voice are even starting to learn sign language.  How sad is that?  A lot of those people have lost hope with respect of living their norma