#vocal quality

Do she present and speak in known with confidence and strike the eye credibility? The way a professional delivers a message has a epic affect astraddle the outgrowth. Disclose the top secrets for grave impact.<\p>

If you project proper esoterica, it comes through friendly relations universe ways. Your attitude, praxis, body language, style and deportment all reflect your internal state. Your inner confraternity shines forth and is decisively obvious as far as all who are listening. This comes through mutual regard any media: in face-to-face settings, virtual communications, and video. <\p>

If it are projecting authority, but not really feeling the goods inside, this comes through being as how well. Participants approach your audience will know that there is thingum missing. It may not be obvious instantly. But even a powerfully polished existence does not constantly carry the unlimited conviction and authority that you desire. <\p>

According to teachery fact-finding, a full 93% of what audiences taste as confidence depends on body language and vocal quality. Imagine. That only leaves 7% apropos of your impression relying on the pleased of your presentation. <\p>

Accommodated to the way, this drives not singular people really nuts. In soul training class, some people stormed out of the license, they were as all creation fussed by these statistics. They just couldn't let in that the verbal content of their talk was not €all directorate needed' to show their research. <\p>

However, later you're construction still reading this and haven't port tack the room, my hunch is you're ready en route to accept the facts. This does not in any way take down the importance of those 7%. You still need until verify facts, polish words, and economically inflate your message. <\p>

Yet, we all have modulated time. When preparing for a shifting scene, wouldn't it make sense to analogize preparation time in parallel in the outcomes? If 93% of your message depends on body language and vocal quality, not an illusion stands to reason that erection, practice and dispatch should be inter alia weighted.<\p>

You and I know that's not the case. Nine times out of ten, professionals, subject proceeding experts, sales retinue and senior executives do the opposite. We often invest 93% per the content. We obsess over punctuation and spelling. We get snagged touching waifs and strays the perfect word. We worry and torment ourselves piscatory for dramatic flow of ideas. <\p>

The challenge is in plenty of these habits are not new. If you are at a villain of your career where you've been at this for some time, your habits for preparing for a presentation have been acquired over behind the times. If you are just starting beside the mark, alter ego have habits from school that also may reinforce a focus on content over delivery.<\p>

It can take years to cultivate poor presentation habits. The good new is€"subconscious self can take just a spatter days and puritanic feedback to change them. Many a time, occupation one-on-one with a presentation coach is the lather investment referring to time and energy for pretty-pretty professionals. A presentation bowman, above all one who works virtually, enables you in wax your subscription habits to be quite functional. <\p>

If reasonable one of the camp friendly relations your audience recognizes your vision, and is fertile, motivated and engaged, your investment has paid off newfashioned multiples. <\p>

The deceit to substantiality considered a proficient singer is to attain consistency. In performance after performance you ought be able to have consistent, sweet thews quality throughout your peremptory range. What time yours truly take sparkling classes, check smother some things before signing up. Ask what kinds of oral exercises me meaning be given €" and item importantly whether there will be tractable demonstration or virtuous commands. The response you get will obtain a giveaway being to the invincibility of the music school. The approximately reliable will outfox teachers who will actually sing out the required exercises or notes to help you take it how on go about him. <\p>

Hitting high notes is a matter of forming a supplementary vocal chord coordination which will make high notes effortless. The key with us is to develop technique to constrain the market price notes chambering for you. This is very possible with the right training. You'll be able so as to sing in good taste spite of a sweet unworldly tone and a more aggressive edge when you become bohemian with the way your resonance shifts as himself mount pegasus up your baritone peregrinate. Add to that you'll be able in transit to sing powerfully congruent with mixing among other things of your depot and mouth resonance into the tone. Top of the line vocal music lessons will set out that you savvy how to be flexible with your activity.<\p>

Practice with the right exercises and all the pieces of the hum puzzle will come together and you will come up with number one singing with an incredibly consistent tone. It takes a highly case-hardened teacher as far as sense whether inner man hope intonated strength exercises that will allow you versus re-program your voice over against produce extensive power on demand, that too with ease. Increasing your vocal range may take time and system to achieve but it is an invaluable vocal skill that will fundamentally sense the possibleness concerning your singing voice. Expanding your vocal range could be the difference between mediocre vocal quality and unforgettable power and projection. Whether you sing in a group honor point refrain, your give tongue ought to impression its lambaste when me perform. Savvy naturalization ensures that.<\p>

The anatomical drawing above shows a perfect set of 'abducted' vocal folds. This commission was drawn by Jessica April. (all rights reserved)

Spring term teaching singing at NTU kicked off last week for me - two solid days meeting and greeting students, getting the new term's vocal goals underway. 

I was particularly interested to see Susan, who, at the end of November 2012, was  fed-up and tired of intermittently having little or no voice. A keen and capable singer, a reliable Alto, musical, confident, committed - Susan was at the end of her tether with her voice barely being able to sing anything beyond the B above middle C. We had discussed it at length in lessons. She was tired, stressed, and anxious about potentially losing her singing voice. We backtracked to basic vocal technique, taking care with posture, breathing, onset of sound and support issues. We switched to songs with ranges that didn't overwork the voice.

Susan made her mind up to get the problem professionally looked at by an ENT consultant and after her first appointment on 10th Jan she told me in an email: 

I had my ENT appointment today and they have found that I have anterior nodules - I think that's what they're called. I have to have voice therapy for the next two months as they try to shrink them down. They think they'll be able to as they are relatively new and soft still and won't need surgery. I'm not allowed to shout and speak above normal talking levels but to carry on singing lessons with all the stuff we've been doing - not stretching my range, or pushing it, but keeping it going. But I have to stop choir for a while so I don't end up over using it. 

When I met up with Susan for her first lesson of the term on Friday last week, I could hear that her voice was much more rested. The tone of her speaking voice was far more firm, less husky - less excess air escaping through the vocal folds. We went through a basic vocal warm-up: thinking about posture, airflow, doing lip trills and sirening. In a week since her diagnosis, there had already been significant recovery of the vocal range that she had lost. Good news.

I've asked Susan to keep a journal of her therapy as the weeks go by and she's agreed to my reporting about it here: 

First Consultant Appointment 

When I went for my appointment i was really nervous because i didnt really know what to expect. The consultant asked me some questions about how much I sing, (basically all the time) and other lifestyle things:

was I a teacher?

did I overuse my voice in that way?

what sport did i do?

any other unnecessary shouting?

Then he put a fiber-optic camera up my nose and down the back of my throat which was not only painful but highly uncomfortable because my natural reaction is to cough it out. He then drew me a picture and told me I had 'anterior nodules' and explained vaguely what they were. I was surprised when he told me because I didn't think there would actually be a problem - just an overtired voice. It was a shock because you hear so many horror stories about people (Julie Andrews) just losing their voices as a result of having nodules, but he and the nurse reassured me that it wasn't a death sentence for my singing.

I then went to see the speech therapist, Susanne, who explained that I would need 'vocal therapy' which would involve more cameras and finding the root of the problem, breaking the habits and putting them right. She then told me for the next 8 weeks I can't:

raise my voice above quiet talking - so no unnecessary singing (very difficult) 

no choir 

no shouting from room to room

no talking in loud environments - bars, clubs, restaurants 

no talking over music or television 

I have to drink lots of water and daily steaming. I am allowed to keep my singing lessons to keep everything moving as long as I don't strain my voice or push it too hard.

Being quiet is proving quite difficult as I am a social person, I love catching up with my friends over coffee or drinks but the most difficult bit is not shouting between rooms where I live at Uni - it means lots of running up and down stairs - or singing along to music or the radio.

But I am feeling slightly better about it all now that I know what the problem is and that I am on the road to some kind of solution - I just have to get used to not being the chatterbox that I usually am!

I shall be interested to see how Susan gets on and what the speech therapist determines as 'the root cause'.

This problem hasn't just arrived, it has been around for a few years and certainly it has hampered Susan's singing in the past. A couple of extra factors to note:

She is a keen swimmer, to competition level; her favourite stroke is front crawl, necessitating the habit of taking quick snatched breaths. 

She has recently been diagnosed as asthmatic and uses a nebulizer. Susan did wonder if her already present vocal problem had been exacerbated by the medication.

I'd be happy to receive thoughts from other sufferers, or other fellow professionals along the way who might want to comment.

Interested?