A Voice Apart

When you got any voice disorder, your life could change (and not for the better), momentarily...  Just in the recent past, you were a regular person like everybody else, and that one morning when you woke up, you felt that your voice is a little shut down and that you had to clear your throat extensively to bring any sound out to the surface.  "That was quite unusual" you might have thought, and hoped that all of it would go away soon.  You started thinking that your bedroom was quite dry and maybe, in the recent past, you had some cold, and maybe the new showed-up symptoms were just the residuals of the latter.  You went through your day, still feeling uncomfortable with your voice and even feeling that something just got stuck inside of your throat.  By the evening, you also started feeling a pain in your neck and shoulders, and overnight, your throat was 'literally' on fire, as the gastric acid began burning your vocal cords .  Due to that, so

Should you continue singing the same way you have always been singing?  Should you ignore the unusual symptoms like hoarseness and dryness of the voice, loss of range, change of tone, etc.? These are your answers; You are a singer and have been for a long time. Your voice has never let you down for some time now, but, as musicians like to say, there is no gig lasts forever! Now you are not just getting mature, but you are also getting older and have had a lot of shows under your belt. Suddenly, you started noticing that you cannot reach the same high notes which you never had a problem with in the past, your tone of the voice is not the same and at times, you are even experiencing pitch problems, which you never had a problem with in the past. After the show, your voice and nevertheless, yourself, feeling exhausted and your voice sounds raspy and hoarse.  Those are very unfamiliar symptoms to you and now you are puzzled, concerned and even in panic. Your livelihood depen

Nowadays, a lot of singers are susceptible to a variety of vocal disorders.  That happens because in the first place they never “owned” the right vocal technique , the kind which would prosper their voice to the fullest capacity possible; and at the same time it would save and protect their voice for life.  The result – Voice Disorder .  Now the process of restoration of one’s voice begins.  A lot of those students, “who were really very good students,” have learned the wrong technique really well and formed it into their vocal habits.  Not only do we have to fix their “vocal instrument,” so to speak, but also have to get rid of bad habits, like: dropping their jaws down, sticking their stomach out, scooping and sitting under the notes, excessively using their nasal passages, or their very throaty sounds.  It’s easier said than done, though.  Those habits are usually deeply embedded in the person’s psyche and the body muscles, which are also retaining t

I believe, due to the recession, I get more and more phone calls and e-mails with the request to tell them all about the “magic pill” or send them the “magic pill” to fix their very serious voice disorder!  Such nonsense started several years back when the recession really hit North America. Before that people were much more sensible and had an understanding that if they had any kind of voice/vocal problem , they would have to come in person, wherever they resided, and fix to the best of their and my ability their voice.  Then came the next phase – Skype! They figured that now it’s all good; they don’t have to go anywhere, they don’t have to pay as much, let alone their travel, and they can fix their voice right from their couch and in front of their little screen with a questionable sound quality.  Go figure!  And lastly, let’s examine what’s going on now and in the present: They don’t want to come in person, they don’t even want to do Skyp

Sometime ago, I received an e-mail from a, seem to be, very frustrated, aggressive and, probably, very loud in the past, woman. She was, sort of, inquiring about her damaged voice, but in the tone of her e-mail, there was a lot of anger and blame. As usual, I asked her if she wanted to speak on the phone, so I could hear her voice, first hand and then make my assumptions and outline the best course of action for her particular case to be. She agreed and I dialed the number. The minute she picked up the phone, she tried to “scream”, with her broken voice at me, blaming everybody and anybody and saying, with anger, that she could not scream anymore at her two teenage sons while they were on the field, playing soccer. Go figure! To me, even with her voice issue, she sounded very loud, rude and obnoxious, and also, interestingly enough, she, instead of wanting (for real) to fix her voice , wanted to learn a sign language…? Usually, people with a hearing impediment are using s

Let's Find Out! Lately, more and more voice problems sufferers are coming to me with the most, seem to be, common diagnoses; Such as acid reflux negatively affecting vocal cords, and also (by osmosis) affecting voice performance, which, in turn, often leads to  muscle tension dysphonia  disorder, as well as to many other kinds of voice disorders...  Are there, perhaps, any additional voice/ vocal problems that people also experience? You may ask, my reader? The answer is:  Of course, there are!  The rest of them, however, are much more tangible; Those include  nodes, nodules, polyps , lesions, cysts, etc, usually located on one or both vocal cords.  However, what appears to be interesting is that the person, let’s say with the hoarse/raspy voice, and not diagnosed with any growth on their vocal cords, is immediately labelled with one or the other diagnosis; either gastric acid reflux which is burning the sufferer’s vocal cords or muscle tension dysphonia (MTD), which

In this blog, I would like to speak about the human voice in general and the speaking and singing voice in particular. Many people, especially those who are not singers, have no Idea that something may happen to their voice. They get the odd cold or virus, lose their voice momentarily and for a short term, but then regain it fairly quickly and go back about their lives, as per normal. Unfortunately, they do not even have a clue that, at the time of the cold or when the virus occurs, they have to be extra careful and extra gentle to their, somewhat bruised, voice. Being quite unaware of what the consequences might be, they continue as before; speak a lot, speak loud, scream and sing. Then, finally, they get rid of the cold but, to their surprise, find out that their voice never got back to normal!   It still sounds raspy, low and actually, altogether hoarse, as it does not have its usual tone or resonation for that matter. That’s when, unfortunately, the ordeal