Deanna wrote:
>My dilemma is that I teach approximately 50 individual voice lessons a week and
I'm
>trying different techniques to "save" my voice. I've been constantly
>hoarse for years but recently I had some speaking lessons with a teacher
>to work on taking out glottal strokes on words that begin with vowels
>and being more aware of how I'm supporting my speaking voice with the
>same energy as for singing.
It should be obvious, but obviously isn't to everyone, that we use the same
instrument for speaking and singing, and since we speak lots more than we sing,
the habits we have for speaking voice use will dominate. As a teacher of both
speech and singing, I preach this in both places, and I point out in the FIRST
lesson with every new singing student that he/she must immediately begin to work
on acquiring better speaking habits, or all is vanity (to quote a well known
source of wisdom). I sometimes call it developing more musical speech, and I
work on this constantly along with the teaching of singing. I believe it is
every voice teacher's duty to help students with this, and if we all did so, we
would not get into as many problems as Deanna describes above. We also have to
educate people about the need for voice rest, just as we have to rest other
parts of our physical bodies. We are not machines!
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