A Voice Apart

To my knowledge, the majority of people love to sing. Even those who cannot sing and others who can and have a perfectly good full-time job and respected profession, would drop all of it without any hesitation in the nick of time to make their living doing what they love the most – Singing .  So let’s say, out of 90% of people who would do the above, only 1% or 2% realize their dream. We all know that it is extremely difficult to succeed in the music business and make a living out of it; however, it is not impossible.  If the person has the true music talent, good voice, positive attitude and the vision of their future success, they could do it. However, they have to understand that with all of the prerequisites described above, if they don’t possess the right vocal technique, they may ruin their precious voice right before succeeding in their vocal performance career.  A lot of Ballet Dancers and Figure Skaters also initially possess their talent for their f...

In the conventional sense, it seems not so difficult to learn how to sing. People do some scales, some lip-trills, as well as: -      Goo-goo gaga, ney-ney-ney, meow-meow-meow (to make the cats jealous lol), miam-miam, ziam-ziam and niam-niam-niam, vocal exercises . After doing the above for years, the potential singers are assured that sometime, (perhaps, in the year 2050. lol), or soon thereafter, they will suddenly wake up with a “big voice” and that will assure their singing career for more years ahead, (if, by that time, they will have any years of their actual lives left).  Perhaps due to their age then, they could be good for a senior citizens choir or, for that matter; they can even become the worst Opera Singer, ( as seen in this video ). Who knows? Meanwhile, jokes aside, the time is passing by; the person gets older and still cannot apply any of the above aforementioned exercises to the real singing. So what’s wrong with that...

The Royans Professional Vocal School , (a.k.a, The Royans School For The Musical Performing Arts), has been in existence for over 30 years now.  We opened it on February 15th, 1984 as The Children’s School Of Music. But then, several years later, it suddenly turned into the Adult School of Music with only a few children on our roaster.  In 1987, it, literally, turned into an adult Rock School.  We had a galore of rock bands, consisting of guitar, bass guitar and drum players.  All of them desperately wanted to learn how to sing, as singing is truly a good asset for a band musician to have, and it also makes them much more marketable for that matter. Now we had “Big Children” in our roster, so to speak. And truly, when I was pulling out those voices that were often stuck in novice, (and not so novice) singers’ throats, necks and shoulders, the “little boy or girl” would practically appear in front of my very eyes, figuratively speaking, of course....

Lately, more and more people have been inquiring about their voice/vocal problems. It could be connected with enormous stress imposed on them due to the recession times, fear of losing their jobs, lack of financial stability and/or simply not taking care of their voices and themselves in general, or not knowing a simple voice/vocal technique which would empower their voice to the max, but would not promote the damage. Be it people who have speech difficulties or singers with vocal problems, they all have something in common. Both categories of people are looking for some “magic pill” which upon consumption will supposedly solve all of their voice problems.  We all wish it would be so. However, it is not as easy as it sounds. To repair the voice , be it speaking or singing, will take a lot more than just a “magic pill”, so to speak. However, some of the herbal remedies are so good and work so well on strengthening the vocal box and the vocal cords themse...

When yesterday I came home after a hard working day, I, as usual, tuned into CP24 - our most popular Toronto breaking news station.   For many years now, I established a habit to wake up with CP24 news and go to bed with the news update for the past day. I really like to know first what has been happening in my city and then embark on the international news. My husband, however, a native Torontonian, likes to know what’s happening in the world first and then maybe what’s happening in his city. Go figure! I guess, to each their own. Anyway, out of all the Mayors for the last 35 years that I have been living in this city, I precisely liked two of them, Mel Lastman and Rob Ford.   Both have been very useful for the city and also have had very entertaining personalities. Rob Ford in particular, has been “entertaining” Toronto, and nevertheless, the whole world at large for the last several years. I often felt really sorry for him, as the media really ...