“When any voice has been developed through voice training, it should come to the point where in all ways it is found in the same condition which the naturally great voice has without training.”

- BARBEREUX-PARRY, M. Vocal Resonance: Its Source and Command

Q: Should you seek out Professional Voice Training?

A: Consider this: Your vocal folds which produce your unique tone are but a fascinatingly tiny network of muscles, tissue and mucousal layers, ranging between only 1/2 to 1 inch long – roughly the length of your fingernail! With such an exquisitely small and fragile instrument, wouldn’t you like to be sure it is functioning efficiently?

It should come as no surprise to you that your voice is an instrument like any other! Essentially, your vocal cords (lying flat inside your larynx) create a basic pitch and tone by resisting the air you send to them (via your trachea), your vocal tract above the larynx modifies that tone into a spectrum of what we hear as the vowel, and your body gives it amplification.

However, there are many considerable differences (and challenges) that make your voice very different from every other instrument:

• To start, you can’t buy new vocal cords if you sang with too much tension, or if you blew a bit too much air too hard on a particularly rapturous night. If you do strain your voice by singing improperly, depending on the severity, you must at minimum stop singing for however long it takes until you recover your vocal health, IF your vocal cords can fully recover. That can be frustrating if people are depending on you.
• Worse, the voice does not even have the advantage of, say, the guitar with it’s touch and turn tuning keys on the bridge. You can’t see or touch the vocal cords at all – the voice can ONLY be tuned by adjustments from your thought and feel alone!!
• Consider that for every pitch you can make, there is a wide variation of vowels (around 10 or so in english) that must be coordinated on each of those pitches. No other instrument has this kind of variable for every pitch. Granted, singing through many vowels on some pitches isn’t such a bad thing, but on others, different vowel and pitch combinations can potentially create a tremendous amount of instability due to slightly differing feedbacks of compression that each vowel creates. If you experience a “crack” or strain at certain places with certain vowels in your voice, that is what I’m talking about. These changing conditions occur at “bridge” areas of the voice that directly influence the ability of your voicebox to stay stable, and your vocal folds to vibrate efficiently.
• As your vocal cords are part of the vast system of your body, the healthy condition of your vocal cords that is required when you sing requires the much more challenging, prime condition of your body in it’s entirety. Your vocal cords are mostly mucous, and one of the least important vital systems. That means when the health of any part of your body begins to waver, resources will be diverted away first from areas like your voice to take care of what’s causing you ill-health elsewhere. Great for survival, but terrible for singing. If you are sick on the day of a gig, understanding how and what to do can make all the difference.
• And last but not least, after your voice is tuned up and ready to go, you have to be able to shift between coordinations quickly, if you want to sing at and sound your best all the time.

Just like learning to play the guitar though, anyone can learn how to coordinate their vocal mechanism so that their vocal folds may vibrate freely within a balance of harmonics and compression that change not only on every pitch, but on every vowel. So, unless you’re one of the miraculous few born with fully functioning voices (and even then, how long will it stay that way?), you will probably find that you may need some help learning how to coordinate and maintain your own voice to fully tap your vocal potential.

Q: Wait a minute!! That all sounds rather complicated… Isn’t singing supposed to be EASY?

A: Yes! Singing IS easy – but only when it’s approached correctly.

In fact, the success of the Speech Level Singing voice training system is built on simplicity: Learn to coordinate a “Speech Level” across your entire vocal range. Although not everyone’s speech habits are necessarily the healthiest (and if yours is not, SLS has some some simple tools to help), the SLS technique helps you to ensure that the way you speak, and the way you approach your singing remain similar – nothing will feel different in your throat or mouth.

To help you find and maintain your Speech Level, you need only do 2 things: Keep your vocal cords moderately closed (no breathiness, yet no excessive cord pressure/squeezing either), and your voicebox/larynx in a low and stable position (doesn’t ride up and engage your swallowing/word making processes on high pitches, or dip on low ones), on EVERY pitch, and on EVERY vowel, across your entire vocal range.

Your speech level (a relaxed larynx, and moderately closed cords) is likely an already natural phenomenon for you during speech. But for singing, you need access to a much wider range of dynamics and pitches. In order to acquire those greater degrees of vocal cord tension further in a balance, Speech Level Singing voice training helps you to build and maintain a Speech Level coordination across all of your entire 2, 3, or even 4 or more octave vocal range. This way, you will have a naturally rich voice full of overtones, leaving it optimally healthy and in it’s naturally flexible state, so you can continue to experiment in any style you choose – and have a GREAT time doing it!

Ready to learn more about 3rd voice training in Toronto? Contact the studio to learn how to get your voice ready quickly, safely, and efficiently.

Q: Is this REALLY how all those 120 Grammy winners like Stevie have learned to sing their best?

A: Yes! Stevie Wonder has studied Speech Level Singing for nearly 50 years! The rest too have learned how to sing at their Speech Level. But with all the misinformation these days about singing, no wonder why voice training everywhere else has and continues to be the most widely misunderstood instrument.

ALL those performers rely on the foundations of their Speech Level for their continued success. Remember, the freedom of your vocal cord structure alone is what will:

• Make manifest the tone quality and resonance that will either fail or succeed in lighting up the hearts of your audience,
• Determine the scope of your ability to experiment and sing strong, freely, clearly, and easily across the entire range of your voice, and
• Determine your capacity to successfully survive the length of your singing, gigging and recording career, professional or not.

Luckily enough, Speech Level Singing ensures the world’s highest standard of voice training through the meticulous testing and yearly certification of it’s teachers. Of course, if you have any experience at all studying with other voice training programs and teachers, you will soon discover that this is indeed not what the vast majority of teachers, and so called professional voice training systems, want or are able to teach you.

Breath control, diction, resonance and “sound placement”, and even relaxation, are all RESULTS of good singing – not the means to developing it!!! If you want a flexible and stable voice, you will need a voice training system and teacher that can help you to balance against your unique, habitual singing tendencies that tend to throw you off your Speech Level. Your vocal potential relies entirely on your ability to maintain a relaxed/stable larynx, and moderately closed vocal cords across your entire range. ONLY then, can you truly create a condition in your voice for optimum, exciting and liberating singing.

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Do I need Voice Lessons?
Your First Voice Lesson

You immediately struck me as a teacher who really has a deeper understanding of the training process…”

-John Henny, Master SLS Instructor

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