On the voice

I haven’t posted about this yet, but I have been meaning to for ages. I went to my ENT a few years ago because my voice was just not right. I got a photo taken and saw there were large swellings on both sides of my chords.  They looked similar to swellings I had in the late 90′s, but they had moved down a little bit, and definitely bigger and on BOTH sides.  I had never seen my vocal chords look so bad before.

I included a photo here, but it is a bit blurry, and it is WHILE I am singing, so it is hard to tell, but I watched the whole scope, and trust me, my chords were in a bad way.  Most ENT’s suggest therapy or adaptation before surgery, and especially since I did not have laringitis, my chords were still working, I thought this was the best approach.

I completed about 6-8 sessions of speech therapy that summer with Dr. Linda Carroll.  She was a passionate, slightly eccentric lady, as one would have to be, to be THAT into voice and speech therapy. She was an absolute expert in every way.  She taught me some exercises and helped me to re-register my voice completely.  The best lesson I learned from her: “It’s not worth speaking unless you are using your professional voice.  If you don’t speak well, what’s coming out of your mouth is trash.”  Professional voice in this case, being the voice I use when auditioning etc.  I found I was speaking very LAZILY when I wasn’t on script.

I have used this philosophy with my kids and their practicing too.  Just because you repeated something, doesn’t mean it was quality….QUALITY over QUANTITY and hopefully a combination of both.

Anyway, I was supposed to go in to get my chords checked after the therapy, but I never did.  Instead, I got them looked at again when I was beginning my nasal surgery path.  I knew my voice was better, but I was actually astonished to see the good healthy my chords were in!  Dr. Carroll really is a miracle worker.  Now my only complaint is that sometimes my voice will not phonate on a G above middle C.  It happens when I am belt/mixing most of the time, but is still catches me by surprise, and if I were singing for a living more, I would be working on getting that fixed up too….but for now!!–my healthy vocal chords are a wonderful sight!

ps. Lolly always thinks this is a picture of my “private area”, and just now she came over, looked at it, and said: Is a vocal chord where the baby comes out?  And she also waved her hand in front of her nose, like the picture smelled or something.