A Voice Apart

"Italy's Singing Nun Channels Madonna, Releases 'Like a Virgin' Cover" As I mentioned before, providing vocal services of all sorts for over four decades, I think I’ve seen it all and pretty much dealt with it all. However, the title (which speaks for itself) is even for me, still remains to be quite outrageous.  First of all, you my reader, may ask: 'What I mean by vocal “virginity”'?  To answer that question with more clarity, I will give you an example of a dancer who desperately wants to perform on stage, but has, so to speak, bad feet (flat feet with no arch), and also very tight hips, whereby the perfect turn out of the dancer’s body is very hard to achieve.  The above two components are crucial to the dance profession, even on an amateur or semi-professional level, let alone on a professional level. Similarly, I am receiving potential students with, at the glance, a very small mouth opening, very tight throats and quite dispropo

I've been running the Royans Professional Vocal School for nearly 29 years now. Ever since the beginning, to be exact, on February 15th of 1984, the business itself required a person (myself, my by now deceased partner, or somebody hired at the desk) to answer the phone and to explain what exactly we've been offering. As you all know, at the time we had just a rotary phone and hardly a tape-recorder-type answering machine. Strangely enough, looking back today at those precious days, the business actually was by far more efficient then it is today. How so, you may ask? Practically nobody had cell phones, which means they could not text any irrelevant questions and hide behind it to avoid a human voice communication. The computers were hardly present, with the exception of some profound law firms and other executive organizations, and of course, the government. So, the communication those days was live and actually very pleasurable, as people then (perhaps not bein

Teaching and consulting for over 37 years, I have dealt with a lot of different people from all walks of life. Some of them were already professional singers and some were just beginners. However, they all had something in common.... Almost every one of them was gripping on their necks and some more than others. Those, with incorrect vocal technique, and those who just did not know better, were looking very stressed and sounded not at ease at all, to put it mildly. In my books it’s called a complete “vocal suicide”. Why so drastic and so dramatic, any of my readers could ask? The fact is that in the real sense, it is very detrimental not only to your vocal performance, but also your overall health in general.  When the vocal performer tightens the neck, the veins supplying the oxygen also tighten and thus, the brain becomes naturally depleted of air. Many years ago, a Russian singer/actor dropped dead on stage for exactly the same reason. His neck turn

Given that modern technology is ruling the world, it is very difficult for the consumer to make any choices with respect of purchasing any goods or services. Everybody is claiming that they are the best and some of them are finding the most successful people in the same field and then plagiarizing the latter, mainly in theory, and claiming that they are as good and better than the originals. Since people are bombarded with choices, they literally are confused and sometimes cannot separate the right from wrong, or even right from left (lol). However, the real value is always prevailing. The fake value tends to fail. For those who like fitness, they are probably aware about a famous Nordic track fitness machine, which was heavily advertised, especially in previous years, on the television and other sources. The machine then, and I believe still now, was valued starting at $2000.00, which, I agree, is quite an investment for home fitness equipment. Nevertheless, though, this