Vocal Process - the missing year

As you can see from the previous posts, it's been a year almost to the day since I blogged last.

So many things have been happening that it's difficult to know where to start.

Completed the Scarborough Spa Orchestra job (and therein hangs a rather weird tale which I might tell some day).

Created a voicebox video for the Science Museum in London. Their interactive cafe space, the Dana Centre, had seen my voicebox videos on the internet and asked me to create one for an event on voice and karaoke.
So naturally I ended up singing My Way with a camera up my nose.

The event was a huge success and I am looking to publish the voicebox video - So How Does Your Voice Work - in the near future.

And talking of Voicebox Videos - I finally released my original set of six voicebox videos as a DVD. Sales have been nothing short of phenomenal for such a specialist DVD, and we've sent DVDs out to Canada, the US, New Zealand, Italy, Scandinavia and South America. You can check out the Voicebox Videos DVD on the dedicated website.

I've done a lot of studying over the winter, with the Internet Marketing Center in Canada. It's a fascinating subject and one I really enjoy. I really feel I've only scratched the surface at the moment, but already the fruits of my labour are evident on the Vocal Process website.

In fact the website goes from strength to strength, with hundreds of visitors every day.
I'll be giving you more news on that when I've got the stats sorted.

Another week of frantic work, coaching, concerts and webstuff, and then we're off for a fortnight's holiday. We haven't had a fortnight off for YEARS so are leaving Allison (our new PA) to caretake the company and will be disappearing from public view for 14 days.

Bliss

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)
The Voicebox Videos DVD website tells you all about the Looking At A Voice endoscopy videos series
The Vocal Process website has a series of free articles on vocal technique and style, memorising and different musical genres.

Scientists discover "the perfect voice"

The scientists are now claiming to have discovered "the perfect voice".

Linguist Andrew Linn from Sheffield University and sound engineer Shannon Harris examined 50 voice examples to find the best balance of tone, intonation, speed, frequency and words per minute.

Sky News picked up the story and invited Gillyanne on as voice expert to comment on the idea of a perfect voice. (Check out the Vocal Process website for more info).

And if that really is the recipe for the perfect voice, great. It's really easy to analyse and the setup is easy to teach.

Now as far as I'm concerned, "the perfect voice" doesn't exist. Even the concept of the perfect voice is flawed.

And that's for a specific reason.

Voices 'move'. Voices need to be flexible, because they are called on to do so many different things.
Ordinary people talk, yell, cry, moan, laugh, and make all sorts of expressive sounds. Professional voice users have to do all of that, and usually have to do a bigger range of sounds, or do it for a lot longer at a higher level of competence.

The online examples of male and female "perfect voice" sound warm and fluent, with fairly wide intonation leaps and sentences that end with downward pitch direction. Technically, they both have slight glottal chink (a breathy sound that is not completely clear), and some thyroid tilt to sound warm and gentle (unthreatening). Interestingly, they both speak at approximately the same pitch centre, albeit an octave apart. And the pitch is low (around low Ab) although the resonance is bright.

All of which is lovely...but the snag is that they won't be heard more than a couple of feet away. So no use for teachers, sports trainers, sergeant majors, opera singers, public speakers, or in the pubs and clubs.
However, it IS really useful for anyone using microphones or talking one-to-one. So television presenters, radio DJ.s, telephone sales assistants, therapists and vicars.

In other words, it works really well at close quarters when you want to sound confident, trustworthy and warm.

Would you buy a car from this man?


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)
The new Voicebox Videos DVD website tells you all about the Looking At A Voice endoscopy videos

The Vocal Process website has a series of free articles on vocal technique and style, memorising and different musical genres.