A Voice Apart

"Does It Smell In Here? A look at the current state of the speaking, coaching and consulting industry." by Larry Winget and Randy Pennington: (Click  HERE  to see the article.) - Our article is inspired by the one above - - I have been consulting, teaching, coaching and repairing voices close to four decades now. All previous years, being true to my cause, I kept saying to people that I did not think that I had any competition with respect of what I have been doing for many years… At least, that’s what I thought at the time.  I knew that I was producing unprecedented results with respect to the voice work; and to my knowledge, nobody at all (of those who had similar claims of success) could live up to my level of results, expertise and experience. Then came the internet… and now it is in full bloom! All of a sudden, everybody is a  voice/vocal coach   and even a  voice repair specialist …? A lot of them, I have never...

Intimate and interactive: " Alex Norman of illScarlett   (Sony BMG Music Canada)" For those who wanted to know how it all came about, we decided to disclose the "intimate" details of how The Royans Professional Vocal School (a.k.a. The Royans School for the Musial Performing Arts) got conceived, was carried and had been brought up on this Earth for its existence to nowadays. ---   I came to Toronto, Canada from Russia (Leningrad/St. Petersburg) in 1980. In 1984, my partner (common law husband) and I were able to open a school named (at the time) The Royans School for the Musical Performing Arts.  This school was donated to me by an older Polish Canadian philanthropist. This gentleman overheard me singing and playing piano, and while congratulating me on my talent, he asked me why I am teaching singing and piano in other schools, but not in my own? I did reply that I was still a new immigrant and, at the time, my daughter was barely two years old. To...

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 I can say so myself, the Vocal Science ™ method and technique is truly revolutionary!                                         To date, I have coached and treated over 20,000 clients; and I can say with absolute certainty that none of them came to me with any accountable/tangible technique or quality of speaking and singing taught to them, for that matter. Moreover, some of them revealed to me and my staff that they, before entering such lessons, actually had a quite decent speaking or singing voice. One of them, apparently, got signed to a major record label and got addressed to a high-end vocal coach. Unfortunately, the aforementioned person never improved her singing skills, but (on the contrary) in the process, got her voice quite damaged. So she came to us not for singing lessons… but for non-surgical voice repair. How sad is that? Needless to say, since her voic...

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 ...

- Revised and modernized version from July 23rd, 2011 I've been teaching, consulting and recording vocalists for close to four decades. I've also been conducting group vocal interactive workshops and seminars for the longest time. It is extremely interesting to watch and experience the changes with each generation. What was happening before is history. What is happening today is reality. And today's reality is very confusing, and at times, disheartening. On one hand, people are much more advanced now than they've ever been. In what sense you may ask? Definitely technologically. Also quite definitely, intellectually, as the technology gives them access to much wider venues than they could have ever dreamt of.  Yet, physically speaking, it's another story. The Vocal Science ™  method, which I have been advocating for quite a few years, requires an integration and synergy between mental, physical, emotional and vocal components. Unless all of those compon...

Do you experience any voice problems speaking or singing the word of The Lord? In a previous blog (titled “Calling All Pastors, Priests, Ministers, Bishops, Worship Leaders, Gospel Singers, Etc”), we have touched the topic of voice issues of those who religiously (no pun intended) worship God and Jesus, using their speaking and singing voices and, unfortunately, sometimes using their voices not always adequately and often excessively. But what about the church choirs and other religious (or non-religious) choirs for that matter? People who are singing in those choirs are usually very devoted to their causes, and thus performing their scores very diligently and with everything (so to speak) they’ve got…to the max! They are usually very animated, very energetic, and nevertheless, also using their voices to the max as well. The choir director/master always encourages the choir members to sing passionately and loudly, but not always paying attention to the technical as...