A Voice Apart

This case is about Michael F from the United Kingdom: He suffered from paralyzed vocal cords due to throat cancer. ____________   Michael was diagnosed with throat cancer and, due to that, he had undergone numerous sessions of chemotherapy and well as radiation treatments. In the end, he ended up with one vocal cord fully paralyzed and the other one completely damaged (fully non-functional). His speaking voice was totally unclear and had a very high soprano tone. Obviously, the condition of his vocal cords was beyond repair; however, by employing the Vocal Science™ technique, his voice got rechannelled to a different set of muscles (facial cavities) which allowed him to speak much louder and much clearer. His voice also acquired some bass on the bottom, which was supporting the actual lift off of his vocal box and off of his vocal cords. Clearly, there was a huge improvement, as Michael was taught to employ his facial muscles (natural amplifier/resonato...

One day, you wake up and you notice that suddenly, your voice is not the same as it normally is. You think to yourself; "maybe, its just morning raspiness and it will go away later in the day".  Five (or more) days pass and you realize that your voice is not getting any better.  It’s actually getting worse with every word you try to convey. On top of that, your throat feels like it is on fire and it has been burning severely. So, by now, you have come to the realization that something is definitely wrong there… Your  voice feels weak, and on top of that, it sounds raspy and hoarse . “What could I do to make it better” you ask yourself in desperation? Of course, right away, you turn to the “all reliable internet" for answers to your vocal dilemma, and find out that all of their “answers” are just generic explanation websites which, at most times, do not lead you to the best diagnosis and/or treatments. Now, you are lost completely and totally unaware ...

In our roster, we have more and more people coming to us for voice repair and voice restoration , but they are also coming to actually “find” their voice. We have clients who come to us with various voice/vocal issues and who have already tried everything else, especially through the means of the Internet. Some of those people are very "computer savvy" and are able to deeply surf and navigate voice-related sites. Evidently, they have been trying to save money, so they would not have to travel anywhere to rectify their voice problems and, instead, were trying to do it on their own and from the comfort of their home. Needless to say that eventually, accomplishing nothing to what they were looking for, they actually managed to make their voice/vocal issues even more pronounced and, in some cases. completely  non-repairable (at least with a non-surgical approach) ... I really like one of the commercials for men’s weight loss (that is running very often...

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...

Should you just work on your physical body, or should you just work on your voice? The answer is: NONE of the above mentioned choices are right! As per usual, I am receiving multiple e-mails from all over the world. 90% of those e-mails consist of quite long letters with all kinds of stories, primarily about the voice problems these individuals have been experiencing. The majority of them possess the notion that if something is wrong with their voice i.e. it sounds hoarse, their throat hurts and feels scratchy, they have excessive mucus in their throats and some have already been diagnosed with acid reflux , muscle tension dysphonia , and whatnot; it must be happening only on a physical level. They do not realize that the majority of vocal issues become present because of the misuse of the vocal mechanics (speaking or singing). However, you cannot dismiss either of the above. If the physical body is already out of whack, so to speak, the wrong mechanics of the v...