Why does anyone do "Professional Development"? We chat about Comfort Zone, transgender surgery, CPD & performance nerves

Why DO we do professional development? We're already professionals!
What IS comfort zone and when should we be in it or out of it?
Dr Gillyanne Kayes and Jeremy Fisher chat about comfort zone, continuing professional development (CPD) and their most recent injection of new thoughts via voice surgeons and SLTs.
Why they attended a phoniatricians' conference and what they learned about extreme voice (distortions), vocal tremor, transgender voice surgery and themselves.
Part 1 of 2.

0:00 Introduction
0:32 What is comfort zone? When should you be in it?
1:21 Our own CPD at a conference with voice surgeons
4.25 Finding your place in the world
7:25 Getting nervous and the effect on Jeremy's voice
9:20 Cathrine Sadolin and extreme vocal sounds
11.47 Nerves, experience and fitting in
18:10 Being flexible with your presentation
20:15 Watching transgender voice operations
23:32 Learning about vocal tremor
25:03 Declarative or procedural learning and Kittie Verdolini Abbott

Kittie Verdolini Abbott's article on how singers learn is here https://learningmethods.com/downloads/pdf/verdolini--principles.of.skill.acquisition.pdf

Jeremy's video on breaking down the concepts in Kittie's article is here https://youtu.be/utNmfLG8A0w

We teach multiple onsets/offsets in the online course Best Practice Update, part of the Learning Lounge Deep Dive.
Here's a free preview of the hover breath going into the smooth onset - check it out!
https://vocal-process-hub.teachable.com/courses/learning-lounge-l2-deep-dive/lectures/30620222

And here's the link to the Learning Lounge Essentials and Deep Dive https://vocalprocess.co.uk/learning-lounge/

Here's the link to the new International Association of TransVoice Surgeons https://transvoicesurgeons.com/



We've also got this! ↓
For real 1-1 attention on your own voice, book a voice coaching session in the singing studio with Jeremy or Gillyanne
https://DrGillyanneKayesJeremyFisherInspirationSession.as.me/

The 12 Hours to Better Singing Teaching course online, with voice coaching techniques, vocal articulation exercises and a LOT more for the up-to-date singing teacher is here https://vocal-process-hub.teachable.com/p/12-hours-to-better-singing-teaching

For the best self-guided learning, check out the Vocal Process Learning Lounge - 22 years of vocal coaching resources (over 600 videos) for less than the price of one private singing lesson. Click  on the link and choose a Level
https://vocalprocess.co.uk/learning-lounge/

If you want to discover if our singing teacher training programme works for YOU, message us - we can share the process for joining Cohort23.

Sign up for the Vocal Process newsletter https://vocalprocess.co.uk/news-and-media/freebies/

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Appstore https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/one-minute-voice-warmup/id1212802251
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Transcript

[00:00:00] This is a voice, a podcast with Dr Gillyanne Kayes and Jeremy Fisher.

[00:00:21] Hello and welcome to This Is A Voice, season seven, episode seven, 

[00:00:26] a podcast where we get Vocal about voice. 

[00:00:29] I'm Jeremy Fisher. 

[00:00:30] And I'm Dr Gillyanne Kayes. 

[00:00:32] And we have just been discussing comfort zone. 

[00:00:35] When you should be in it. And when you can come out of it. 

[00:00:39] We both feel quite strongly about this, the whole business of comfort zone.

[00:00:42] I think when you are performing, you should be in your comfort zone. That's the one place where you should not be out of your comfort zone, because when you are performing, you want to be absolutely on top of what you're doing. Having said that, when should you be out of your comfort zone? Uh, rehearsals obviously. But also when you are learning, when you are growing, when you are moving your business forwards, when you are moving your, your life forwards, actually, that's when you need to be out of your comfort zone. And we were very recently out of our comfort zone. 

[00:01:13] Oh boy. And were we stretching ourselves? Yes.

[00:01:16] Anyone who's watching you, have just seen this. Jeremy, uh, just remind people what we have been doing. 

[00:01:21] Okay. Gillyanne is holding up the program for the 30th Congress of Union of the European phoniatricians, which was taking place in Turkey last week. And, uh, we've just come back from there. It was so good. 

[00:01:35] And the question really is why did we do it? 

[00:01:37] What were we doing there? We are not, phoniatricians. We're not laryngologists. We're not SLTs or SLPs. Yep. 

[00:01:44] There were quite a few singing voice practitioners there though, weren't there? Singing teachers? 

[00:01:48] There were a handful, yeah. 

[00:01:49] And a bit more than a handful. 

[00:01:51] So this is our professional development. We think professional development is so important. okay. So why is it important? Why is professional development good for you? 

[00:02:03] Gosh. you? stretch yourself and therefore you grow. Yep. You broaden your horizons. 

[00:02:11] It's a different environment. It's different colleagues, it's different cultures. So just the fact of being there opens your mind. 

[00:02:19] You are watching experts in their field share their knowledge and wisdom. And actually what was so wonderful about this community, you know, in the medical community, it is sharing. And the reason for that is you cannot have success in medicine without teamwork. Medicine depends upon teamwork. 

[00:02:38] It's absolutely built into the whole diagnosis. The the operations, the, the post-operation therapy, there's all sorts of things. And diagnostics as well. Yeah. Oh, I mean the diagnostics things. It were so good. One of the things that I went to see, we're gonna do highlights from what we saw.

[00:02:52] Mm-hmm. One of the things that I went to see was rehab Awad doing her presentation, and it was all about how a voice clinic works, what the roles are, and this is particularly for SLTs, speech language therapists, or SLPs speech language pathologists. Depending on which country you come from, what you call them.

[00:03:12] And that makes me think there's something that was really nice about this particular conference. First of all, we'd never been to Turkey before and, uh, it was held at the Xanadu convent, convention center and 

[00:03:23] I thought you were saying the Xanadu convent. It's not the convent, it wasn't held at the convent, 

[00:03:27] Five star hotel. It was very nice, very, very nice. Lovely accommodation. Yep. 

[00:03:31] So. I mean, you're in a different environment. Yes. And that's good for you as well. And with different colleagues and also people coming from different geographical regions. Yes. I mean, the conference is delivered in English. Yep. 

[00:03:44] and from so many different countries. So that was really fascinating. Yes. So, what was so great about watching Rehab work was, she was talking about diagnosis, she was talking about the whole process of finding out what someone's voice problem might be and the diagnosis that she uses is so close to the diagnosis procedures that we use when we are teaching our teachers or when we're doing master classes or when we're just listening to students.

[00:04:14] And it's so good to hear that what you are doing matches so closely with the medical. 

[00:04:19] And we had a similar insight, didn't we? Or it's, it's almost like a sense of affirmation if you like. Mm-hmm. Watching Tori Burnay, who's another British speech and language therapist Yes. Talk about how she works with singers. And I think that brings me to one of the other aspects of, you know, doing a professional development exercise if you like a event like this, which is as well as being stretched and getting new perspectives, you also get confirmation and affirmation of some things that you're doing, that you're doing well.

[00:04:53] It's sort of like a reflection point, and we all need that, particularly in our profession, because we work in such a vacuum. 

[00:05:00] Well, I wrote down a phrase, which really meant something to me, which is discovering where you sit in the world. Hmm. And I think that's really important. You know, I'm doing a lot of career coaching and a lot of career mentoring at the moment, and part of that is to find where you sit, where you, where you are, where you work, what level you are at, what you can do to grow, what you can do to expand, and also where your real strengths are.

[00:05:24] I have to say, one of the most fascinating things for me always is to watch an expert work in their field. Mm-hmm. So good. And it doesn't matter to me whether it's a, a speech language pathologist, whether it's a surgeon, whether it's a potter, whether it's an artist, it really doesn't matter. It's watching somebody who is really expert at what they do, just doing what they do.

[00:05:46] So fascinating. 

[00:05:48] It's inspiring, isn't it? And we all need that. So Jeremy, you talked a little bit about two british practitioners. Yes. 

[00:05:56] Rehab Awad, who's a phoniatrician. Yep. An MD and a speech and language therapist. 

[00:06:01] Yes. 

[00:06:01] And Tori Bernay and they're at, they both practice in London. 

[00:06:06] Yes. I want to talk a little bit about extreme Vocal Sounds.

[00:06:11] Okay. Because we hear a lot about them these days. And there were two presentations on, uh, these at the conference. One from someone we hadn't met before, an Italian practitioner called Eleanora Bruni. Yep. Who I think is in Rome. And she did a lovely, very lively presentation. Uh, wasn't it? And She did. You really got the sense of care in the way that people are learning to make these sounds. Uh, she had, uh, video endoscopic footage of what was going on and it was lovely to hear her also talk about therapeutic application of some of the work that goes on in extreme vocals. 

[00:06:54] It was also very interesting for me because, she actually did the presentation before mine, uh, on the second day I think we were on. Mm-hmm. And it was very interesting. She was talking about the emotional impact of distortion and, uh, or, you know, types of distortion. And that was very close to what I was talking about with it, which is the emotional impact of onsets and offsets. And there was a real, that's often what happens when you go to a conference, is that you realize there are lots of areas that people overlap and that you have connection with.

[00:07:23] Mm, very much so. And by the way, one of the arts of presenting at an event like this is something that Jeremy did, which is you are, you are in there, you are in the vibe, you're in your session. Yeah. You're getting nervous. Yeah. I mean, you know, he's not going to share with you, but I will. He was out shivering in a corner before his event.

[00:07:46] I mean actually I will, I will share this. Cause it was very funny 

[00:07:48] Mm-hmm. what was happening was that, you know, I was getting very nervous because you have basically, I mean, I'll tell you the story later, but, uh, You have only a few moments to, to make your mark or to do whatever it is that you do. Mm-hmm. And so I was, I think, third in the program Yeah. in that particular session.

[00:08:04] And so I was sitting there going, yeah, no, I'm, I, I'm staying calm, I'm doing my thing. And then suddenly started coughing. Mm-hmm. And I don't cough normally. It's not something that's part of my medical makeup, but I could not stop. I actually had to leave the room and go and have a coughing fit. And I still dunno what that was about, but the part of the problem for me was that a lot of my presentation was demonstrations of some real fine tuning.

[00:08:28] And with all the coughing, I thought, I don't know what's gonna come out at all, which just puts a little bit of extra pressure on what you doing.

[00:08:34] Nobody would've known. It was very good. But anyway, what I was gonna say that was a nice devotion, thank you, is that if you have got to sit there through other people's presentations and you feel nervous, Stay present.

[00:08:48] Mm-hmm. That was something you said to me for mine, wasn't it? Yes. Be present. Yes. Listen to what other people say. And it's actually very nice to gently back refer to something and say, yes, you know, oh, Eleanora spoke about this. And here where I'm talking about onsets and onsets, it's about perceived emotion, and how people respond to them and they, they change the onsets, change the emotion.

[00:09:13] Yes. And I think. I think that's a very useful thing to remember. Talking more about extreme Vocal sounds, I'm sure most of our singing voice listeners will be very familiar with the work of Complete Vocal Technique, Cathrine Sadolin and the researcher Mathias Aaen, and together with Julian McGlashan, who is a laryngologist.

[00:09:37] And I know, we've probably said this before, but Julian did our very first endoscopy videos. He did. Yes. 

[00:09:42] It was 2006 I think. 

[00:09:45] Mm. It was so nice to see him there at the conference, actually and Have a good chat. 

[00:09:49] Yeah. And those are the voice box videos, which are in the Learning Lounge Deep Dive. 

[00:09:53] And I've seen, you know, Cathrine or Mathias present several times on extreme Vocal sounds. But this time for me, the experience was different. And perhaps that's maybe to do with the way that I learn. I loved the way now that they're talking about the extreme Vocal effects, you know, and obviously they have their own labeling system, uh, happening in different zones of the Vocal tract. Mm-hmm.

[00:10:18] Uh, and it was very clear the way that Cathrine was guiding us through. And obviously the endoscopic, And the stroboscopic footage is very good. And finding out that you can be doing these extreme vocals at different levels of the Vocal tract. And then back referring to, what Eleanora said, she also commented that people have different words for the same sound.

[00:10:43] And it seems to me that this is, this is still an emergent field. That what's happened. I mean, if you think about Melissa Cross, for example, Mm-hmm. And someone who's done quite a lot of work with us, Aliki Katriou. Yep. They're all doing extreme Vocal sounds and they all have their ways into it. Yep. And what we really need to do is get all these people together and say, well, we call this that and this is what's going on. So that maybe we'll arrive at some kind of a consensus. I think that would be good. I also wanted to say that in Cathrine's work they are also looking at therapeutic uses of extreme Vocal effects to perhaps change, the patterning of people who are having difficulties with their voice.

[00:11:34] And I have to say, I think that's fascinating because that's a very unusual usage. 

[00:11:39] And I did two types of growl myself, and I'm very, very pleased. And no, I'm not going to demonstrate them today. 

[00:11:47] I want to talk about nerves because you know, you may be listening and going. Well, okay, so we know we've written 11 books. We've written two chapters. We've been presenting together for 25 years. We've been presenting separately for 40. 

[00:12:01] Uh, I'm a a musical director. I am absolute used to performing. I I was doing hundreds of performances a year, so what's with the nerves thing? And the answer is it doesn't really get any easier. Even in our sixties, it really doesn't get any easier. Uh, it's always the same because what you are doing, 

[00:12:19] Somebody told me this once and I really liked it because I already 

[00:12:21] all, I always assumed that what you were doing was you were getting nervous and you were trying to create energy in your body to, to be able to do this job. And somebody told me it's not that at all. It's that actually that you are responding to the room, you're responding to the other people, and it's the energy in the atmosphere that you are harnessing if you like. That makes it slightly easier for me. I had something happen, which I thought was quite interesting, and it's never really been this clear before, which is I was there with my topic and I'm, I know that topic. I'm very good on it. I've done workshops on it, you know, the whole onsets and offsets thing, and I had nine different ones to play with. 

[00:13:00] Well, it's in the Learning Lounge, isn't it?

[00:13:02] It's, it's in, it's part of Best Practice Update In the Learning Lounge Deep Dive, but it's a sort of much more practical workshop arena. 

[00:13:11] So I knew what I was doing, but the thing that really worried me is I didn't know where I fitted in the whole program, in the whole curriculum because it was so operation based and laryngology based and 

[00:13:26] very much medically based

[00:13:27] very much the medic side of it. And I'm thinking, well, here I am doing a practical workshop for, for voice things. How does it fit? Am I just gonna stick out like a sore thumb? Am I not gonna get any interaction? What's going on? 

[00:13:41] I'm not nodding because I thought you stuck out like a sore thumb. But thank you. We both had this conversation. 

[00:13:46] It was very interesting because in a way it was the only real challenge for me, which is how do I work out where I fit in? Mm-hmm. And I am not the sort of person who will go, this is my topic and this is what you're doing. I don't care what anyone else around me is doing. I'm just gonna do it. Thank you. Bye. I don't do that. Mm-hmm. I mean, you know, I'm a collaborative musician. I have been for decades, and I want to know where everything fits together and how it all works together.

[00:14:10] So that was the real challenge, was to find out how it worked and where my place was. And as soon as I'd got that, I stopped being more nervous. Mm-hmm. Because I knew where I fitted and I knew what was gonna happen. 

[00:14:24] That's interesting, isn't it? I mean, i, it's not on our list by the way. We've got a list of topics today. Performance nerves and not on the list. Nope. 

[00:14:33] But as we've gone there. yeah. I'm going to say that, uh, for my panel session, my round table. Uh, I went in and, you know, bumped into the. In, into our, our space. And the first person I spoke to was our chair who was Professor Dr Bernhard Richter of the Freiburg Institute of Music Performance.

[00:14:56] Yes. And uh, he said, how are you feeling? And I said, well, I am a living, walking example of performance nerves. You know, because that's how I felt. Yeah. And it takes a while, you know, to sort of settle from that. We know we need those performance nerves because they help us to mentally upload or physically upload if we're a physical performer. Mm-hmm. Into peak level. Yes. Actually. 

[00:15:26] It's actually quite worrying if you don't have the nerves at all. Yeah. Because it actually feels like you can't get to the, to the state that you need to be in. 

[00:15:33] Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And I know one of the things that really helps me, and it matches me with what you've just said, Jeremy, I connect with the audience so pretty much unplanned. I decided to start my introduction to the panel and why we were doing it by saying who's had a singer with a voice problem? Mm-hmm. And that allowed me to connect with the audience. Mm-hmm. Sooner I've done that, I'm much more comfortable. Mm-hmm. 

[00:16:02] Uh, this is another reason why I think being in your comfort zone is really, really important when you're performing or when you are lecturing or whether you're giving a demonstration, whatever it is. 

[00:16:10] We have different ways of dealing with nerves, but there is a similarity, which is once we get on our topic, we know that we are fine. I knew that once I started doing the demonstrations and doing the analysis in my workshop. As soon as I started that I knew I would be fine because I knew I was very solid on that.

[00:16:29] You were in your comfort zone? Yes. 

[00:16:30] Mm-hmm. 

[00:16:31] And I was in my comfort zone talking about how to deal with singers who are having a voice problem in, you know, a singing teacher setting. Yes. 

[00:16:41] Mm-hmm. I wanna go back to, why professional development? Because, you know, we are still doing it. Mm. And one of the big ones for me is it stops you getting stuck.

[00:16:52] Mm-hmm. You know, there is, it can be, it become quite incestuous if you just do what you do and you go round doing what you do and there's no other input and there's no other viewpoint. Mm-hmm. I think, uh, the difficulty with that is it gets stuck and if it gets really stuck, you can start to become a cult.

[00:17:12] Yes. I think that is unfortunately true. And it's so, in, in a way, just to put it another way, you start to believe what you do, what you say. Yes. And of course you must be behind, be behind whatever it is that you, you teach or you say. But it's different from a belief system. Yes. And what happens when you go to these kind of events is that if you are holding beliefs, 

[00:17:36] oh boy, are they shaken!

[00:17:37] And, and bodies of knowledge, they get challenged. And then, you know, if it's a good event, you can put your hand up and say, oh, that surprised me. Can I ask you a question about that? Yes. And then you learn, 

[00:17:50] yes. Okay. Jeremy? Yes. You watched a number of voice operations Okay.

[00:17:58] Uh, 

[00:17:58] on, in relation to transgender voice. Would you like to tell people about that? 

[00:18:03] I did when the program first came out, before I go into the transgender thing, I want to tell the story because when the program first came out, I'd applied to do an hour's workshop, and my hour's workshop just disappeared apparently in the program, and I was not the only person that this happened to. I found myself being in a, what they called a panel, which basically boiled down to, well, you've got 10 minutes. 

[00:18:29] And this is because so many people wanted to go to that conference and they had not been able to run that conference for five years. Yeah, it's biennial. Yeah. Due to Covid. 

[00:18:40] Yes. So this is the first time in five years and so many people applied. So what they did was they put various people within groups that had a sort of overall topic, sort of. Mm-hmm. And it's very sort of sometimes, uh, so I found myself in this group of people who were, it was called Lectures on singing. And I thought, okay, that means I've got about 10 minutes. So I, and I know what happens in these things is that whoever is doing the timekeeping is never efficient. So I thought, right, I'll take my hour workshop, and I actually got it down to a six minute presentation. I was going fast, but it like six minute presentation. So what then happened was that they hadn't realized all the difficulties of it. And so people were double booked on it. So every so often somebody we'd get another message going, oh, somebody's dropped out because they're doing something else in a different room.

[00:19:32] Mm-hmm. 

[00:19:32] So on the day it was like, well, we're down to six. That's fine. Okay. So you have like 12 minutes. And then we were down to five. Okay, you have 15 minutes. And then we were down to four. Okay. You have 20 minutes. 

[00:19:42] Mm-hmm. 

[00:19:43] So this, this presentation that I was doing just kept expanding and contracting and it's like I still know what I'm doing. And when I got up to do it, I said, right, well, This has gone from six minutes to an hour and back again. So just tell me when to stop. I'll carry on until somebody waves.

[00:19:59] And you, and also by doing that, you did something, which is a great icebreaker. You made us all laugh. Yeah. 

[00:20:05] We all connected with you. And that's important as well.

[00:20:08] Yeah. So, okay. Operation. 

[00:20:10] Right. One of the, it was the, When I first saw the program, I was, my thing was directly clashing with this and I was so disappointed because of everything in the program this was the one I wanted to see the most, and then they moved it so I could see it, right? It was, uh, transgender operations, male to female voice operations, 

[00:20:29] Mm-hmm. 

[00:20:30] and it was stunning. So the first thing is 10 transgender surgeons all in a room. Mm-hmm. And it was actually the second meeting of, uh, and I've got it written down somewhere. It's a new organization. It's a new organization which was set up in 2022, which is basically transgender surgeons. 

[00:20:50] We can put it in the show notes.

[00:20:52] It's the international something of transgender surgeons. So it was only their second meeting. And what was so brilliant about this, I cannot imagine anywhere where you could go and watch 10 surgeons talking together, sharing videos. You watched the same operation, one after another done by four different surgeons, and it was video, it wasn't live.

[00:21:13] Uh, but it was so fascinating and also discovering, and I, I was very pleased by this. A lot of surgeons will do the same or very similar operations for the male to female voice surgery. They will do slightly different versions of it, or they will add something else on because they feel it works better for them. And there was, a, there was discussion in the room about, you know, they, this. person does this version and this person does this, this version, but with this added, and it was really fascinating to see that everybody is doing approximately the same thing. Bar two, in fact, eight. Eight of them doing approximately the same thing, but doing it with their own flavor, doing it with their own style, doing it in their own order.

[00:21:58] And I love that because what it said is, We are all personal. Every surgeon had their own way of doing it. Mm-hmm. Or their own way of doing the sutures or their own way of, you know, getting their way in there. It was, it was so good to see. So that was fun. And uh, then we had a couple of outliers, which was absolutely fascinating.

[00:22:19] The videos were amazing. There was one that was particularly gruesome, uh, which was the whole, opening up the throat and working from the outside. Most of the surgeons would work from the inside, so the, the care, the delicacy, and the care that people do when they are taking bits of cartilage or when they're taking bits of Vocal fold, or when they're sewing things up is incredible.

[00:22:46] And there was one moment where one of the surgeons was doing a slightly different version and he had two needles coming in from the outside and a camera on the inside, and he was tying knots in inside. He was tying knots in the suture inside someone's larynx. And I just went, it's difficult enough for me to thread something when I got a needle in my in front of me. It was just amazing. So the level of skill that you see in something like that.

[00:23:10] The precision is phenomenal. 

[00:23:12] It felt like such a privilege was absolutely fascinating. 

[00:23:17] I did a report on all 10 of the, the presentations that I saw. And I, I think it went into two parts. Mm-hmm. Because it was so detailed. 

[00:23:25] Mm-hmm. And I think they're going to be amalgamated so people can watch them in, on other platforms 

[00:23:30] on the Facebook channel, hopefully. Yeah. 

[00:23:32] Yes. I would like to talk about Tremor. Vocal tremor? Yes. 

[00:23:39] Talk to me about vocal tremor. 

[00:23:40] This was a presentation by, I think a Belgian practitioner called Youri Maryn. Yep. Did you know that there is a tremor index? I thought that was absolutely fascinating. So, you there are different types of tremor. They emanate from different parts of the Vocal tract. Tremor obviously meaning a form of shake, which Perceptually would re result in a sense of instability in the speaker or singer.

[00:24:08] Mm-hmm. 

[00:24:08] So we have, in the lower vocal tract, we've got respiratory issues that can cause tremor. We've got phonatory issues, in other words about Vocal fold vibration. Then in the upper Vocal tract, we have articulatory. And obviously that tongue and the jaw and the lips and those articulatory things can affect, the different form frequencies. Mm-hmm. And I have to say that, the work that Youri Maryn is doing, I think is gonna be really, really interesting. He's just done a pilot project and I think we need to see where this goes. It's going to be fascinating. 

[00:24:47] I think that's the other thing about being at a conference is that you see research at early, mid, and late stages. Mm. And so you see where people are going. You see where their interests are, and you also, you can extrapolate what, where that's gonna go. That is so fascinating. 

[00:25:03] Can I sing a song about Kittie Verdolini Abbott?

[00:25:07] You can.

[00:25:08] Yeah. I did a little post in praise on Instagram, uh, about her wonderful presentation on, what was our actual title for this? Motor learning. Yep. In singing and speaking. Yep. And actually her PhD was in the area of cognitive motor learning. Just one or two absolute nuggets of joy. Yeah. If you are familiar with Kittie Verdolini's work, one of the core aspects is the difference between declarative learning. Yes. Learning that, and procedural learning, learning how, Yep. And I love she, she sort of told a story from her own background as a singer. You know when you have a singing lesson and you go out and you feel amazing afterwards, it's fantastic. But you haven't retained it. Yep. And she said that her best singing teacher didn't say very much, didn't give a lot of feedback, but it was that teacher that took her up to the next level.

[00:26:15] And she said that on reflection, when she looked back at that experience, she realized that the lessons that she'd loved, those good lessons, it was the teacher's brain that was driving her voice, not her brain. Did you clock that? 

[00:26:34] I did. Yeah. 

[00:26:35] I mean, I was like, yay. 

[00:26:37] Yes. was very interesting and the idea that you could be really good in the lesson and it doesn't transfer outside, Outside the room, uh, or you can be terrible in the lesson, but somehow you learn something that then transfers into your life. I love that. 

[00:26:50] Yeah. And what she was saying is that, you know, learning is a function of experience or practice. Yeah. And when we're in the singing studio, it can be in, you can get that in the moment progress. And actually in the moment progress, I would say belongs more, uh, to the Masterclass Arena. But that in the moment progress might not be retained. You might get slower progress in a lesson or even feel that your student hasn't progressed, 

[00:27:22] Mm. 

[00:27:22] but they will come back the next week or two, three weeks later, and they've got better retention.

[00:27:29] So those of you who do teach singing or maybe are working with voice, you know, in speech and language therapy clinic, don't despair if your client or student doesn't get it in that session because that doesn't mean they won't ever get it. 

[00:27:46] There is something very powerful as well. And we talk about this with our Accreditation Programme people when we are teaching them about teaching, singing, uh, which is what is your goal and what's your timetable as a teacher?

[00:28:00] Because quite often, particularly if you err on the Vocal coach side of things, quite often you are aiming for a, a finished performance, a polished something. Mm-hmm. You know, by the end of the lesson. And in a way, we, and we say this, that's a false deadline because if you are aiming to, to reach a pinnacle by the end of the lesson, you are gonna have to cram an awful lot into that lesson.

[00:28:24] And it's quite likely that you're gonna find yourself in a situation where the singer goes, oh, that was a great lesson now. And then the moment they walk outta the room, gone. 

[00:28:32] It's absolutely gone past you because they haven't embedded anything. And that is something that we've had to work on a lot with teachers on our accreditation training Mm-hmm. because you know it's, it's kind of inbuilt into us that we want to get a result for our students. We want them not to have wasted their money. Yep. And it was for that reason that we invented The One Thing rule. Yes. Only work on one thing at a time. 

[00:28:59] Yep. One thing at a time. And one thing at a time does not mean, oh, we'd like you to do your breathing. Oh. And while you're doing your breathing, and remember to stand up straight and while you're doing your breathing, remember to No, no. That's more than one thing. And that's not even three things that are related. That's three things that are completely unrelated. 

[00:29:15] I also loved something I've gotta flip back on my notes, 

[00:29:19] that, Kittie Verdolini talked about, which was about variable practice.

[00:29:24] Yes. Now, this is something that Jeremy 

[00:29:26] something I do 

[00:29:26] has done for years and years. Yeah. Do you want to tell them what it is? 

[00:29:29] So we're actually running outta time. We may need to stop there. 

[00:29:32] Uh, well, I've got so much more to share. 

[00:29:35] I know. Uh, we'll just have to share it next time. Okay. We'll see you then. Bye. Bye-Bye.

[00:29:41] This is a voice, a podcast with Dr. Gillyanne Kayes and Jeremy Fisher. This is a voice.