A Voice Apart

Through my extensive practice I have been treating   a lot of singers (professional or not) and just regular people with speech problems .  Some of them are quite easy to deal with, while with the others it is extremely hard, to put it mildly.  In general, both described above categories are quite troubled.  Some of those people, unfortunately, have been suffering for a decade or two, if not even more.  Some of them almost lost hope for their vocal recovery , while the others never gave up and continued their search.  Finally, the person arrives to my studio.  They are trying to look and act brave until we start the process, which is in its nature very tedious, very intense vowel-on-vowel, syllable-on-syllable, word-on-word instruction with simultaneous herbal remedies intake.  It is indeed not for the faint of heart and also definitely not for the person with below average I.Q.  It requires an intellectual understanding, in depth; it also requires

When you got any voice disorder, your life could change (and not for the better), momentarily...  Just in the recent past, you were a regular person like everybody else, and that one morning when you woke up, you felt that your voice is a little shut down and that you had to clear your throat extensively to bring any sound out to the surface.  "That was quite unusual" you might have thought, and hoped that all of it would go away soon.  You started thinking that your bedroom was quite dry and maybe, in the recent past, you had some cold, and maybe the new showed-up symptoms were just the residuals of the latter.  You went through your day, still feeling uncomfortable with your voice and even feeling that something just got stuck inside of your throat.  By the evening, you also started feeling a pain in your neck and shoulders, and overnight, your throat was 'literally' on fire, as the gastric acid began burning your vocal cords .  Due to that, so

In 1984, my partner and I started a music school for children and adults. We had 7 teachers teaching all kinds of instruments and also giving vocal lessons . In 1986, my partner died and shortly after, I moved to a new location and started specializing to what I knew best and have done all my life – vocal development. In 1987, I turned The Royans School for the Musical Performing Arts, into The Royans Professional Vocal School , specializing in professional vocal coaching. Now we have started dealing with teenagers who wanted to be either the next Celine Dion and later, Mariah Carey and Britney Spears . Then came along Christina Aguilera and Ricky Martin . And then the music became more sexually and violently pronounced.  The music reflects and effects to what is happening at certain times in the world. The music theme and scene changes and the mentality (especially of the growing teenagers) also changes. The more “liberation” and

Let’s suppose you woke up feeling ill and experiencing sore throat, cough and a fever. Naturally, you think that you got a cold or caught some kind of a virus Nothing too dangerous, you may think... So, for the next several days, you do everything to get rid of the symptoms. And yes, you were able to get rid of pretty much all of them, except your throat is still bothering you. Moreover, after you knocked down your cold or your virus symptoms, you discover that, not only that your throat is still sore, but your voice is acting kind of weird . It’s sounding kind of hoarse and raspy and you have to clear your throat every 15 minutes. The time passes by and you are completely recovered on every level, but your voice is still sounding  Hoarse and not coming back to its normal state. In this instance, you decide to go back to your family doctor, just to get a referral to an ENT specialist. After waiting three to five months for that appointment, to your dismay, you find out

Approximately a month ago, I received a student from the US who has been a professional singer all his life, but for the past while, he had begun experiencing some vocal problems ; like a loss of high range, a raspy/hoarse voice and a collection of excess mucus in the throat, coupled with minor acid reflux . He was experiencing fatigue with his voice and could no longer sing for prolonged periods of time. That made my client very insecure and resulted in him refusing and cancelling upcoming gigs. He originally arrived to me, per-registered for 20 hours of non-surgical voice repair sessions, but ended up taking 30 hours to learn the new vocal technique and to lose the bad habits adopted for the last 40 years being on stage.  The voice repair was actually complete within 10 (maximum of 15) hours; the rest of the sessions were dedicated to mastering the actual singing performance . It was not easy, as I told him, jokingly, even before we started, that

Should you just work on your physical body, or should you just work on your voice? The answer is: NONE of the above mentioned choices are right! As per usual, I am receiving multiple e-mails from all over the world. 90% of those e-mails consist of quite long letters with all kinds of stories, primarily about the voice problems these individuals have been experiencing. The majority of them possess the notion that if something is wrong with their voice i.e. it sounds hoarse, their throat hurts and feels scratchy, they have excessive mucus in their throats and some have already been diagnosed with acid reflux , muscle tension dysphonia , and whatnot; it must be happening only on a physical level. They do not realize that the majority of vocal issues become present because of the misuse of the vocal mechanics (speaking or singing). However, you cannot dismiss either of the above. If the physical body is already out of whack, so to speak, the wrong mechanics of the v