Ready for your close-up?

The Singer magazine got to hear about my video endoscopy ebooks and ran a two-page spread called "Ready for your close-up?".

I was pleased to see that they thought the videos to be "very reasonably priced... given the amount of work that goes into putting just a few minutes of video together, and 10% of each sale goes to charity."

The Singer magazine and Rhinegold Publishing have kindly given me permission to have a copy of the article on the Vocal Process website. Click here to download a pdf copy (471kb) complete with pictures of my larynx.

The ebooks really seem to have captured peoples' imaginations, as three days after the article came out, I had a phonecall from a BBC interviewer. She'd seen the article and wanted to build a piece around the ebooks for the BBC Radio 4 weekly science programme, Leading Edge. Was I interested?

A week later she arrived on the doorstep to record an interview. Her first reaction on seeing the video was how "visceral" it was. She thought it was bizarre that beautiful sounds could come out of something that looked so frankly gynaecological.

The funniest thing is "watching" a video on radio. You have to describe everything you see in front of you, even while it's playing. We were focussing on the Constriction and Release video ebook footage, and she asked me if I could teach her to do the exercises I was performing in the video. So I had about three minutes to show her how to constrict and release the false vocal folds.

As it happens, she was an enthusiastic amateur singer, so was comfortable singing a notes and scales. One of my methods of working is to get a client to actually do whatever it is they are avoiding (ie the inappropriate behaviour), then do the appropriate behaviour. I find that by exploring what you are trying to avoid, you often discover more about what you are aiming to really do.

Which meant that in this case, I was asking a BBC interviewer to make the sound of straining and grunting. And then to breathe absolutely silently. It'll sound very funny on radio.

So if you want to hear my dulcet tones and can get BBC Radio 4, tune in to the science programme "Leading Edge" on Thursday November 2nd at 2100.

Visit http://www.vocalprocess.co.uk for the latest downloads:
the Vocal Process eZINE (free electronic magazine)
86 things you never hear a singer say (free ebook)
Looking at a Voice (endoscopy video download)
Constriction and Release (opening the throat on video - the latest endoscopy video download)

Vocal Process is running a day course on Practical Phonetics in November. Click on the link to find out more.