A Voice Apart

Dealing with various voice disorders is my specialty. Over many years, I have attended to hundreds, if not thousands of people with different voice injuries of their speaking and/or singing voices. In general, they were all, one way or another, physically and, nevertheless, emotionally distraught. What was different about them was their reactional response to their voice disorder and its consequences. What was in common that all of them had lost their confidence, especially the singers. And even after the restoration of their voices, their physical demeanour has been expressing the tightness and fear, to say the least. And even after the voice sounded as good, or even better than before, the performance aspect has been significantly lost, as they could not bring themselves out of their shell and loosen themselves up in order to produce a required performance quality. In Russia, we have a saying: “The good dancers do not show their sweat”. Speaking of dancers, they work really hard a...

Hardly finish your tour? Does your throat hurt after performances? Voice sounding hoarse? If your answer is yes, the above are the symptoms of an overused and abused vocal anatomy. The worst part is if you continue doing it without changing your manner of speaking and singing, it will lead to the need for a serious voice repair and not necessarily a non-surgical one. By that time, if you attempt to attain the non-surgical voice repair, it might be too late. Then you are facing a laser or a scalpel operation, which could result in scar tissue, which by itself could be more detrimental than the original damage... This could be your worst nightmare. The reason I am writing this blog is to prevent you from that possibility. The prevention is definitely far better than dealing with serious vocal damage . What does prevention entail, you may ask? Learning the proper skills for speaking and singing before you embark on any performance or that nasty tour which m...

Well, yesterday is gone… but today is still (hopefully) not too late!  However, you yourself may think that the recovery of your voice (after you waited for so long), could not even be on the radar… but please think again. We definitely can help! And not only in the restoration of your damaged or lost voice, but we can also help by teaching you how to speak and sing up to (nevertheless) a professional level. We will make sure that we will repair your voice and that you will regain and maintain your voice for life! We have people who come to us from all over the world with all kinds of voice/vocal problems. Some of them had been medically diagnosed and some of them had not been, but those of them - especially with diagnosis, never revealed those diagnosis or told us anything at all until their actual arrival to our studio/clinic. Either way, by advocating our very own V ocal Science(TM) Method and technique , we make sure that all of our voice repair clients im...

My business, “ The Royans Professional Vocal School  and The Royans Institute for Non-Surgical Voice Repair ” use to be located in a quite prestigious area in the northeast part of Toronto, Canada. However, in the building where my studio was located, the washrooms were not kept up to standards, and the toilets, quite often, were backed up. To serve our clients better and provide them with safe and clean facilities, we had to contact the management of the building more often than we would have liked to. They fixed it…, and then, the saga began all over again... For the last 4 decades, I have been mostly specialising in Non-Surgical Voice Repair for speakers and singers. Quite a few of them had been coming into that very studio with shut-down voices and quite often, with, so to speak, shut-down bodies.  The memory brings one of my voice repair client's case: The person came from the US with a very low-drawn, hardly understandable, speaking voice...

My answer would be: “No, you should not.” With that said, if you want to learn something valuable from your coach/mentor, or your voice specialist for that matter, YOU are the one who has to be submissive to such learning and NEVER DOMINANT! For example.. during my session, one of my students/clients had been constantly trying to take over, so to speak. In general, I have always reminded them that one of us has to be submissive… and it ain’t going to be me! What do I mean by that? What I mean is that when I try to convey my message, and for many years (along with it), the tested, tried and proved curriculum, the student/client tries to impose his/her own way of running MY session; and therefore, no doubt,  interferes with the process of his/her own learning progress. I have been consulting, teaching and repairing voices for over four decades, but some of my clients, instead of listening and embracing my expertise and extensive experience, trying to prove their own...

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...

Lately, more and more phone calls and e-mails from various church leaders are pouring our way. Interestingly enough that those requests are primarily coming from the US. The US people seem to be very devoted to their church, religion and faith, which is definitely very commendable! Not only they are worshiping God and Jesus, but they are also very respectful and faithful to their leaders. We often get phone calls from somebody who inquires about voice repair on behalf of their Priest, Minister or Bishop, which is also very commendable, as those devoted people are really trying to help their peers. The bottom line, though, is such that the above aforementioned church leaders are constantly endangering their voices (speaking and singing).  They preach a lot and preach very loudly. A lot of them are using their singing voices and, unfortunately, using them totally incorrectly! So there comes a time that both of their speaking and singing voices end up being quite co...

Lately, I guess due to the recession, and the market of the employers (and certainly not employees), I often attend to people who are very unhappy professionally and otherwise; and desperately looking for desirable employment, but failing (over and over) numerous of interviews. There are several reasons why that president takes place. For example, my very recent client was a man in his early 60’s who, about a couple of months ago, lost a very good engineering position.  When I spoke to that person over the phone, being a voice specialist, I right a way, made a mental note that his voice sounds very low positioned, quite raspy with quite heavy European accent and with a very faint pronunciation. I did invite him for a consultation and we have begun (firstly) talking about the application of his voice, which, in my opinion, could be very distractive during his future interview with a future employer.  His voice was very dry and needed moisture and lub...