Back to rehearsals soon? Voice feeling a bit rusty?

Here's a little extra guidance beyond the tips I shared in the video above:

Tip #5: Your vocal folds (or cords) are the only pair you'll ever have. You can't go and choose new ones when the old ones start to wear out.

Imagine those little vocal folds, pristine and perfect at birth. Functioning with ease and as usual in babies and young children, with the best and most perfect vocal connection, there can be. What causes things to go wrong when all was perfect at the onset?

True vocal folds are no bigger than your little fingernail. They deserve careful use if they are to serve us well all our lives. Sometimes things go wrong, usually as a result of a poorly mixed cocktail of factors.

For example, if we think of gaining greater volume when we sing, there’s a psychological trigger that suggests to us that we must push more air to make it happen. But a greater volume...

Last month, we introduced a NEW virtual workshop event into The Learning Curve for singers. Two sessions hosted jointly by myself and Ryan Walker, audio/tech coach here at The Voice School. Intentions of the workshop were to provide hands-on, informative guidance in terms of what constitutes a good basic recording set-up, grasping best practices when doing so at home on a realistic budget. 

The idea developed from the need and desire for continued music-making and connection during these restrictive and isolating COVID-19 times. Singers need to continue using their voice, to keep the instrument in fine fettle - and in seeking to do that, technology repeatedly came to our rescue to make blending voices for ensemble singing a possibility.

As such, fun vocal work/projects we’ve been pursuing within The Voice School Hub since April 2020 using and sharing recorded vocal MP3 and WAV files have given rise to many FAQs along the way and a natural curiosity in understanding more...

This year, in the wake of COVID-19 and the uncertainty that it has created for singers getting together, I decided to make 2020 my year of delivering my regular workshop courses online. 

Residential weekends at Dartington Hall, form part of my teaching year structure. Situated near Totnes in South Devon, the Dartington Hall ethos provides the perfect vibe for such valuable learning exchanges to happen. The workshop weekends run in March (Love Your Voice) for solo singers, and October (Sing Joyfully) for ensemble singers.

Thanks to the pandemic, I’ve been on a learning curve of my own since March, reconfiguring my music studio, learning more about the tech requirements for teaching, and leading online. Little did I know how eerily on-point my post of January this year, where I welcomed applications for my ‘Love Your Voice’ course at Dartington Hall. This is how I opened the post:

“Teaching is more than imparting knowledge, it is inspiring change....