A Voice Apart

Regain your voice and your confidence back!   Your voice… desired and deserved!   More and more professional artists end up with the vocal injuries . Nearly every week, we hear that various concerts and tours have been canceled and the lead singers (either a soloist or band lead singer) just about to undergo a vocal cord surgery . How sad is that? Sad indeed!   Why does it happen and why it happens to so many artists? Is it because they are overworked and over-stressed? I think that definitely the above are the factors.  However, if their technical merit of their singing had been intact, less tragedies and cancellations of their performances would take place. So, human being puzzle (in a manner of speaking), like any puzzle, has many components and pieces, which have to fall into the right places. Those singers’ lifestyles, naturally, are very active and filled with a lot of appearances, interviews and performances. Due to the above, thei

Does anybody know…? Does anybody care for that matter…? Vocal Science… The Best or…Nothing.   Quite often, people who require voice repair have some other health problems to start with. These health problems could be a trigger to voice loss, or any kind of voice issues. Sadly enough, our Canadian singer Gord Downie has recently been diagnosed with Terminal Brain Cancer; and peculiarly enough, the tumor is apparently located near the speech center of his brain… I am not a doctor; though it makes me wonder whether or not his not exactly adequate singing (in my subjective professional opinion) and, understandably, a lifestyle of a rocker (which usually comes with the territory), has anything to do with it? This is just speculation on the matter, but it probably has some merit. Let’s also examine a very serious disorder called Spasmodic Dysphonia: I personally call it “Vocal Epilepsy”, as the voice of the sufferer spasms uncontrollably. The disease, in its nat

*Mind, body and soul... and your voice*  In 1984, we have opened the school, which was originally named: The Royans School for the Musical Performing Arts . Almost right from the start, we have enrolled over 100 students, consisting of children, teenagers and adults. After my partner (the second Royan) had passed away in 1986, a year after, (in 1987), I changed the name of the school and it became well known as The Royans Professional Vocal School . And at that time, the school became primarily an adult vocal school and children became a minority. However, we always have been working with teenagers and young adults, developing their talents for the music industry at large.   Nevertheless though, working primarily with adults, provided me with a lot of experience and education concerning North American mentality. Being an educator by trade and a very inquisitive person by nature, I have been tuning in to those adults who allowed me to get themselves under my care; and not

Teaching for nearly 42 years, I have dealt with children, teenagers and, nevertheless, with adults of all ages and walks of life. Children and teens definitely require more effort and more care. Some of them are very emotionally fragile and sensitive, especially when they are approaching puberty at the age of 12 to 14. A lot of them become practically silent and very closed-in inside. Naturally, they don’t speak much; their speaking voice becomes low and dull. They are basically living in their inner-world. Recently, I was travelling to Dallas, Texas to work on a person with a paralyzed vocal cord . She happened to have one of her granddaughters, who was about to turn 9 years old. My client’s daughter, at the dinner table, did confess to me that her older daughter was hardly speaking to her; and moreover, was put in a special class for children with dyslexia . When I met this beautiful girl, who hardly looked beautiful, as she was so down and obviously (in my opinio