A Voice Apart

While still being in Canada, I got a call from a regular person, (not a singer), who was pleading for help, as she already has undergone two vocal operations and not even done by the laser, but performed by a scalpel. She told me that she was running out of the options. Both times, the nodules on her vocal chords were literally scraped, and thus, she ended up with scar tissue as a side effect of the surgical intervention. Now, her nodules showed up the third time! And yet again, my at the time future client, was offered the third operation! Clearly, the vocal nodules were recurring themselves over and over again. In between of the operations, my client attended a course of treatment which was called the Buteyko breathing technique. Unfortunately, it did not produce any results with respect of the improving the voice situation, but rather produced the opposite result where the person now acquired a quite pronounced raspy cough. Once I met with my client in my hot

I am a fan of all arts related talent shows.  The other day, I watched " So You Think You Can Dance " and one of the judges commented on the performance of one of the auditioners.  He said something along these lines, “It was so nice to watch you and even nicer to witness your talent paired with the great skill you own.” GOLDEN WORDS!!! I right away made a mental note and thought, “I would not say it better myself”. However, by the looks of things, it mainly applies to dance, but somehow not to vocal performance.  Over the years, I’ve been on a lot of panels and ran a lot of vocal workshops and seminars within the industry format, and the comments were always directed towards the great song, the great dance performance, while singing, the great overall talent, but not to the great singing performance or vocal skill, for that matter. It felt like the industry did not account for the skill required to produce at least a decent vocal performance. 

Needless to say, on an everyday basis, I have been getting a substantial amount of e-mails and phone calls with inquiries about my private services, group workshops, books, herbal treatments, etc. As technology is progressing rather rapidly, more and more inquiries are about whether or not they could sit at home, stare at the computer and nevertheless, learn how to sing professionally  but also fix the quite substantial damages localized in their vocal anatomy...? Go figure! It never ceases to amaze me how naive and, I'm afraid to say, unaware some people are. They, unfortunately, absolutely have no clue that the voice is a part of their anatomy and overall physiology, not to mention, it is also a big part of their emotional makeup. For the record, my own approach to  voice mechanics  is very holistic. That, firstly, applies to people's vocal anatomy and then, nevertheless, to all of them in a general sense.  In my opinion, the person, while speaking or singing, represents

The "Titanic" movie is the greatest movie of all times, in my opinion. There was featured the greatest ship, the wonderful love story and a beautiful song "My Heart Will Go On", sung by Celine Dion, one of the greatest Canadian singers. As we know,  the very sad occurrence happened to the seemed to be safest, fastest and presumed to be strongest ship. The Titanic was pushed to perform even faster and stronger than it was originally meant to be by those who actually designed this "super boat". In fact, the ship designer was present on the scene and his words were, "I'm sorry that I did not build a strong enough ship to save all of you". On this note, let's compare what happens with the newly found and discovered talented artists. They also appear young, beautiful and strong. And then... they're pushed to the max. Rehearsals, recordings, performances, tours, and what have you... To withhold all of this, you almost have