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...

Over the years, I have possessed a lot of singers (or wannabe singers), and also speakers who originally came to me for non-surgicalvoice repair to restore their speaking and singing voices. Now, after certain amount of hours spent with me restoring their voices and re-learning how to really speak and/or sing , they naturally became very excited and began to practice on their own, in spite of my warnings to them to keep it in moderation.  I do understand that they are very excited to reach the new higher grounds with their speaking and singing voices, but they do not understand that the bad habits, which got them in trouble in the first place, are still there and have been there much longer then the newly – found good habits. There is a saying: “Bad habits die hard”.   Indeed!  So what happens is; once my clients start practicing on their own sooner than they were advised, the bad habits kick in and knock down the newly-instilled good habits....

I work with people from a wide variety of professions and walks of life, but I do find myself working with specific groups of people more often than others: Lawyers, Teachers, Admin Assistants, Salespeople, Public Speakers, Professional Voiceover Artists, Radio & TV Personalities and Singers. Due to their chosen professions, they often ruin their voices because they have no knowledge of any sort with respect of how to use their voices properly or how to preserve their voices for a prolonged period of time. Majority of times, these people tend to speak without any knowledge of how to lift their voices off of their vocal boxes and vocal cords in particular, and rather, instead, put their voices in use employing a different set of muscles (facial muscles); thus providing a very much needed rest for their vocal anatomy overall. On the contrary, they are pulling and pushing their vocal chords, squeezing and twisting their larynx and, moreover, engaging the muscles in their ne...