A Voice Apart

When the person ends up with some voice/vocal disorder , his/her life is definitely altered in one way or the other. Just like a person who, after the tragic accident, became disabled, his/her life would definitely take a drastic turn. Now those people had to learn how to live their life in a wheelchair and adapt the use of even basic life essentials to their limited mobility. Conversely, the person who was using their voice a lot (and perhaps excessively loud), who also was very communicable and social and who is now (after the voice/vocal injury) unable to use their prime tool of communication (their voice) the way they had been accustomed to, will also have to adopt their life to something different other then the life they were used to. Sounds quite tragic, doesn’t it? For some people, it is a tragedy, indeed! The vocally-injured person is not only effected by the constricted/limited use of their voice, but is also effected emotionally, a great deal. For people who

Everybody knows that the private one-on-one singing or speech lessons are very beneficial to ones’ development.  All of the instructors’ attention is drawn to one individual and catered specifically to the person in front of the instructor. If the student is not a novice and has a strong personality, the private approach is the right way to start the voice/vocal development .  If, on the other hand, we are talking about a complete beginner who has never taken any speech or singing lessons, let alone any other instructional sessions in his life, the group approach to start with for somebody like that would be the right answer. Not only the above-described person will greatly benefit out of it, but will learn a lot to become prepared for the private, more intense sessions . I usually do not take more then 6 to (absolute maximum) 7 people in a group, to be able to provide the semi-private instruction within the group setting. Due to that fact, the participa

More and more, my practice seems to consist of non-surgical voice repair cases. The speakers, the singers and the wannabe singers, are pouring into my studio in Toronto as well as in my alternative location in UK. Nevertheless, people always had problems with their voices and perhaps not necessarily less than today. However, no doubt, the food and the air, i.e. environment overall, used to be much cleaner and more pure than today. Outside of the environment, people in the past were more conscious of the education in general and vocal training in particular. In the past, they appreciated the knowledge which was giving them confidence about the safety of the use of their voice. In the past, people had dignity and integrity and a lot of them were coming to me, with or without any indicative vocal problem and were saying, "I want to sing in a better and more respectable venue and not in a toilet bar." Today, they don't care how and where they sing, as long as they

You are experiencing voice problems: Sore throat, hard to swallow, burning vocal cords, difficulty speaking/singing, etc. “Should I ignore all of this and hope that my voice will come back on its own and will be as good as before or better?” “Should I agree for a surgical procedure?” “Should I try to find a “magic” pill, which will solve all my voice problems?” Should you continue suffering, or should you do something about it ?  I am sure that the first thought that usually comes to your mind is,  “let’s go to the doctor and find out what’s wrong with me”. Then you get a referral to the ENT specialist. And after that, "if you’re lucky", you may be diagnosed with something not so serious, and most likely, you would be offered some kind of a medical drug, which usually is designed to knock down your gastric acid, regardless weather you have it or not. If you are "not so lucky", you may not be diagnosed with anything at all, or