Two reasons to celebrate

There's one celebration just gone and one coming up.

This blog has just passed its third birthday!

The first entries were in March 2006, and featured Village Halls and Fairy Lights - comments on touring with Hatstand Opera.

Well, this month, three years later, I'm featuring Island touring with Hatstand Opera... no change there then. It's been a blast writing for this blog, including all the stuff I can't fit into the Vocal Process eZINE.

And talking of the eZINE, edition 36 is due out at the end of April, and it's a celebratory one, because...

Vocal Process is 10 years old!

Yes, we really have been around for 10 years. Gillyanne Kayes and I incorporated the company on 27 April 1999, and we've been sharing information and promoting expertise ever since.

We've run a barrel-load of training courses in several countries across the world, set up our Integrated Voice teacher training programme, written two books, and created the UK's first endoscopy video ebook downloads (and a sell-out Voicebox Videos DVD version too).

The latest addition to the creative canon is the Constriction and Release DVD, the first time that the teaching process of opening your throat by controlling the false vocal folds has ever been seen on DVD.

And there are more plans for the future.


If you'd like to celebrate with us, just add a comment to this blog entry, or join the free Vocal Process eZINE mailing list to get a copy of the anniversary edition.

(If you haven't joined the eZINE mailing list already, you also get a free copy of my very first ebook, 86 Things You Never Hear A Singer Say)

Just visit the Vocal Process website homepage and click on the box that appears magically before your very eyes.


The Vocal Process "opening your throat" techniques appear on the new sell-out Constriction and Release DVD
The Vocal Process website has 280+ pages, including a series of free articles on vocal technique and style, memorising and different musical genres.
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)

4 islands, 8 shows, 4 days

Just got back from the Channel Islands tour again.

Hatstand Opera and a mad schedule (the two do seem to go together somehow...)

It wasn't just "If it's Tuesday it's Guernsey", this time it was "If it's Tuesday, it's Alderney, Guernsey AND Sark". Three islands, three modes of transport (plane, boat, tractor). Two shows. In one day.

And as if there wasn't enough to do while we were there, we included a couple of radio interviews.

The excellent radio station BBC Guernsey sent their roving reporter from the Jim Cathcart show out to meet us in our favourite venue - St James Arts Centre in the middle of St Peter Port.

The interview (with all four of us chipping in) was a blast, and included a succinct report on warming up the voice before a show, and begins with the MOST important thing for singers.

Click here to listen

Many thanks to BBC Guernsey for allowing me to include an extract of the interview on this blog.



The Vocal Process "opening the throat" techniques appear on the new sell-out Constriction and Release DVD
The Vocal Process website has 280+ pages, including a series of free articles on vocal technique and style, memorising and different musical genres.
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)

Working with the adolescent voice

At Vocal Process we believe that good, informed training should start early.

So on April 25th we're running our one-day training course on working with the child and adolescent voice.

The Developing Voice is presented by Jenevora Williams, adolescent voice expert, researcher and teacher. Jenevora's currently involved in research into the training and vocal health of boy choristers and has a great deal of useful, practical information on the development of the larynx and vocal tract throughout childhood.

It is worrying that so many singing teachers, conductors and vocal coaches think that the young voice is simply a smaller version of the mature adult voice. So much damage can be caused by well-meaning but misguided teaching.

A child's voice is not the same as an adolescent's voice, and the adolescent voice is not the same as the adult voice. There are massive physical changes, both skeletal and hormonal, that occur for both boys and girls in their early teenage years.

On the course, Jenevora will guide teachers (and students) through the five stages of change that a boy's voice goes through, and help them identify which vocal practices are healthy.

There is also a three-minute voice test to work out which stage of change the student is passing through, and information on range, voice qualities and suitable exercises, including how to deal with breathiness in girl's voices.

Singing is now a required part of the school curriculum - the UK government's Music Manifesto intends to “put singing back at the heart of all primary school musical activity through the creation of nationwide singing campaign leading up to the 2012 Olympics”.

To find out more about Jenevora's work, and to read about changes in the vocal mechanism from birth to adulthood, visit the Vocal Process website and click on Resources, Articles. You'll find interviews, downloads and presentations on the adolescent voice.

You can also read more about the Developing Voice course on April 25 by clicking here.

We hope to see you there!

The Vocal Process "opening the throat" techniques appear on the new sell-out

Constriction and Release DVD
The Vocal Process website has 280+ pages, including a series of free articles on vocal technique and style, memorising and different musical genres.

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)