A Voice Apart

If You Suffer From These Symptoms Listed Below...  You May Have MTD or SD Voice Disorder! Have you, perhaps, THREW YOUR VOICE OFF OF A VOCAL BALANCE…? -Drowned your voice Deeply in your Lower Throat Position…? - Experience Hoarseness and Raspiness…? - Have Difficulty to Swallow…? - Have Difficulty Breathing…? - Feel Pain in the Throat and/or Neck…? - Does your throat feel Dry at All Times…? - Acid Reflux perhaps…? - No doubt, excessive Mucus…? ….Find out how we can help you - Naturally / Holistically / Alternatively… For many years we have been receiving people with the above-listed symptoms. Practically all of them came to us with a diagnosis of either Muscle Tension Dysphonia (MTD) or Spasmodic Dysphonia (SD). The majority of those people have been mainly concerned with their speaking voice, however, there were also singers who were not necessarily diagnosed with MTD or SD, but who had a dry throat, excess of mucus, and/or gastric acid and thus they also possessed a raspy and ho...

    Vocally Speaking. The Vocal Science (TM) Method. Become Non-Orthodox! Think out of the box...  "Diana, God downloaded into you his gift"  - Patsy S of London UK. Let’s analyze; What does the Vocal Science™ method actually consist of, you, my reader may be wondering…? It does consist of a natural, holistic and completely alternative approach not only to the voice mechanics, but also to a person as a whole. What separates this method from other methods and why does this method work without failure? First a little bit about the conventional methods: There are vocal coaches for singers, there are speech therapists and speech pathologists for those who have some kind of voice disorder or voice issues and/or vocal problems. What do they really offer…? To tell you the truth, it is pretty hard to define. Vocal coaches are trying to teach their singing clients some strange (to put it mildly) exercises, which is remotely reminiscent of actual singing. Those coaches do al...

Spasmodic Dysphonia is a very nasty voice disorder which is, conventionally speaking, not treatable, let alone curable. Via my observations of many years of practise, it looks like it happens more to women rather than to men. I think that men are less emotional, less loud and/or much less flamboyant in their nature. Interestingly enough, practically all of the women who came to me for treatment, before acquiring “SD” (according to them) were very active, very loud and yet very sensitive emotionally; and then… ”suddenly” they began to feel changes in their voice… It gradually began to deteriorate… Those women, naturally, were very-much surprised experiencing the latter; and thus not agreeing with the obvious fact of the above-mentioned matter. They began to push and pull their voice trying to bring it to the surface while, concurrently, doing further damage to their vocal anatomy… Needless to say, after producing these very damaging manipulations with their voice, one day, it may b...

- 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...

At The Royans Professional Vocal School /The Royans Institute for Non-Surgical Voice Repair , we naturally get a large number of inquiries related to voice/vocal problems, issues and disorders. The majority of people who actually inquire about our services truly believe that the problem with the voice is physical as, in their opinion, something must have gone wrong with their voice and the sound; and now, via speech therapy or a vocal operation, they believe that they will solve all of their voice problems and thus will sound the same as before…or even better. Unfortunately, only the minority of voice disorder sufferers do realize that conventional speech therapy, or even a vocal operation for that matter, would actually change anything… Due to the level of their intelligence, they do have the understanding that something went wrong with their vocal mechanics; which, nevertheless, have to be fixed and put back intact and, needless to say, back in balance. Easier said then do...

A stroke is one of the most harmful experiences an individual can experience. When they happen, strokes will often cause temporary or permanent paralysis (nerve damage) to one or both sides of the human body. Sometimes, speech, memory, balance, cognition, and vision may also be affected. In addition, muscle spasms and pain are some of the most common issues that are associated with stroke. These issues often cause stroke survivors difficulties with respect of managing their daily tasks - like bathing and dressing. Therefore, it may be challenging for them to continue to manage the daily roles in their lives. One of the more serious complications of a stroke tends to be the difficulty in communication, which indeed causes difficulty with respect to talking with others. It is known that about 25 to 40% of stroke patients suffer from aphasia - a disorder that impairs one's ability to process language and their ability to speak. Aphasia also makes it challenging for a stroke su...

The Right and Healthy Modality of the Vocal Behaviour for Non-Singers. Being in the music and voice business for over four decades, I've met a lot of people with good voices, bad voices and also, so to speak, broken voices.  Some of them were singers, some of them had nothing to do with singing. Those who had nothing to do with singing, however, had a lot to do with a lot of speaking; and thus sometimes, they had been forcing their voices out and screaming from the top of their lungs and from the bottom of their throats...(basically, purely screaming)! Outside of the regular people, we are also talking about some professionals like: fitness instructors, martial arts instructors, teachers, lawyers, crown attorneys, public and motivational speakers to name a few. Due to their occupational (in a manner of speaking) hazard, they have been forcing their voices to serve others and one day, someday, their once precious voice seized on them "unexpectedly and out of the blue...

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...

Had Your Voice Been Compromised Due To The Above? Unfortunately, after being diagnosed with such a nasty disease like throat cancer and then, as a consequence, having to undergo chemotherapy and radiation treatments, the voice could be very easily compromised and the vocal anatomy could also end up damaged.  The medical doctors, in this case, are usually trying to convince their patients to be grateful that they survived (never mind their damaged voice or anything else which ended up being damaged for that matter).   They usually say: “ Be grateful that you are alive and don’t worry about your voice ”. It’s easy for them to say, but the person who use to speak (or even sing) with a normal voice, feels quite inadequate, as he/she has a communication breakdown via a raspy/hoarse voice , or sometimes, even no voice at all. Nevertheless, that person is affected with everyday life challenges, not to mention work challenges and… even the loss of the la...

Lately, we have received (in our studio/clinic) a fair amount of people with various voice/vocal injuries caused by numerous forms of accidents. Some of them even had been in a coma for a number of months and their relatives were advised that they may never come out of it; and thus will continue their existence in a vegetative state… Thank God, some of them proved the doctors wrong and did come out not only from their coma, but even stood up and walked (almost on their own) from out of their wheelchairs… and, nevertheless, on their own two feet! How remarkable is that?  It is indeed! No doubt, those people went through a lot! On this note, it is easy to assume that they are real “troopers” and definitely, needless to say, survivors. Unfortunately, for many of them, outside of other physical challenges, their voice became an issue. Some of them literally lost the ability to talk at all or to talk normally. The conventional doctors, speech therapists and pathologists ...

If so, we can help to restore your speaking and/or singing voice! Fix your voice, regain your voice and maintain your voice for a lifetime! - This is our motto! More often then before, we are getting inquiries from people who (at one time or another) had been involved in some kind of an accident; and due to that fact, their voices (and vocal anatomy in general) ended up being severely injured. Most common, of course, are automobile accidents; but there are also work-related accidents, bicycle accidents, slip and fall accidents and pedestrian-related accidents.      In our roster of voice repair clients, we had a person who, due to the bicycle accident, fell with his throat right onto the handlebars; and thus damaged some parts of his vocal box. We also had a person who was working on a construction site and, somehow, the electric saw fell DIRECTLY ON HIS THROAT…, in this case, the cut happened to be on one of the vocal cords. We ...