A Voice Apart

________________ Can any voice/vocal disorder be treated non-surgically? Conversely..., can any voice/vocal disorder be treated surgically? To kick things off, let's find out the answer(s) for the above! Let the controversy begin!!! ________________ ________________ My answer(s) and point of view was inspired by an article from The Guardian Newspaper, titled "Why do stars like Adele keep losing their voice?" ( here is a link to that article )  ________________ ________________ A few months ago, this article (mentioned in the link) was brought to my attention by two of my clients. Both found similarities in the content of the article above with what I have been teaching them as well as with the content of my two websites. For the last 34 years, I have owned an international professional vocal school in Toronto, Canada. My vocal school is a division of a non-surgical voice repair institute The Voc

"Does It Smell In Here? A look at the current state of the speaking, coaching and consulting industry." by Larry Winget and Randy Pennington: (Click  HERE  to see the article.) - Our article is inspired by the one above - - I have been consulting, teaching, coaching and repairing voices close to four decades now. All previous years, being true to my cause, I kept saying to people that I did not think that I had any competition with respect of what I have been doing for many years… At least, that’s what I thought at the time.  I knew that I was producing unprecedented results with respect to the voice work; and to my knowledge, nobody at all (of those who had similar claims of success) could live up to my level of results, expertise and experience. Then came the internet… and now it is in full bloom! All of a sudden, everybody is a  voice/vocal coach   and even a  voice repair specialist …? A lot of them, I have never heard about before.  Bu

For many years, we have been attending to various people with speech problems, who were possessing some voice disorders like: Muscle Tension Dysphonia Spasmodic Dysphonia Polyps on the vocal cords Nodules on the vocal cords Cysts and lesions on the vocal cords Acid reflux & simply… strained vocal cords My answer to a question of "What do we mean by 'Speakaholics'?" would be to go ahead and beat all the bad vocal habits; and once it’s done, keep practicing (ongoing) the new adapted skills (instructed), the new adapted application of the speaking/singing voice, the new acquired diet/nutrition, newly acquired proper posture,  and  physical fitness in general. All of the above listed voice issues would cause the sufferer (to say the least) a hoarse and raspy voice, unclear enunciation and pronunciation and could even cause partial or total voice loss… Given all of the above described, these (listed above) and other voice problems suff

In the previous years, I had worked a lot not only with professional singers but, also, with some amateur singers who, at the time, were labelled as wannabe singers. In fact, a lot of them were recognized by various talent scouts and agents, especially when they were appearing in karaoke nights or open mic events in a variety of bars and clubs. Once upon a time, one of my beginner students was brought up by her husband to a big karaoke club to show him what she had achieved with only 5 hours of instruction (by that time) with me. She told me that she was very nervous and, understandably, felt very insecure… However, she also told me that she remembered (what we still call to this day) to “smile and bite”, and, nevertheless, she also remembered to enunciate and pronounce her words with absolute clarity. Before she finished her song (to my memory, it was a song called “Time After Time” – by Cindy Lauper), she was helped down from the stage by a person who came up to