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.