Working With Established Singing Artists
I have worked with many singing artists who have experienced range limitations, pain with singing, developed polyps/nodules on their vocal cords, or experience vocal fatigue (among many other issues). In order to fix these issues, I must reduce the tension in and around their larynx (which houses the vocal cords). Often when we reduce the tension in the larynx, there may be a small change in the tone of the artist’s voice. This change comes about as the artist learns to identify, access, and repeat what I call “relaxed laryngeal posture” or RLP. The artist can be rightly concerned that we are changing the tone and timbre of their voice – the very thing that identifies them! At the same time, I must change the habitual mechanics of how they sing, or I won’t solve the very problems they are coming to me to solve. So, this is a dilemma!
It is at this point, that we start to record the artist singing in both their habitual way, and in the new RLP way. What the artist notices on playback, is that the perhaps 10% change in their voice when using RLP is really only noticeable to the artist. In fact, what they are really noticing is how unfamiliar RLP feels when they sing! I often say to the artist that the only two people in the world that would notice the change in their voice would be me and them! As the artist becomes more and more familiar with the unfamiliar feeling of RLP, they start to realize how helpful RLP is in resolving their singing issues, whether range limitations, pain, polyps/nodules or vocal fatigue. In fact, for those artists with polyps/nodules, as they use RLP more and more, we can actually see – when they get “scoped” by their ENT or laryngologist – the reduction of size of their polyps/nodules. Often, over time, they disappear altogether! In the end, though indeed we do minimally change the way the artist’s voice sounds, the change is so minimal when compared to the upside of singing with RLP that every artist is more than happy to make the change!