A Voice Apart

The voice disorder such as a paralyzed vocal cord is definitely “not a picnic” to put it mildly. Usually, this condition occurs due to a related or non-related surgery. It occurs very often during the thyroid extraction or spine fusion, where the neck is involved. It actually could occur in any surgery where intubation takes place. The fact is that majority of the hospitals here in Canada and in the United States are the teaching hospitals. What that means is that these kind of procedures are not necessarily conducted by the appointed specialist(s), but are being performed by medical interns or even by medical faculty University students. Those young doctors to be are obviously still learning and do not have experience how to insert those tubes correctly. Thus, the occurred mistakes, which could cause the patient a severe damage of their vocal box, could be crucial to one’s life.   So the patient who went in to the operating room with a perfectly good voice, woke up a few ho

Last night, we happened to catch a concert which originated in Paris and the venue held, no doubts, over 60,000 people! It was truly packed. To the credit of all those people and the two well-known bands, in spite of the unstable political situation, the concert went on and actually, to my surprise, was very well received.  While watching the concert, I became more and more scared that singing (off key, off tone and off tune) is becoming our standard.  I originally came from Leningrad, (St. Petersburg, Russia), and was deeply enrolled from the age of 6 in all sorts of music. Education in Russia is taken very seriously; so I spent 12 consecutive years, 7 days a week doing music and, specifically, singing.  I, apparently, possessed ‘perfect pitch’ which, I am not sure right now that I still have.  I have been teaching singing since I was 17. That makes it close to 42 years now and 32 years in my own school here in Toronto.  I have taught an est

By the common opinion, they hardly, if at all, can restore a speaking voice, let alone a singing voice. Usually what brings speakers and, moreover, singers in trouble, is overuse and improper use of the voice which could, no doubt, lead to a mechanical problem within one’s vocal anatomy. And thus, the voice, (speaking and or singing), becomes dysfunctional. The Singers especially need to recover their voice mechanics and none of the registered and non-registered speech therapists had been trained to do so.  However, lately, (must be due to the recession), those troubled singers are having wild fantasies of using their (or their spouses’) insurance, trying to appoint a speech therapist to work on their SINGING VOICE!!! Clearly, their upset minds do not allow them to think straight and the only thing they could think of is how to save money, instead of how to spend money wisely to get what they are after - their new healthy and rejuvenated voice and the knowledge

Some time ago, after 30 hours of non-surgical voice repair, speaking and singing instruction and herbal treatment, we said goodbye to our New York client, John Polanco.  With his permission, we would like to share his story with you, our readers.   Ever since he was a young boy, John had a real passion for singing. He discovered that singing, especially in his native language (Spanish) made him very happy and thus, he felt very joyous.  He began to sing with friends at parties and by himself. Many people (his musician friends included) were giving him advice on how to sing better. He had carefully listened to them and tried to adapt all of the new "techniques" they were suggesting him to employ. He was also imitating all of the famous and not-so-famous Spanish singers and he loved doing it, until he noticed that his voice did not perform the same anymore. He tried to push and pull his voice until he could not do it any longer.  That was 20 years