A Voice Apart

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

Let’s suppose you have a car, and you know how to drive it. Does it mean that you also know how to teach driving, or how to fix the car if it’s broken? The answer is - not necessarily. You could be a very good driver, but when it comes to fixing the car, you probably would need a certified/professional car mechanic who specializes in technical issues of the matter.  In fact, when my child reached 16, she asked me to teach her how to drive, and pointed out that a lot of parents do exactly that. My response to her was; “My dear daughter, I definitely know how to drive, but you will not pay me a million dollars to teach you how to drive. I will leave it to a professional who would make sure that you will go on the road, won’t kill anybody and, yourself, come back in one piece. Similarly, when somebody claims to be a vocal coach, it should not be assumed that this person also knows how to fix the voice issue/problem, if such occurs. However, I have recei

I have been teaching and repairing voices for many years now. I have taught actors, professional media personnel, voice-over speakers, fitness instructors, and, of course, singers of all calibers. To survive in those described above professions, you need a strong voice, a voice which will never let down its user.  Those people’s livelihood directly depends on the strength, health and command of their voices. If the person, of any of the described above professions, would damage and/or lose their voice , their livelihood would be (very much so) in jeopardy.  Over the years, I’ve fixed the voices of quite well-known radio and TV personnel, public speakers, pastors, worship leaders, to name a few. All of them needed their voice back to the normal operational state and as soon as possible! So there was no time to just speak about it or feed them with promises of a future recovery — I had to get to the action and  to act upon it immediately! These people were despera

Let’s find out… Perhaps one day you woke up and felt that your throat is unusually dry and even somewhat scratchy. You probably did not think much about it, as it had happened before. So you started clearing your throat, trying to cough it out, but this time it was much harder to bring it to the normal state. You have tried again and again and instead of it getting better, it was getting worse. Now, probably there was a time for concern. At first, you thought that maybe you caught a cold or a virus, but you overall felt alright and not sick at all. Then you started to analyze your social behaviour and your conduct at work, trying to remember if anybody there was sick and had a virus or a cold. After that, another thought occurred in your mind and you started thinking... “Probably, I speak too much and too loud on an everyday basis, I speak on the phone all day and then go to a loud club or to my band practice…” Suddenly, you realize that you are overworking your voic

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