A Voice Apart

The vocalrevolution is here , I said it finally to myself and to the world at large in 1994. I have been teaching voice since 1985 and teaching it my own way, in spite of an extensive 12 year education in the music field.  While I have been studying in the Music Teachers College in Russia , Leningrad, I was offered to do rather strange things to supposedly develop my voice. After those vocal escapades, (I called them "vocabatics without a safety net"), my throat would hurt and my voice would sound raspy and low. It made me really worried and I begun to think about it night and day. I also started rebelling during the private vocal lessons and during the choir practice, to the point that I got kicked out of the choir and almost got kicked out of the college. I was prohibited to sing in my last semester before obtaining the Bachelors Degree of Music Education and specialising in Voice and Choir Conducting. Go figure! I, however, graduated with the flying colors...

Teaching now for over 40 years , I could right away sense if the child, or now adult, has ever been taking any activities which require mind/body coordination, like for example: Ballet, Gymnastics, Figure Skating and, of course, participating in some of the other recreational or professionally oriented events and sports. Those who did not do it I their childhood, could not literally “walk and chew the gum at the same time”, so to speak. Some of them could not walk a straight line, let alone on their tippy toes with their arms up, as per the requirements of Vocal Science Method and Technique . Some of them simply do not possess any motor skills. Their brain is not trained to give a command to their bodies, which in case of the voice training and voice powering, it requires a great deal to visualise how the physical sound travels, and then connect the sound to the upper back muscles, upper diaphragm and lower abdomen, to achieve the total voice performance , speaking, or fu...

Let’s examine what has happened to the world lately? What has happened is that nobody speaks, especially on the phone. Everybody is texting and e-mailing and practically nobody  communicates otherwise.  Not necessarily any of those people have a voice problem; and that’s why they are afraid to speak. But, all of them, however, independently, have a problem in common; they simply do not know how to communicate anymore, ( voice problem or not). Some of them, primarily young people, who were born in this technological craze, evidently, had never been taught either how to hand write, nor how to read actual books, (not the internet mishmash), and let along speak, as even passing school tests, they had to respond in writing; choosing one answer out of 3 or 5 choices (multiple choice method). How scary is that? Some of them cannot even sign their own name, unless electronically! In my world, those, (the above described people), are often inquiring about either ...

Very often, I get the phone calls, (especially from the US), from the husbands or wives of the vocally effected individuals. They inquire about the Non-Surgical Voice Repair on behalf of their loved one and I, in a lot of times, am hearing and even suspecting that there is something wrong with their own voices. Since some people are not able to coherently express themselves outright at the beginning of the phone conversation, I presume that they inquire about themselves! Of course, if I hear severe voice damage, I know that I am talking to the right person. It is quite peculiar that the spouse, with no voice problem per say, sounds like he/she has one!  It seems, like when I travel to the UK, I also pick up a British accent. Also, when I receive the American clients from Buffalo New York or Texas, my Russian and Canadian accent gets mixed in with their American accent.  It seems to be when one of the spouses has a voice problem and has obvious difficulty speaking...

One of my friends likes to use this expression; “There is no change without change”. Usually, it’s very much so true. Lately, it’s been no secret that quite a few well-known singers have acquired a lot of vocal problems; bleeding vocal cords , polyps, nodules , dysphonia and other nasty vocal disorders. Why is that... and what is the cause, you, my reader, may ask? We often hear people saying: “We love the voice, we love his or her songs, we love the emotions, we love the performance…” So, what is the problem then? The problem is that nobody knows (let alone singers themselves) or pays attention to the voice application and how exactly that voice is being used by the performers. And yes, the industry usually picks up a good-looking person, quite often with good songwriting skills and with the potential of that person becoming a worldwide recording artist and performer. And yes, when it comes to recording, the best producers and engineers will be producing their ...