No more hiding: Videostroboscopy of my imperfect vocal folds

A few weeks ago, one of the voice-specialty speech-language pathologists (SLP) I currently work with wanted to see my vocal folds. The professor in my voice disorders class, who is also an SLP, had taken videostroboscopies of the students in class so that we got practice seeing them and seeing what a rigid videostroboscope feels like. So, this other SLP pulled up my file from class in spring of 2014.

Prior to this video being taken, I was enjoying thinking of my voice as functional and healthy. Seeing the paresis in action again, however, brought back the emotional memory of the first time I saw it. All the "how can I sing opera without an intact voice?" came flooding back into my head. Thus, I put the video away in a file on my computer and never looked at it past that spring semester in 2014. Until that SLP wanted to see it.

A few caveats: I wasn't tolerating the rigid scope very well (the one that goes in the mouth). I have a pretty hyper gag-reflex and I was certain I would gag the whole time, so the video is choppy and the SLP taking it never quite got a full shot of my vocal folds. I just want to say that the SLP who took this video is an amazing voice therapist and very skilled with the stroboscope. The fact that she never got a good look was entirely due to my hyper-reactivity. I just never managed to calm myself down! (The one at the ENT's office back in 2009 went through my nose.) The second caveat is that I wasn't singing regularly much at all at this point in time and I had a round of reflux that week so my vocal folds are a little swollen, but you can see the paresis still there.

When the other SLP wanted to see the video a few weeks ago, I realized that I had been avoiding it because I'm much happier thinking about my voice as healthy and functional for me. I've been practicing again and taking voice lessons again and my voice felt great! Why would I want to see it still being an issue? Then I realized that avoiding the video is silly. If I want to stick to my own philosophy of a balanced voice being the whole goal of technique, then I should learn to accept my whole voice--flaws and all. It still is functional for me right now. I am still able to express myself musically through my singing, so I should not be afraid of looking at my full voice for what it is at this moment.

With all that said, here's a little guide to interpreting this video. The front of the throat is at the bottom of the video and the back of the throat is at the top. You can see the epiglottis in full view at the bottom and you can see the root of the tongue where it meets the epiglottis there in most of the video as well. The opening to the esophagus is at the top of the video and is closed whenever you are not swallowing. (The muscle that closes the esophagus functions such that it's tonically closed during it's resting-state.) The right side of the screen is the left side of my larynx and vice versa. The vocal folds are the white strips of tissue you'll see in the middle of the screen--the posterior portion of the vocal folds are first visible around 00:20. There is a bit of redness there as well thanks to the reflux I was dealing with around that time. (I was having an issue getting my PPI prescription renewed with my doctor's office.)  The arytenoids are visible near the top of the video. These are the guys you want to keep your eyes on to see the paresis in action. The posterior glottic gap (i.e., the place where my vocal folds don't completely meet during phonation) extends further for me due to the paresis. This is where I "leak air" when I'm singing.

At 0:31:  You might need to stop and start the video in short bursts from here, but this is where you can see the left arytenoid doesn't go as far to midline as the right.  If you stop and start a few times, you can see the right arytenoid adduct smoothly and quickly. The speed with which the right arytenoid adducts makes it pretty clear the left arytenoid isn't traveling as far. It stops moving before the right arytenoid does.

At 0:48:  You can see the left arytenoid "crap out" (very technical term right there). It stayed in an adducted position, or as close as it gets to midline during adduction, so what you can briefly see is my right arytenoid adducting to meet it.

If you think you're seeing any bumps on my vocal folds that look like nodules or polyps, it's actually mucus. This is determined during stroboscopy by the very scientific method of having the patient clear their throat and swallow. If the bump moves off or moves to a different location, it's mucus.

So, those are my vocal folds as they are now (minus the swelling and redness from reflux). Yes, I can still sing with these folds and my voice doesn't fatigue during the day as long as I don't strain when I speak. Essentially, the biggest "enemy" to my being able to sing is tension, since it's still easy to want to "fight" with my voice, particularly on long phrases. But, I think if I stop hiding from my vocal flaws and learn to accept them, I'll start to sing better just by feeling more free to express myself flaws and all!

Edit to add:  Also, when I start to glide up the pitch, I start to shift my epilaryngeal area in the manner referred to as "covering" in the pedagogical literature. This is all great and good in the singing world, but it obscures the view of the vocal folds when using rigid stroboscopy. I should have tried for a more "choral sound" during my glide to maintain the laryngeal position. But, gliding is a check for the superior laryngeal nerve (that handles the action of the cricothyroid), and as you can hear, mine is pretty well-intact. Just the recurrent nerve (the one that handles the muscles of adduction and abduction) is a little impaired.

Getting back into the game, again (or Look, Ma, I can sing!...I think)

A few years ago, I posted on singing after a break.  Well, I took another long, inadvertent break when I went through the master's program for SLP.  The good news is, I finally found a good teacher in my current town and I'm hoping to plan a recital for sometime this year.  I still haven't seen a vocal coach in about six years, I've only had about three lessons with my new teacher thus far, and I usually only practice about four times a week since I'm still quite busy in the PhD program, but it still feels good to be singing again.  I feel a little more like a normal person when I say I do singing as a hobby, but it's also a little weird to go from someone who trained for the professional operatic track and then downgrade to an avocational singer.  It's like, I want to have all the abilities I used to have, and I have the knowledge of what makes something professional vs. student vs. avocational, but I don't have the time to focus on music and singing as much as would be needed if I were to go out for professional gigs again.

That said, a dear friend of mine recommended that I record my singing and "share it with the world" as he said, so I've decided to do just that.  I've uploaded a couple of my personal practice sessions here where I made it my goal to just to focus on the text and emotional journey and to not obsess over every little thing that went wrong.  Basically, I'm working on letting go and just singing/making music.  For me, this means always thinking about one or two measures ahead in my mind, which I figured out works for me because as a person because I'm usually thinking a few phrases ahead when I'm telling a story to friends--so it's a good way for me to focus on the expression of the piece.  These recordings are not perfect (made only on my iPhone 4s microphone in a small practice room) and I can tell a few spots where I got off here and there (like when I shorted a phrase by a whole beat near the end of the Mozart aria), but overall, I think I managed to make a little music that day rather than just be a singing-technician.  Progress!

P.S. Another big plus of being avocational is that a little snap-shot of my singing doesn't have to be professional quality or flawless since I'm not trying to attract any gigs through my web presence, so that gives me a bit of courage to share it with you guys. Feel free to leave constructive criticism or feedback in the messages below, though, as I still appreciate hearing about how I can still improve as a singer.

The discussion begins!

I've had a great comment over on my other blog, Balanced Voice, that I would love to open up to a discussion in the comments.  If anyone has the time or inclination to give their two cents, I think it's an interesting topic that needs more exploration in the pedagogical world.
Check it out:  Technique vs. expression

Another semester, another workload

I'm getting pretty burnt out of school right now.  I'm tired of taking classes, studying for exams, and having homework of any kind (even if it's just reading articles).  I suppose this is reasonable for someone in their second year of their PhD program of a new round of degrees after a career change, but I'm just tired.  The fall semester is about to begin and I'm dreading the work load that comes with it.

That said, I'm very happy that I decided to continue for the PhD in Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences.  I'm really enjoying getting to dig really deep into the research literature, learning how to design scientific studies (there's a lot of planning to do!), and getting to guest-lecture in courses.  The mentoring I'm getting from the faculty at my university is really amazing!  I'm at one of the top schools for SLP for my PhD.  I say that not to brag, but because I want to say learning how to think critically from some of the best researchers in the field is incredibly exciting!  It's also cool to see these top researchers day-in and day-out and then to see other people at other schools get all "fan girl" or "fan boy" over these people I get to work with everyday.  Maybe this is what it feels like to be a young artist at the Met!

I'm also doing my clinical fellowship on a part-time basis in voice, with some other clients with things like traumatic brain injury and Parkinson disease to round out my hours.  In the US, everyone who wants to be an SLP has to do a clinical fellowship after they finish the clinical master's degree. The governing body for SLP, ASHA, dictates a certain number of hours for the CF, so mine should be completed in two years (hopefully) at my current part-time hourly rate.  Usually, this clinical fellowship is called the "CFY" for "clinical fellowship year," since it's usually completed after 9 months of full-time clinical work (so that those SLPs who work in the school districts still complete it after their first year of work).  But, since mine is part time and will take me a little longer than a year to complete, I'm calling it my "CF"--minus the "year" part.

This semester, I will be completing my PhD minor in neuroscience (which involved taking all the first-year PhD required courses for neuroscience at my university) by taking a biological computer modeling course.  For this, I need to brush up on my calculus.  This is the course that I'm worried might be a heavy course load. (Last year, I took a cellular and molecular neuroscience course and a systems neuroscience course for my minor.  The cellular one was not quite up my alley--good to know, but not the most exciting material for me--but the systems one was fantastic!  Exactly what I wanted from my minor!  And the cellular course made a good foundation for the systems one, so I'm glad I took both.)  I'm also taking a grant writing class where we'll compose a draft for a grant called an F31.  This is the research-dissertation (for PhD students) grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the US.  It's a very competitive grant, but my department has a very good record of their students being awarded F31s...possibly due to this really good class I'll be taking.  I'm excited about this class because I have a cool project to write on and being forced to plan every aspect of your study, including possible limitations to completing your study, from the very beginning is a BIG skill that all good researchers need.  And it's daunting at first!  But I'll have good guidance from the professor for this course, so that will be great.

And last but not least, I finally found a good voice teacher where I live, so I'm back taking lessons (sporadically at the moment--once a month or so) and practicing regularly on campus.  I'm hoping to get up a program for a recital in town just for fun, but I'm not putting any pressure on myself to make that recital happen anytime soon.  I'd rather get my coursework mostly done before I schedule something like that.  But it really feels good to be singing regularly again!

And I must say I'm loving the "singing as a hobby" compared to professional work right now.  There's something satisfying about not worrying about catching a cold or if I had a little reflux the night before.  I can just take a break from singing that day.  No big deal!  --I guess I kinda feel like just a regular person in that way.

Anyway, if I don't blog as regularly during semesters, blame the calculus! jk.  But seriously, I'll try to stay on it a little more now.

Hitting the ground running…and somehow finishing strong

Well, well.  It's been a long time since I've posted, hasn't it?  I've been thinking about getting back to blogging so very often over the past two years.  I just finished the Master of Science in Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences in May, and I am now in my first semester of my PhD program.  My research is focusing on acoustics of voice and speech, and, clinically, I'm getting some fantastic training in order to specialize in voice therapy.

So, when I logged back in and looked at drafts of blogs I left unfinished, I found that wrote a short draft of a post I intended to publish after my first two weeks of grad school.  Here it is:

Grad school has started.  Folks kept telling me that you'll really hit the ground running in a clinical program, and they really weren't kidding!  In the past two weeks I've completed HIPAA training, read 15 articles/textbook chapters, been quizzed on eight of those articles, done my lesson plans for my first two clinical sessions, given those two clinical sessions, read through seven client files, and observed four hours of clinic.  My first research project is due in two weeks, and my first exam is the day after labor day.

On the plus side, I know this is all stuff I can handle, and I know that the faculty at my school are approachable, supportive, and brilliant.  They totally have our backs.  It always feels good to know someone has your back.

So I've been fluctuating between feeling all awesome-sauce and conquistador-like and feeling like a fraud, idiot, and incompetent a**, but I think it's getting better.  As long as the pendulum keeps swinging away from the "incompetent a**" feeling and moving more toward the "I've got this" feeling, I'll know I'm heading in the right direction.

Fast forward two years and I find it's a pretty good description of the program.  The pendulum did swing away from the "incompetent" feeling.  In a short two years, I ended up becoming a rather competent clinician.  But, man, was it an intense and stressful ride to get there!

Of course, now that I'm starting something new again with the PhD program, the pendulum has swung back to "incompetent" again.  (Ain't it always the way?)  Only this time it's in regards to all the fine details that goes into good research design.  I still feel pretty competent as a clinician, though, so that's good.

Anyways, I'm going to do my best to come back to regular blogging.  It's been so long that I honestly don't know where to begin.  There's some scientific stuff I need to correct in my anatomy and physiology section.  I would also like to write up some stuff about teaching singing more efficiently and maintaining a technique.  But for now, I might just jump in with things as they are in my life now and fill in as I go. Gotta get my feet wet again with this blogging stuff.

The power of kindness

I keep a regular yoga practice.  I mainly practice at home, since it's free to do there, but I also attend yoga classes regularly at a good studio.  I tend to do yoga about two to three times a week.  However, this past spring semester, I ended up only practicing once a week, at most.  So, I got decently out of shape from what I'm used to and I ended up hurting my left hamstring, somehow.  What sucked the most about this was that my left leg has always been more flexible than my right leg, while my right leg tends to be stronger, so I was usually able to do hand-to-foot pose and this one-legged arm balance with my left leg pretty easily, while I still struggled a little with the right.  However, this summer, while I've been trying to nurse my left hamstring back to health, my sides have reversed.  I'm still not able to do these poses, or others like them, with my left leg, but I've gotten them down with my right.

So just today, while I was practicing at home, I realized that I've been so careful with my left leg this past few months that I've actually let it become weak.  I've stopped trying to engage the muscles on that leg as much because of the injury.  Of course, this is not helping recovery at all, so today, I started forcing that leg to pull it's weight, and while my hamstring still isn't totally better, I actually got my full trikonasana on the left side back today and my hamstring feels better now than it has in a long time.  I'm sure the more I focus on working the muscles on my left leg, the better it will get, and I will be back to my normal yoga practice pretty soon.

This little experience with my hamstring really reminded me of my vocal recuperation, probably because I had a conversation with another singer dealing with their own voice disorder just this week.  See, the thing is, I was acting like my hamstring was still injured, even though it's been months since the actual injury.  My hamstring is quite likely healed up, it's just healed tighter than it was before.  Because of this tightness, I've been avoiding really using it in yoga, making modifications on the left side for any hamstring-intensive pose and just allowing my lunge on that side to kinda go out of form.  In essence, I was allowing my muscle to stay weak just because I was still acting like something was wrong with it well after it was healed up.  In an earlier post, I said I had a hard time learning to trust my voice after it was healed up, because I felt like my voice had betrayed me by being injured.  But I've talked to a few singers out there dealing with injury who have the added issue of still feeling like their voice is injured even after therapy is completed and they're given a full bill of vocal health by their team.  So they're still fighting with their voice and letting it do the wrong things because they still think it just doesn't "work right," even though it does.  It's a mind game, isn't it?

What these injuries really do to us is force insecurity upon us, so naturally, our reaction is to defeat the insecurity.  Attack it full on so that we can get past it as quickly as possible.  But when this tactic burns out, as it often does for many people out there, we start to retreat into the insecurity, allowing it to defeat us and beat us down until we give up.  This can lead to regret and perhaps even bitterness for so many of us, and maybe we find the fire to fight again and maybe we win, but what if we just changed our perspective of this insecurity?  What if, instead of fighting, we decide to accept this weakness that has been thrust upon us and still decide to be kind to ourselves?  And what if, by being kind to our whole new self, insecurity and weakness and all, we learn how to patiently and diligently work through our injury, not by forcing ourselves to be as we were before, but by moving toward being someone new and different because of this experience?  What if all we need to do is realize that healing doesn't typically mean going back to how things were before, but it can mean becoming better than we were before?

I suppose saying I'll get back to my normal yoga practice is a bit of a lie, because before this injury, my right side was more inflexible than it is now.  If my left side is restored to it's former, flexible state, my whole body will actually be more balanced than it was before this.  Just like how, even if my voice is only better because of being healed and the glories of vocal technique, I'm a better, more joyful singer because there was a time when singing was taken away from me.  So to all those out there recuperating from any injury:  May recovery make us all stronger, more balanced, and more joyful; may we be kind to ourselves and patient with our injury as we build our strength back up; and may we all realize that we will never be the same...and that can certainly be a good thing.

Why yes I DO like school, thank you very much

There's a common statement I tend to hear from certain people when they find out that yes, I am going back to school for yet another graduate degree:  "You must like school."  This statement is always delivered with a bit of snark and a slight roll of the eye, and it is usually said by people who say they were "never good at the whole school thing."  That phrase is almost always followed up with the person explaining how great their (insert job title with major company) is and that they get paid (insert regular hourly wage/typical management salary) and they never needed a degree to do it.  The rather clear subtext to this exchange is thus:  "You poor, nerdy sap.  You must be in school because you're avoiding the real world.  You should suck it up and just get a job like everyone else."

What I find the most interesting about these exchanges are the implicit assumptions that are made about people who seek additional degrees at all.  The main assumption tends to be that anyone who gets a degree higher than a bachelor's or a second bachelor's is a "career student;" you know, someone who's just avoiding adult responsibility by staying in school as long as possible.  I find this assumption interesting in light of two facts:  The fact that I have been out of school for several years now and have been an independent adult through all of those years, and the fact that there are a lot of health/medical professions that require a graduate degree for licensure.  I know I can't expect the general populace to know what requirements there are for certain professions, but why do some of these folks not drop the snark when I tell them that?  Why not just trust that those degrees are required because there is a vast body of knowledge and many hours of training required to do the job effectively?  People trust MDs are valid professional graduate degrees, so why not trust that physical therapists, occupational therapists, physicians assistants, audiologists, speech-language pathologists, etc., need advanced knowledge to effectively do their job?

But it's the implicit insult that really gets me:  "Nerd."  Now, I know that in today's society, the term "nerd" has been usurped to mean anyone who's really, really into pretty much anything and is not really seen as an insult anymore, but in this setting, it's intended as one.  Perhaps there are just too many grad students out there who are intellectual snobs.  Maybe these folks have encountered so many of those snobs that they get all defensive and mistakenly think someone with multiple degrees is automatically a snob.  I can definitely sense a bit of insecurity from the other person in this exchange.  Maybe they always wanted more out of life, but gave up on their dreams.  Maybe they always struggled in school and felt inferior to a sibling or friend who always found school easy.  Maybe they did well in school, but only because of a near-abusive "tiger mom," and so they hated school as much as they were good at it.  As much as I believe insecurity is nothing to be ashamed of, I also believe personal insecurity is never a valid excuse for making another person feel like crap.  I believe this as much as I believe that salaries and job titles do not define the intrinsic worth of another human being.

My reactions to these situations have never been the best.  I usually end up explaining the good employment prospects and the typical starting salaries in the field, but this is in stark contrast to the belief I just stated above, isn't it?  So I end up feeling put down, but also a little dirty for defending my life decisions based on their criteria of self-worth.  The thing is, that is not my criteria.

So, after having one too many of these situations in the past, I have decided to arm myself with a response I can feel good about (which will be truncated in real life):
Why yes, I do like school.  I like to learn.  I enjoy broadening my mind and discovering new and exciting things that I never knew about before.  I like the idea of helping forward the advancement of society and human knowledge through research.  I like the pragmatic side of this new field, where I get to help an individual who is struggling with a disorder that keeps them from effectively communicating.  I like school.  I like that it is not only an avenue through which I can pursue my dreams and sharpen my mind, but it is also a safe place to learn, try, discover, fail, try again, and, ultimately, succeed.  I like learning, and I like that I will continue to learn, grow, and develop throughout my life thanks to the mental training higher education has given me.  With all the people in the world who use knowledge and education to keep others down, I like that I am becoming someone who will counter those greedy individuals, and who will use her knowledge and education to help others in need of it.  I think education provides me with a value beyond just a salary and job title.  It provides me with a sense of purpose and direction and the ability to accomplish my goals.  Isn't that ultimately what we are all searching for?

The balance between the rift

There's a funny thing that happens when you learn a lot of valuable information in a short amount of time.  You tend to forget that not everyone is having the same experience you are.  I think this is even more pronounced in people who tend to be rather ambitious, like me.  I know that in society in general, ambitious people are lauded, but there's a distinction between an ambitious person who has reached a level of success and an ambitious person who is just starting out.  The successful person is seen as someone to look up to, and the new student to a discipline is seen as, well, a n00b.

We n00b's, by my definition, tend to be a bit crazy, you see.  We geek out to anyone who shows even a tiny bit of interest in what we do.  We find ourselves talking far too long about some nuance of our discipline without realizing it.  In short, we are awkward and alienating.  We're like someone who's just fallen in love, and we just can't help ourselves.  However, we usually know we are a little different than others.  I think I get it from my father.  I once said Dad is a guy who doesn't have "hobbies" he has "obsessions," and, while I do have a few hobbies, I will say that voice science has become an obsession.  I can only hope that my cohort of master's students won't mind, and perhaps they will even be the same.

I was like this with opera too, and really, I still am if given the chance.  But the years have taught me that very few people can tolerate a singer geeking out about opera for too long before they politely excuse themselves.  SLP is a little different, if only because if someone knows what it is, they usually either know someone who went to one, or they went to one themselves.  Therefore, they seem to appreciate learning a little more about this profession, usually from the respect they feel toward that SLP who gave their parent a swallow evaluation at the hospital, treated their autistic child, or helped their grandparent after their stroke.  For opera singers, though, we're just seen as a novelty, and people don't usually treat you with the same level of respect, perhaps because they've either never been to an opera or have never met an opera singer before.  (Or worse yet, perhaps they have and that is why they don't respect them.  Parish the thought!)  This always ruffles my feathers, because I still strongly feel that, while the value in opera is subjective, it still has value nonetheless.  And really, what kind of person are you if you don't at least respect someone for their craft even if you don't see the value in it?  (But perhaps the issue lies in the general public not knowing about the craft itself and the training it requires...but I digress.)

What's interesting to me is that while I seem to have gained some respect and/or interest from random people I meet, I've lost a bit with (some) singers, particularly the ones who didn't know me before.  Maybe it's that whole "abandoning" the musical profession thing, but I can certainly see that I've become an outsider.  You know, someone who no longer understands the demands of the profession, or appreciates what the real professional singers go through.  The biggest issue I have with this is I find myself wanting to abandon the singing world altogether.  Why go into voice research?  Why be interested in treating voice professionals when I get out?  They're just going to treat me like I don't understand them anyway.  I know this is really just an immature reaction from me generalizing a small portion of the singing population, but I find myself heartbroken all the same.  Opera was my first love, profession-wise.  I'll never really leave it.  I may not train as hard as I used to when I was auditioning, mainly because I no longer have the time, but I still sing.  I still remember the training from my master's program and beyond.  I know I've gotten a bit rusty, but I can still run the race, even if I can't run it in the Olympics.  (Course, I never got a great deal of respect from singers when I was in the profession either, but that's another story...one that I don't really need to write.)

All my new knowledge I've gained in voice science, and it's been significantly more than my pedagogy program, helped me a great deal.  I was able to train smarter and more efficiently as a singer and I became a more efficient teacher.  I noticed I was able to help my students with a vocal problem within weeks instead of months and months instead of years.  I was a good teacher before, but I'm a better teacher now.  But, I've gain new, more specific terminology that makes it harder to communicate with other voice teachers.  I can see a rift forming in my mind just as it is forming in those singers who see me as an outsider.

That rift is the burden of knowledge.  I know that sounds pompous, but it really isn't.  On the contrary, it is a lonely place.  It is the divide that comes when you forget exactly how much your target audience knows and how much they don't know.  If you assume they know more than they do, you talk over their heads and seem like a pompous blow-hard who just wants to show them up intellectually.  Assume they know less, and you seem condescending.  As I integrate new knowledge, it solidifies, and I forget what it is I didn't know two years ago.  Everything I've gained is just elementary stuff to the professors and licenced SLPs in my new field, and as such, I approach a lot of this as if it is elementary.  However, some of this stuff is way beyond what some singers learn in pedagogy courses, so forgetting that makes the rift larger.  And yet for others it is not all that far off; it really just depends on the school.  So how does one begin to talk about it without falling into that rift?  Maybe I'll never learn to find the balance.  To talk in a way that doesn't alienate or deride and to be seen as a colleague to singers instead of a traitor and offender.  And maybe I'll never stop being an outsider.  I hope I find that balance someday, though, cause I would rather be of help to others (who wish for it) than to drift away in the rift.

Sensation vs. Perception: The crux of pedagogical contradictions

Just like Martin Luther King, Jr.,* I have a dream that one day vocal pedagogs will have field-specific, unified terminology that will eliminate the pedagogical confusion so many students experience when moving from one teacher to the next.  However, I'm starting to think this dream is too lofty.  In the subjective field of vocal training, trying to unify the centuries of pedagaogical terminology with the current science of voice might be a little too much of a hurdle to overcome.  I mean, motivated voice students will still desire to read and understand the writings of Lamperti, Garcia, etc. in the context of current voice training, so a complete shift toward unification might alienate the past writings of great pedagogs.

So what are we new pedagogs/voice students supposed to do?  How are we supposed to wade through the old information and understand it in terms of the new?  I think one piece of the puzzle might be to understand the differences between perception and sensation.

I touched a bit on this near the end of my previous post where I talk about what I feel is happening when I am singing, but it is something I've incorporated into my teaching that, I think, many of my students, even the teenagers, seem to appreciate.  One of my high school students had one of her choir teachers give her a few "vocal tips" that seemed to confuse her in terms of what we had been working on in her lesson.  Using this established difference between sensation and perception, I was able to explain rather quickly to this student that we were, in fact, working on those things, we were just calling it something different in our lessons.  This difference has become such an easy way for my students to begin developing a "tranlation" ability, which I find so, so important, since I know for most of them, I will not be their only voice teacher throughout their training.

What is sensation and what is perception?  Sensation is a term used in psychology, as well as anatomy and physiology, to refer to sensory information from the outside world coming into our bodies via the nervous system.  When this information reaches your brain, it processes this information, associates it with memories, etc. through some cognitive processing, and then decides how to act.  This is the process of perception, which happens to be a very individual process.  So sensation (diff. link) is the incoming information, and perception is the interpretation of that incoming information.  This works all the time for all of us in some obvious ways:  If two friends go to see the same movie, both people receive the same incoming information, i.e. the movie, but they might interpret the "take home message" of the movie in two different ways via their individual perceptions.  (How many of us have sent friends articles, etc. where the friend seemed to miss what was, to us, the vital underlying point of the article?  You can now blame their perception for getting it wrong...or yours, if you're humble like that.)

How does this work for pedagogy?  Well, a lot of the differences we encounter in pedagogical terms comes from the vast differences in the perception of proper singing...at least as far as I perceive it.  (Yikes!  This article could quickly become an exercise in circular logic, couldn't it?)  For example:  So much debate has been waged over the "low larynx" issue.  Student 1:  My teacher said my larynx should never move while singing.  Is this right?  Student 2:  Well, my teacher said research has shown that it does move quite a lot and should raise on high notes, so I guess you're teacher is wrong.  Student 1:  But my teacher said historical documents all talk about the importance of a lowered larynx, so are all those singers of the past wrong?  And the debate rages on.  So what's going on here?  How can science point to the opposite of what all the great singers and past teachers say they're doing?  Sensation and perception!  Biologically, the larynx is certainly moving around during singing, and yes, it is raising on high notes.  It's a physics-thing that simply must happen.  However, when laryngeal efficiency has been obtained, the singer feels like their larynx isn't moving at all and the teacher might not see the larynx raising as much in the throat as it used to.  So the singer might perceive that their larynx is stable, but it's just due to how their brain interprets the sensation of laryngeal efficiency throughout their range.

Another example:  #1:  The ribcage must stay elevated and stable!  #2:  The ribcage collapses during exhalation out of necessity since the lungs are getting smaller!  #1:  You're wrong!  Here's a youtube video.  #2:  No, you're wrong!  Here's an article by "Prominent Scientist."  How does sensation and perception help explain this one?  Well, the fact that the chest cavity decreases in size during any exhalation can not be argued.  It's another physics-thing that simply must occur.  But why would so many singers swear up and down that their rib cage is as stable as stable can be and always elevated during singing?  Sensation and perception!  The act of using excess muscular effort to keep the rib cage from lowering too fast sends very different sensation information to the brain than what it's used to.  For most people, the brain interprets this information with the perception that the rib cage is not moving at all, perhaps because the information is so opposite of what the brain is usually getting about the movement of the rib cage.  So you end up with a lot of singers and teachers swearing up and down that the rib cage must not move, when in fact, it must move, but it must move so much more slowly than usual that it feels like it's not moving at all.

I'm sure there are other examples out there, but I cannot think of any at the moment.  If you have had a similar debate about another important pedagogical concept, please let me know.  I'll see if I can answer it using this sensation/perception model of explanation for ya!


*Disclaimer:  This is a dry-humor joke equating my tiny, little dream of unified pedagogical terms to the great deeds accomplished by Dr. King during his lifetime.  I'm pretty much an ant on the mountain of his greatness as far as I'm concerned.  I've just been watching too many 30 Rock reruns to resist the joke. **
**Disclaimer for the disclaimer:  I find dry-humor doesn't always come across online so I felt the need for disclaimer #1.  However, upon reading the over-explanation of the joke in disclaimer #1, I realize the already bad original joke has now been effectively destroyed.  Awesome.

From professional singer to advocational singer: A fun emotional journey of guilt, shame, and acceptance

It will always take courage to dramatically change the plan you originally had for your life and career.  Leaving what you know and stepping into the unknown, especially not knowing if you'll succeed, is a scary thing.

I'm not gonna lie, when I told my friends and family that I was making this career change from professional-ish singer to SLP, most people were crazy happy about it.  My mom was happy because she had always seen my love for medicine and science, so I think she was happy I was going more in that direction.  But a lot of other folks I met always thought of one thing:  The money.  The SLP field has plenty of job openings, even in this tough economy, so it's a stable future career...unlike singing, obviously.  So that must be why I was doing it, right?  I mean, vocal injury...blah blah blah, but part of me must like the good job prospects, right?  Okay, well, I would be lying if I said the potential for a good, stable job isn't appealing.  Of course it is!  But changing from singer to voice scientist brought a different thought of myself:  Quitter.

Singing is what I know.  Training to be a singer is what I put years and years of effort and put *mumble mumble* amount of money into.  Making a career change after over a decade of musical training made me feel like a big, fat quitter.  I mean, I had finally gotten my voice back in working order!  I was finally able to make a professionally-viable sound!  I finally had something to offer the musical world!  How could I just quit after all of my struggles?  How could I just hang up my hat when I finally had a chance to be competitive in the performance circuit?

The truth is, I didn't give it up quickly.  As I started my classes for the SLP undergraduate leveling courses, I figured I'd be able to do professional singing on the side of being an SLP, no problem.  I kinda thought of SLP as a totally awesome supplement to my singing career.  I still practiced everyday.  I still intended to do this particular state voice competition that year, and I still intended to audition for summer shows and YAPS.  But very shortly after staring my classes, my goals in the SLP field began to readjust, I began to totally fall in love with the field, I started to desire a PhD after the master's degree, and I realized I had to start giving up some of those dual-career dreams of mine.

The breaking point came when the application deadline for that state competition was approaching.  I went to my voice teacher for a lesson knowing I'd need to really bust my a** over the next two months to get into competition shape since I had not been getting regular coachings in while in school.  I had a good friend of mine, also a singer, who was really excited for me to do the competition.  He was convinced that I would place very highly (which I doubted very much), but at the least, he felt I would finally be able to show all those folks who knew me "pre-therapy" what my voice could "really do"...now that it was healed up.  (Remember, I had this injury for probably about ten years before my diagnosis...including during all of my master's of music program.)  My teacher, though, felt I had too much on my plate already, so she suggested I not do the competition.  Being the great teacher she is, she recognized that I wasn't totally in the performance-career-mode anymore, and busting yourself to compete in something that you're just not that into is exhausting and rather pointless when you already have a lot going on.  So, just like the lesson when she suggested I look into SLP as a career, I left that lesson thinking about what she said, and I realized she was right, I probably shouldn't sign up.

When I got home, I looked over my class schedule and realized the competition date was the same week as three of my mid-terms, and two major projects were due that week as well.  And what I had already discovered from my first semester in SLP, being in a non-music major yields very little time to practice music at all.  See, it's hard just keeping your voice in shape if you're not in music school or performing, cause you have to make time just to sing everyday.  As a voice student, though, you sing everyday anyway.  So even if you're not practicing your own rep., at least your instrument is staying in tip-top shape.  I'd have to work double-time to not only get my rep. up to snuff, but also just to keep my voice in good shape day-in and day-out...and there's no way I'd be able to do all of that on the side of studying for three mid-terms, completing three projects, and maintaining a full studio of voice students.  It was too much, and I had to give up the idea of singing at the competition.

What I realized the most through all of this was that my more-latent vocal science passion was very quickly over-riding what had been my dominant passion of performing.  I felt a bit depressed letting go of those performance dreams, and I felt like I was letting myself, and all the people who supported my singing, down.  I really felt like I was morning the loss of "performance me."

The truth is, anytime someone chooses to leave behind the world he/she knows and the dreams he's/she's been following for years to enter into the unknown there is an inherent morning period for the dreams that are being lost in the transition.  You have to grieve for those dreams, let go of the guilt, and walk into the unknown, which, despite possible job prospects in any field, is a scary place to venture, for anyone.  When someone leaves a lucrative profession to follow a dream of a career in the world of performance, they are applauded for being so courageous.  But I say that anyone who leaves the world of performance for a different dream of a potentially lucrative career is still just as courageous.  It's leaving the known for the unknown and not getting stuck in morning for what you're giving up.  It's going through a tough emotional journey to hopefully come out better on the other side.  That takes courage.  So for anyone out there making this transition out of the performance world, just know that, while it sucks at first, you're no more of a quitter than that "accidental tenor" guy is...and you're just as brave in my book.

And I must say, I really am enjoying singing and music more now that it's not a job to me anymore.  The joy is back, and it's heightened by having enough vocal freedom to really express the music...unlike back in high school.  Being a high-quality avocational singer is very liberating, once you embrace it as your new place in the music world.

Update in Sept. 2015:  I posted a couple of short practice sessions of my singing on a new post recently. My professional-brain is saying I'm being gutsy just throwing out less-than-perfect singing, but my avocational-brain is saying, "Heck, why not?! If it sucks too bad, it doesn't really actually affect my professional life anymore, so just go for it anyway."

Anatomy and Physiology series: Applying the concepts to singing (a summary)

I believe the end-goal of operatic training is to resonate the voice over the sound of the orchestra while having the technical freedom to effectively meet the musical demands and communicate with the audience for however many hours long the performance is.  (Luckily for us, technical freedom and resonating over an orchestra are not mutually exclusive.)  Although many singers are able to accomplish this, I believe keeping up to date on vocal science can make vocal training more effective, thereby allowing motivated singers to accomplish this goal in a shorter period of time than our current model of training.  (Especially since the days of intense, one-on-one training with voice teachers multiple days a week are probably not coming back…at least in the US.) 

We should be taking already built-in biological functions:  using muscles of inhalation during the checking action (or appoggio), it’s relationship to adjustments of medial compression to air flow, neurologicalconstructs of articulation, and a basic understanding of the relationship of some cognitive process to motor control can help teachers to stream-line their training and can help students to better monitor their technique when out on the professional performance circuit.  Bel canto technique did not develop in a bubble, nor where those old master’s of singing granted some great vocal wisdom that was lost to history.  So how did they develop this technique?  I hypothesize that healthy singing technique was developed to meet the vocal demands of the opera house and increasing orchestral size by observing and building upon the already-existing healthy function of the human voice.  (Just as any Olympic athlete builds on the body's natural abilities while training to do amazing things.)

Much of the healthy coordination, the minute adjustments our body makes throughout our day, happen in the background of our consciousness.  To train, we must bring some conscious awareness to the adjustments required, but once the proper coordination is in place, we must remove it from our consciousness once again.  When I took vocal pedagogy classes, the function of the brain and nervous system was never mentioned.  What a fallacy in training future teachers to leave out the “boss” of the whole system!  The great pedagogs of the past cannot be blamed for this.  The greatest discoveries into the functioning of the brain are rather new thanks to improved imaginging technology.  The fault is our own for thinking the pedagogs of the past offered all the information we needed to know.  I don't believe those great pedagogs ever intended for their work to be the end-point, I believe they wanted it to be a beginning:  A beginning of continued discovery between voice science and voice teachers.  (But enough of my rant.)  

There are neurological constructs that aid in healthy vocal production:  checking action, articulation, etc., and there are some that counteract healthy vocal production:  engaging pharyngeal constrictors, contractingthe abdominals while singing, etc.  This is why it would be equally important for voice teachers to also be aware of biological relationships that counteract proper singing, such as the rigid support system which involves abdominal contraction and laryngeal closure.  Eliciting that response by making the abdominals rigid might initially produce an impressive sound, but is asking for vocal trouble down the line.

I’m going to get into some posts on the physics of resonance, but for now, just remember that the way to maximize vocal resonance is by maximizing space in the vocal tract.  However, space in the vocal tract is not maximized by trying to create space.  Rather, it is maximized when the entire vocal system is functioning efficiently.  The kicker is:  When it is functioning efficiently, there isn’t a sensation of “work” being done by the throat or articulatory system, you actually feel nothing happening in the throat.  In fact, the little bit of sensory feedback we get from the laryngeal area is only there to tell our brain when something isn’t right…so if you feel something adjusting in your throat while singing, it more than likely is a sign of tension.  Healthy production feels like “doing nothing,” or feels “as easy as speaking” (if you have a healthy, unstrained speaking voice).  Indeed, the only direct sensations most high-level singers talk about feeling are either sensations of resonance or sensations in their “breath support” system (i.e. ribcage, upper back, lower back, etc.).

So here's a summary of what re-learning to sing seemed like to me after learning all of this stuff:  When my checking action (or appoggio) is engaged, I feel a sensation of my ribcage staying elevated.  To do this, I consciously think in opposites:  I think of making my ribcage larger and larger as the air is going out.  The result is a slow, but consistent, exhalation.  Because air is going out, my ribcage is going down, I just don’t have a sensation of it going down.  Because of the neurological connection of the checking action to medial compression, I don’t feel anything happening in my larynx at all as long as the checking action is engaged.  But must be engaged constantly while I sing, in every part of my range and at the end of every phrase going into my next inhale.  This is the closest thing to straight-up strength training a singer will do, because maintaining contraction of the muscles of inhalation is very tiring to those muscles at first, which is why I would suggest practicing it in short bursts at first:  5 full minutes for a few days, going to 10 full minutes, to 15, and so on.  And remember, the muscles of inhalation are more than just the intercostals, which might be why some people feel it in their upper back, some near the lower ribs, some feel it near their sternum.  I don't think any of those sensations are wrong as long as the result, i.e. free vocal production, is present.  (What was difficult for me, though, was training to feel the sensation of the checking action throughout my range…even all the way up and down fast-moving scale, or during large jumps from low to high to low again, so it might take a little "play time" with this concept to accomplish it consistently.)  If I obsess too much about any part of my articulatory system, I personally start to feel strain near the root of my tongue, so what I do is pause, speak through the text, and then sing through it with the idea that everything above the larynx is just “talking” the text.  That tends to free up the resonance and tongue for me right away.  There is more to my current technique than just that, but these are the main concepts from physiology that I apply consistently in my singing and my teaching.

As a teacher, I see the biggest gains early on in my student's training once we train in the checking action throughout the range.  The exhalation will increase as a person goes up the scale, but maintaining the sensation of resisting exhalation, even as exhalation increases, really opens everything up...once it is attained.  It takes a while for folks to get used to thinking in opposites like that, but think of it like a yin and yang, two opposing ideas sometimes allows you to find the proper balance.  (Oh, and always remember that biologically, the larynx is a valve, so if you throw too much air at it, the valve will close off to try to control that airflow.  And closing off the valve gets the pharyngeal constrictors involved, which results in a "pushed" vocal production.)

So there is, of course, a little more to it than what I outlined there, but that gives some idea of how these concepts from anatomy and physiology of the whole communication system can be applied to singing.  I think I covered everything, but if you've got any questions, please feel free to post them.  I might have accidentally left something vital out.

Continuing on, I’m going to write more on the physics behind the resonance of our voice, and I’m going to go a bit into the ear and why we hear our voice the way we hear it…and also why “not listening to yourself” seems like such an impossible concept for so many beginning singers; the answer to that might just surprise you.  

Am I Good Enough? (a.k.a Mrs. Scaredy-Pants)

As I sit here and write this, I am currently staked out at my dinning room table with my feet propped up on a chair and my shoes still on.  I am hiding from a spider that is currently hiding from me.  Earlier this morning, a rather large wolf spider ran right inside my home when I opened my front door.  I tried to spray some bug-killer spray on it to no avail; it's just too fast!  I couldn't stomp on it because it kept putting itself right up next to furniture, under a bike helmet that's on the floor next to the bike, etc.  My husband and I are both arachnophobics, you see, so this spider is creating a bit of an issue for both of us.  However, he got to escape to work earlier today, and I'm stuck here until my lessons start up later today.  It does stuck being scared of such a little thing...a little, creepy, eight-legged, eight-eyed, fast-running thing that was last seen hiding around my couch somewhere.

My current deal-with-the-spider plan is to calm down enough to begin vacuuming the living room floor, since it needs it anyway.  Then, while fully armed with the vacuum, I can scoot the couch around and suck it up when it runs out.  This plan should go well...as long as said spider is still camping out near the couch.  If not....I guess I'll have more hiding to do today.  Sigh.

This spider-event has gotten me thinking about something else that has been bothering me lately, the age-old question:  Am I good enough?  I would wager that this question is one of the most common questions ambitious-types ask themselves.  I know it certainly haunted me all those years I was in music schools.  Let's face it, without the encouragement of someone at some point in our lives saying, "You know, you're really good at this," very few of us would develop the ambition to succeed in any given career.  And then, if after we get into the field, we don't receive some similar encouragement at some point, either in the form of a competition won, a role landed, or positive comments on major assignments turned in, then we start to lose the confidence that original person instilled in us.

That is certainly what happened to me in the music world.  I was always encouraged by a small number of very supportive faculty, but I always failed to land any tangible evidence that I "had the goods."  The truth is, having everything come down to a five or ten minute audition was not something I could handle.  I would put so much pressure on myself at that one performance that I would bomb it.

Now that I'm entering a field in traditional academia, I must say I'm liking the process of "how to impress" a lot more.  I can impress by writing an impeccable statement of purpose through writing multiple revisions and having it proofread by my profs in the field.  Also, I can devour as much research as I can at the schools where I am applying, study up for good GRE grades, and, of course, get a 4.0 GPA.  What is similar to music is that I have months and months to put together a package that presents me at my best.  What is different is that this package is all on paper, so as long as I successfully put that package together, I can't screw it up with a wad of phlegm, not taking a big enough breath for that one phrase, wearing the wrong shoes with that dress, etc.  I don't have to worry about getting sick on the plane, and I can even fly out on the red-eye if I visit the schools cause, heck, I'm not singing for them.  As long as my eyes are clear from the eye drops and that five-hour energy keeps me alert enough while meeting faculty, I'm golden.  My throat can feel dry and scratchy all it wants!

But I have to admit, I still struggle with that "Am I good enough?" question.  It's a pretty paralyzing thought.  If I let that question get the better of me, I lose all motivation...all that lovely forward-momentum I've been building the past year just evaporates.  So clearly, I cannot let this question get the better of me.  Perhaps I can find a middle-ground of being humble to the proper point of still being open enough to learn, but not be paralyzed with fear.  It's not like I never have options in life.  It's not like failure on this one path = failure at all of life.  Certainly not!  It's gotten pretty cliche to think of failures as opportunities, but when put in their proper place that's all they really are.  Opportunities that emerge after the crying, ice cream, chocolate, moping about the house for a few days, yoga classes, and lunches with friends that tend to follow after a particularly spectacular failure.  As long as the process of working through the failure doesn't get the better of  you, then there are always more options emerging around the corner.

So perhaps I am asking myself the wrong question.  It's not "Am I good enough," but, "Am I motivated and capable enough to succeed in this endeavour?"  My answer to that is:  Yes.  Yes I am plenty capable, passionate, and motivated to do what needs to be done to be successful.  And really, that's all I need...which is convenient because that is all I actually have direct control over anyway.

...Not so sure how well this plan will work for the spider-situation though...

A PSA for all careers: Don't practice perfection, practice life-long learning

How many singers out there dread practicing in some way or another?  How many of us want to keep going until we know we've 'accomplished something.'  But what are we trying to accomplish?  Perfection?  Being better at that high note than your peers?  What drives you in the practice room will become what drives your performances.  If your motivation is to compete with peers, then you will always be disappointed, because you will never be "the best" at any one time to every person who hears you sing.  

Singing is so subjective.  We all know this.  Ask ten singers who their favorite singer is of all time and you will probably get ten different answers.  Why?  Is one of those world-class singers really better than the rest?  No.  Not really.  The truth is we all have our own unique connection to the music which will communicate that music in a way that will speak to some and not to others who hear it.  If you're more concerned with being the best than you are with communicating the human element, you're not going to get anywhere, either professionally or in the practice room.  

If, however, you know vocal technique is the tool that allows us to express the music as we wish, then you might be in a rush to attain "perfect" vocal technique.  But that goal is nothing more than a dangerous rabbit hole many excellent artists get stuck in during their youth, and one many folks who suffer from vocal distress or injury get trapped in as well. 

How many times have I heard from my students, "Sometimes I'm afraid to practice at home, because I'm afraid I won't get it right."  What do I say to that?  First, getting it right takes a long time, so it won't happen in one day in the practice room and conversely, one week of practicing something slightly "wrong" won't kill your voice or end your career.  But second, I say:  Find joy in practicing through taking on an attitude of journey and discovery rather than the drudgery of wanting to get everything right the first time out, cause the second attitude is setting yourself up for failure.  The singers with real longevity in opera don't try to compete with their peers or the up-and-comers, they try to constantly better themselves so they can better serve the music they love.  That's what keeps them at the top of their profession, not the attitude of competition.  (Don't believe me?  Search out any great singer's interviews on youtube, and you will see what I am talking about.  Their love for their art form imbues every word and gesture they make when they talk about what they do.)  

I believe it is that sense of discovery, of adventure, that will allow a person to make larger gains in the practice room with shorter practice sessions than they will with the attitude of "giving 200%" to force something to happen. We all know in singing that the idea of using "force" of any kind tends to hinder vocal development rather than helping it. 

I am now finding out this concept applies to pretty much every field out there.  In SLP, especially among students vying for a position in a graduate school, there are plenty of "competitors" who aren't enjoying the field much at all.  They're so invested in competition that they have forgotten why they wanted to be in this field in the first place.  Then there are the folks who are very passionate about why they want to be an SLP, usually to help people who need their services, who are absolutely impeccable SLPs, even if their test scores aren't the top in the class.  People perceive excellence in these students and professionals because the job they do is not impeded by comparing themselves to others.  They just simply do their job to the best of their ability.  These people aren't interested in having success for successes sake; they are in love with life-long learning.  They are in love with the process of bettering themselves so that they might help others to the best of their ability.

May we all, what ever field we find ourselves in, find joy in the journey, have a passionate love affair with life-long learning, and seek to do our best for the sake of our field and for the sake of others affected by what we do.

Am I ever going to get back to telling my journey?

I had someone I know in my personal life ask me that the other day.  The reason I'm sharing this anatomy/physiology series with everyone is that it is a vital part of my journey thus far.  I recently had the pleasure to sing for a dear friend of mine who has heard my voice pre-therapy and in all stages of technical development post-stage, and who is a very talented, professional singer himself.  He agreed my voice has a much richer, fuller sound from top to bottom and that I have finally achieved a good "ringing" resonance in my middle voice, which is no small feat for a coloratura soprano.  


Now, I made a lot of gains in my singing before going through a year of undergraduate courses for SLP, but I must say, my largest gains have come from this year.  I haven't had many voice lessons at all this year due to time (note to self:  Do not plan a wedding while going to school full time while maintaining a full voice studio ever again!), and I certainly haven't been practicing as much as I'd like, so this breakthrough still isn't as consistent as it could be, but I have made huge gains in my singing.  How?  Learning in more intricate detail how the respiratory, laryngeal, pharyngeal, and articulatory systems work, in addition to some other things about how the brain works in terms of motor-development, etc., has really allowed me to take the concepts from my lessons that I never understood and play with those concepts during practice sessions, combining them with a great understanding of how it was all supposed to be working.  Not only that, but I can take a clear understanding of some biological functions and recognize those functions by a different name in pedagogical texts when I need another resource to turn to.  I have also become a much more effective teacher armed with this knowledge as well. 


In the current operatic world, young, professional singers are expected to have a solid enough grounding in technique to launch into a professional career at a young age.  At the same time, they are restricted to one-hour-a-week lessons either at the university, and sometimes, they get less time than outside of the university if their finances don't allow for once a week.  Yet, we expect them to not only arrive at the technical level of the singers of the past decades at a young age, but we expect them to maintain that level throughout their career with infrequent lessons scheduled between professional gigs.  Some singers do quite well with this model, and some are falling by the way-side.  Perhaps it's lack of talent, or perhaps some just don't get the "luck of the draw" in terms of getting in with a great teacher at a young age, but we can still do more to help all singers to succeed vocally with the current business model than we are doing (speaking of the operatic world in general terms here...there are pockets of great, intense training, but they aren't the norm).  


In the past, singers trained very differently.  They had a lesson nearly every day, rather than once a week.  Their training more closely resembled that of Olympic athletes in terms of personal attention, time, and training with the best coaches and teachers.  So they were able to make great debuts at young ages on the major opera stages of the world.  While the current financial situation many schools find themselves in don't allow for a return of that model, we do have more knowledge to offer our students.  We know so much more about the science of how the body and voice work, and what can go wrong.  Offering this knowledge to the students and singers of today shouldn't be seen as unnecessary or tedious, rather it should be seen as offering our students a safety-net with which they can save their own voice from harm while out on the professional circuit.  


Certainly, there are other things that lead to vocal demise, poor role planning, etc., but the signs of demise are so often overlooked by the singer, or are noticed, but the singer has no way of fixing the issues during the run of their show.  I personally believe that the most determined singers out there have the mental aptitude to learn about their instrument in more detail and to apply that knowledge to their own singing.  We expect singers to be so intelligent about so many things, languages, musicality, individual expression, yet we give them a pass when it comes to the detailed science of how the voice works.  Will this knowledge produce better singers?  Who knows.  But I bet it would to serve to protect some of the great unknowns out there, help them to separate the good pedagogy from the bad, and perhaps even expedite their vocal training.  


So that's why I'm going through this series.  I want everyone to have a resource through which they can understand how I went through my process and what helped me, including what I believe could help them as well.

It IS a confidence issue

Let’s talk about the psychological effects of a vocal injury…or at least, the ones I experienced.  The more I teach, the more I realize that how you feel or think psychologically about singing really is 90% of the battle of learning how to sing.  And I know that about 99% of getting back into singing post-injury for me was a total mental game.

I had zero confidence in my singing at the time of my diagnosis.  I was never able to trust my voice, and it had betrayed me to a unforgivable point at the Met competition.  I pretty much wanted nothing to do with it.  But after therapy, my voice mended its ways and I had to begin to trust it.  Building that trust took a whole lot of time, and I still don’t trust it 100% of the time two years later.  I had to remind myself over and over that my voice WAS healthy, my voice COULD be trusted.  Thank God for a positive and encouraging teacher!  Positive encouragement isn’t just blowing smoke up the butts of those of us with injury.  It’s a vital part of our recovery!

About five months after my injury, I found I was constantly getting down on myself for still not getting my technique right.  My main problem I kept thinking was, “I know my voice was healthy, so it just should work, right?”  Getting my larynx in the right position was a struggle.  Keeping my pharyngeal space “open” was a struggle (still kinda is sometimes).  I failed over and over again to get things right for years, and now that my fundamental problem was healed, I was expecting to not fail at all.  Yet there I was, still “placing my sound” by tweaking my throat into funny ways.  My tongue was still bunching, and my jaw was still tight.  My confidence when performing was shot, because I knew my technique wouldn’t be perfect.  Ten years of always hitting a developmental wall had made me extremely impatient to get to a good place with my singing and my technique…never mind that almost no one sings with perfect technique all of the time and that it takes most people years to get close enough to “perfect” to be world class.

Some singers have great little mottos they say to themselves before they sing such as:  “This performance is going to be so fun” or “Please let my performance touch someone out there.”  And other singers have so much confidence or experience that they don’t even need silly little mottos.  They just do it.  Know what I would think before a performance?  “Please, just let my voice work!”  That’s what I would think.  You know how you’re not supposed to think about technique when you perform?  How it’s supposed to be on auto-pilot so that you can think about your character, emotions, musicality…?  Yeah, well, that still wasn’t happening for me.  It wasn’t happening because I didn’t know how to trust my voice.  I still expected it to be a traitor.  It also wasn’t happening because I still felt like a failure for not being able to figure out the right way to sing, even though my voice was better.  Never mind that it takes most people a few years to figure it out anyway.  Never mind that I was basically starting at square one after the injury, so it would take time.  I wanted my voice to work now!

You know what helped with my confidence?  Improving and solidifying my technique.  That allowed me to trust my voice because good technique made it reliable.  I really think that's one thing the "close to natural" talents out there in the operatic world have over those of us who struggle:  They have trust in a voice that is 100% reliable.  That takes a lot of the worry off the table.  I never realized how much pressure it is to sing with an unreliable voice until my voice became reliable.  It's such a revelation!  And the exhilaration of being able to finally, finally truly make music with my voice was so completely worth the struggle...I cannot even being to tell you!

Know what kept me going so that I would finally feel like I could use my voice to make music?  Positive encouragement from my teacher.  So, so vital to healing the psychological hurt I had experienced with my injury.  Being reminded of how far I had come and being reminded to be patient were such gifts during this time.  I was so used to being that girl with “a nice voice with problems” that I would fall back into that crippling mental state of always being that girl with the vocal issues.  And you simply cannot learn how to sing well if you’re crippled by negative labels and doubts, especially when those labels don’t apply to you anymore.

Another vital thing I did was change my moto before singing.  Instead of “I hope my voice works,” I started to say “My voice does work and will work, even if my technique is not perfect just yet.”  That really helped me when it came down to actually performing on my not-so-perfect technique with my healed-up voice.  I still got nervous as heck, but if it didn’t go perfectly, I was at least able to laugh it off as a fluke rather than as a sign of my incompetence.  Might seem like a little thing, but it was a big step in the right direction.

*Voice teachers, don’t babysit your singers or coddle them, but for your student's sake try to learn when they need some encouragement.  Students who sang on an injury, even if for a short amount of time, are going to need a lot of encouragement to get through the trauma.  And if encouragement doesn't seem to be cutting it, send us to a counselor.  The psychological impacts of vocal injury really should not be ignored or belittled.  But some of us were just put in the wrong “box” as a young singer, and we need someone to take the lid off for us before we can make any progress.

Obtaining a clean onset: Ah…good times…

Might seem a pretty obvious thing after reading my earlier post about just how asymmetrical my laryngeal musculature had become thanks to paresis, but it really took me about two to three months post-therapy to realize I needed to rebalance my voice.  It’s not like I had an adolescent voice…quite far from it in fact…but I don’t think I fully realized just how atrophied my right vocalis had become.  Therapy really had healed up my voice, meaning I had full glottal (which is the term for the space between the vocal folds) closure when speaking.  That’s the only way I was able to successfully achieve those measurements my SLP took at my last session.  But my laryngeal cartilage still didn’t feel totally symmetrical when I did my massages.  It was getting better slowly, but it really took a good six months before it felt normal again.  It seems perfectly reasonable to me now that I needed to re-balance…or maybe finally actually balance…my laryngeal musculature when it came to singing.  I had to get that right fold up to speed, so to speak.

As any pedagogy-guru would tell you, you need adequate fold closure at the onset of phonation, or else the whole darn phrase just ain’t gonna go very well.  (Paraphrasing from the great academics out there…but you get the idea.)  This is why I set out with some onset exercises as my main vocalization about two months post-therapy.  I had never had a clean onset before.  Prior to healing up, I had so much “adjusting” that I made before the onset of every sound.  Onset was more of a process of manipulation than the ideal balance of air flow and fold closure that it should have been.  And without all that manipulating, then my voice would just be breathy at the onset and breathy throughout the phrase.  (Of course, that manipulation was really pressing too much, but what else are you going to do with a ‘gimpy’ fold, right?)  My head and chest registers were healthy and strong, and I could transition into whistle register just fine, but my onset was still a sloppy mess and my middle voice just couldn’t figure out the right balance between chest and head voice.  While the later issue would take more time and a few more lessons to sort out, the first issue I decided to tackle on my own…with some help from Richard Miller and my teacher, of course. 

I started out doing the onset exercises, five pulses on /a/ followed with legato 5-3-1 and eventually 5-4-3-2-1 down quickly (simplified for myself in the beginning to just the pulses), without any thought to resonance placement, solely in my middle voice.  First, I’d do the classic pulse-the-air-out-from-your-belly on a count of five.  Then, when that felt fairly automatic, I would start the onset exercises, just on /a/.   The main key for me was to not actually think about the exercise at all.  I did not allow myself to analyze if it was good or bad, right or wrong, breathy or clean…anything.  No analysis, no manipulation to make it better, just pulse my breath out and add voice to the air movement.  This is one part of my great paradigm shift:  Not over-thinking every sound that came out of my throat.  But, since I was such a chronic over-thinker, I had to start out by blanking out my mind completely and letting my body figure it out without the help of my higher cognitive functioning.  This turned out to be a pretty good idea.  My laryngeal musculature and my air flow started up a nice little relationship without that pesky cognitive analyzing getting in the way.  (As with any relationship, this one would take time to refine and mature, but a good healthy start to this balance was worth its weight in gold to me.)

After about two weeks of this, I was able to gradually increase my range on this exercise, and my onset was starting to get all clean and shinny.  What a revelation it was to just be able to start a clean sound without a lot of fuss!  No wonder so many singers out there actually enjoy singing!  When you don’t have to analyze every second of every sound, or spend ridiculous amounts of time thinking about how to start your sound, singing really does start to get rather fun! 

Another little perk from this was the beginning of developing a belt voice for me.  I had never belted before, but like I said, I did nothing to adjust my sound into anything at all, so I end up sounding a lot like a musical theater belter.  That was what my middle voice onset sounded like about two weeks into using this exercise.  But the onset was clean!  Oh glorious day!  Who cares if I don’t sound like an opera singer just yet?  I can work on resonance and vocal quality later as long as the foundation was finally good!  I was able to just open my mouth and sing.  That was a feat worth celebrating.

Practice can make a real mess of things…when you're doing it wrong

When I first started singing again after the injury, I pretty much just attacked it like I always had before.  I had a new voice and everything was just going to click for me.  I just knew it!  So I ran on this idea for the first month or two when I came back.  I started to practice just the same way I had before the injury.  I had a list of arias I wanted to learn, competitions and auditions I wanted to do…I was really going to go for it in a big way.  I was sure I’d be some amazing, world-class singer in no time!  And oh boy!   Was that a stupid thought!  What I really should have done was learn how to practice effectively to promote new muscular coordination.  I should have retained the patience I had during therapy.  I had a lot to learn!

Let me explain a little bit about me and practicing.  I had always been very good at practicing.  I was diligent, meticulous, disciplined, set goals for my practice sessions, and often wouldn’t stop until I felt those goals were met.  Yeah well, turns out, I wasn’t as good as I thought…

Once I started with my teacher, the one who sent me to the ENT in the first place, she would quite often remind me at nearly every lesson that I should NOT be singing for over an hour at a time.  My teacher would always say just to stick to the 30 minute practice sessions broken up throughout the day.  However, my work schedule simply did not permit that, so I often just practiced in the evenings when I got home until I felt too fatigued to go on further.  Mistake number one.  I would also spend so much of my practice time thinking, conceptualizing, analyzing, and manipulating what I learned in my lesson from every possible angle at every single practice.  Mistake number two.   I always wanted to leave a practice session feeling I’d accomplished something technical…that a light-bulb of some sort had gone on.  Mistake number three.

The other day, I was speaking to one of my friends’ who is also struggling with vocal injuries; he has long-standing superior nerve paresis and also a vocal hemorrhage caused by the compensation (thanks to an eager teacher telling him to “sing through” the hoarseness in his voice.  Oy.)  I told him he probably should only be vocalizing for ten to fifteen minutes at a time until he’s healed up he said, “Oh…that’s good to know.  I usually just vocalize until I feel like I’ve accomplished something.”  This just solidified one of the problems with someone recuperating from an illness:  we (and I’m sure many others out there) over-practice all the time!  It’s because to us, learning to singing has been a war we’ve been fighting for so long that we tend to think of practicing as just another battle.  This isn’t a process of learning and training.  It’s not a journey we take with wisdom and patience.  This is Sparta!  This is Fight Club, people!  We tend to just keep going in our practice until we feel we’ve conquered something, or won the battle of the day in some way.  Basically, we don’t stop until we feel we’ve landed a strong right-hook on our voice that’s put it down and out for the count.  I realized I was doing that all the time, and it was time to change.  My voice teacher was constantly telling me to practice in short bursts of time, no more than 30 minutes at a time.  And I kept doing that for a little while, but then would slowly start “accidently” practicing for much longer.  Why did I keep doing that?  So I could accomplish something, darn it! 

Now, about a year before I found out about my injury, I started doing yoga pretty regularly.  If you’ve ever taken a yoga class for all levels, then you know you’ll end up being next to that advance yogi who’s comfortably bending into pretzels with a smile on her face while you’re just trying to hold your down-dog without slipping off your mat, right?  Well, after practicing yoga for a little over a year, I began to realize just how much of a process doing yoga is.  I slowly was able to make my way into poses I never thought I’d be able to do.  As my strength and flexibility increased, I was able to do more and more with considerable ease I had not expected.  It was a process of constant repetition.  As long as I stay focused on my alignment every yoga session, it became more and more natural for my body to get into and out of the poses with ease.  What all that conscious repetition was doing was training up those neural pathways that solidified those yoga postures in my body.  It became so familiar that it is nearly automatic now, so much so that I now can meditate on other things while flowing in and out of poses during practice.  And, I have such a good technical base of alignment, strength, and flexibility that I can approach a new pose with patience and the wisdom to know that if it’s not perfect today, it will become better with time.   Yoga has become fun and invigorating, where it once was exhausting.

Singing and learning to sing should be the same way.  Or, as I explained it to my runner-friend, singing, as well as vocal recuperation from injury, is a bit like training for a marathon:  You’re not going to just go out and run the full 26 miles your first day of training, you’re going to start in small increments and then build your body up to the 26 mile run slowly and purposefully.  This is what helped me to realize that this is what learning to sing really should be like.  It should be a constant process of progression where you slowly but surely develop the technique needed to sing difficult arias and operatic roles with ease that you never thought you’d be able to do (just like those advanced yoga poses).  So in reconciling myself to this progress, I began to be very meticulous in the way I sang. 

About two months after I got back into singing, where I was trying to practice as I always had before, I decided to take a step back and just do 15 minute chunks of simple exercises from my lessons.  I alternated between the massages, voice therapy exercises, and lesson exercises.  After about a week of just doing that, I would progress into singing through a song or aria for the next week.  Then, I felt I was ready to head back to my lessons and get a new set of exercises and bump the technique up a little more.  I didn’t set any goal other than getting the extrinsic musculature to shut up and get out of the way.  I didn’t set out to learn arias or art songs.  I didn’t practice getting my coloratura dead-on accurate.  I didn’t even work on resonance placement…at least not just yet.  (This made me sound a lot more like a mixed belter in my middle voice, but since free phonation was my goal, I was fine with that for the time being.)  I just did some mindless “workouts” with my voice everyday for a short period of time.  I got out of my body’s way and just let it learn how to balance breath with onset all on its own, using Miller’s onset exercises as a guide.  If I only made it 15 minutes before I felt tension creep back in, I stopped at 15 minutes.  By the end of each week, that time would usually double so I could make it at least 30 minutes before fatigue would cause me to revert to the old muscle memory.  Just doing those simple exercises, massages, and stretches for 15 minutes a day for a week or so really helped not only build my voice back to full strength, it helped to reset those pathways so I could get more release during phonation.  I still got stuck on the “pendulum” swing of going too “dark” or falling “back in my throat” and then going too “bright” or too “forward,” but I could always get back on track with this type of practice.  I had discovered a process by which I could slowly and methodically build my technique in, and a process that kept my neural pathways agile.  They became so agile that making a change to my technique, or to my concept of singing, in a month or so became so normal that it has gotten to the point where I can now make those shifts in a week or two.

Good thing I found this process though, because just a few more months down the road, I would slip into typical bad singer-habits.  Returning to this process would always be, and probably will always be, my vocal saving-grace. 

A note for other singers out there:  Sure, you might not have the time to spend only 15 minutes a day if you're already a pro singer or a student at a university, but if you split up practicing into short chunks throughout the day, you'll actually make much faster progress than if you go at it for a whole hour at a time.  It's the repetition that infuses the correct coordination and sets the neural pathways, not the length of time.  Once the musculature slips back into it's old ways, stop, take a break, and come back to it later.  Really, you'll be surprised at your progress, and you won't be nearly as frustrated at your vocal mechanism as you would be if you "push through" the slip back to the old ways.