This Is A Voice

The Vocal Process Ziggurat, or What We're Doing Now

June 25, 2021 Jeremy Fisher and Dr Gillyanne Kayes Season 2 Episode 11
This Is A Voice
The Vocal Process Ziggurat, or What We're Doing Now
Show Notes Transcript

Gillyanne and Jeremy riff about life after lockdown, the Accreditation programme, and different ways of working with us (the Ziggurat)
How life has changed since our first podcast episode a year ago
Finding an envelope for your creativity
Working with us offline, online and live
The Vocal Process Teacher Accreditation Programme (launching 4th July)
The Learning Lounge
Our new Circle Community, and so much more

Mentioned in this episode:
https://instagram.com/Vocalprocess
https://youtube.com/vocalprocess

Choice For Voice, the British Voice Association https://www.britishvoiceassociation.org.uk/events_choice-for-voice_2021.htm#KeynotesMasterclasses 

Some of our books on Amazon https://www.amazon.co.uk/Jeremy-Fisher/e/B00FUB8WNQ/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

The Online Singing Teacher Training https://store.vocalprocess.co.uk/singing-teacher-training-online

The Vocal Process Learning Lounge https://bit.ly/VocalProcessLearningLounge

Oren Boder and the SOVT Singer Straw at Rayvox https://www.rayvox.co.uk/

Download your free paper larynx (Click the red box "Send me your larynx and feed me more") https://vocalprocess.co.uk/build-your-own-tilting-larynx/

Jeremy   0:00  
I tell you what I want to do. I want to read this out. We wrote a couple of paragraphs

Gillyanne Kayes  0:06  
I did a brain dump.

Jeremy   0:07  
And and then I refined it, which is actually what often happens. Because Gillyanne goes splurge. And I go, yeah, that fits there. And that fits there enough. Is that enough?

Gillyanne Kayes  0:15  
How dare you define my brain dump?

Jeremy   0:19  
So I want to read this out, because I loved it when when we both came up with this

Gillyanne Kayes  0:24  
And the brain dump is about, do you remember, I was saying earlier on about multifactorial, that's what singing teaching is. And obviously, you know, as we're getting ready to do this 12 month training, my brain is uploading with, what is it in fact that we do, you know, we have all this knowledge and we learn this stuff? What is it? how can how can we frame it. And this was the result of some of that conversation and the sifting thereof

Jeremy   0:53  
And this is, really, it's not just a description of the Accreditation programme, it's actually a description of how we work in general. And I just want to read it out. We do holistic training. So you as the teacher, you as the person, you as the driving force. We begin by focusing on your current clients, you'll never be able to do a proper case history if you can't profile them, and therefore you won't be able to move them on. So we talk about profiling, how it works, what it is and how you do it.

Gillyanne Kayes  1:22  
Now we've got a bit about that in our webinars one and two, haven't we?

Jeremy   1:26  
We have, yeah. lesson observation is seeing what you and your colleagues are doing right now. We're working with your colleagues, you're sharing practice, insights, ideas and communication skills. Then we do understanding diagnostics, interventions, vocal function, communication, these are the meat and potatoes of the course. We're doing group trainings, we're doing Pedagogy Practica, and they are going to be moving you forwards all the way through the course. And then this is where it gets really fascinating for me as you go further into the programme your ideal clients emerge. Your focus and direction for your studio appears. And your what you then want to do with your work with your life with your students with your skills emerges. And I love that.

Announcer  2:24  
This is a voice, a podcast with Dr. Gillyanne Kayes and Jeremy Fisher. 

Jeremy   2:34  
Hello, and welcome to this is the voice season two episode 11. And it's nearly a year since we did our first episode.

Gillyanne Kayes  2:42  
I can't believe it. Was it July?

Jeremy   2:44  
July 1st I think it was Yeah. 

Gillyanne Kayes  2:46  
Did we even have the jingle then?

Jeremy   2:49  
I honestly don't remember. I think we did.

Gillyanne Kayes  2:52  
That lovely jingle by Connagh Tonkinson. We still love it. Almost 12 months later. Yes.

Jeremy   2:59  
And this is season two, Episode 11, which is actually our 25th episode. So we're gonna take a break after this particular episode, because we're starting our new Accreditation programme, and next week, and then the Associate programme will start soon after that. And we have the Learning Lounge up. But we're going to tell you all about this stuff. We're actually going to go back to our original topic, which is who we are and what we do.

Gillyanne Kayes  3:21  
Can I have a diversion

Jeremy   3:22  
Go on then. 

Gillyanne Kayes  3:23  
Those of you who have a look on YouTube, clock the waistcoat!

Jeremy   3:27  
Oh, yeah. We're just going to put a little excerpt upon us to YouTube, because I am wearing a waistcoat, which I often do.

Gillyanne Kayes  3:34  
This isn't just any waistcoat. Yes. This is THE waistcoat that Jeremy made for his very first sewing project.

Jeremy   3:41  
Yeah, I was bored in lockdown, you know, wanted something to do. So I bought myself a sewing machine, which I haven't really used before. I've sewn a few hems on curtains, which are straight lines. But I thought nah, I'm going to try this out. So I bought a sewing machine. And the first thing I made was a fully lined waistcoat, five button waistcoat and

Gillyanne Kayes  4:00  
tell them what happened during bagging out,

Jeremy   4:02  
oh, bagging out, if anybody knows about bagging out, it's where you sew something inside out. So all the seams are on the inside, and then you leave a little hole, and you pull the whole thing through that little hole.

Gillyanne Kayes  4:12  
We've got to admit it, we watched the great Sewing Bee

Jeremy   4:14  
Two days it took me to work out what had gone wrong. And the fact that I couldn't pull it out through the hole. Two days of shouting at a piece of material. And in the end, I went back through every instruction that I'd done. And I discovered the very first seam i'd sewn was wrong. And I had to unpick the lot.

Gillyanne Kayes  4:35  
So if you're simply listening, and you're interested in seeing the waistcoat head either to @VocalProcess Instagram, where you'll see posts about it, or the Vocal Process Facebook page. Do you know what there was more engagement on that waistcoat than there had been for the previous two weeks?

Jeremy   4:53  
Yes. And you know, the really sad thing is I've actually had this material. I love material. I love going into shops, and craft shops and wool shops and paper shops. And I mean, I know that there are people out there who love going into paper shops because of the colours and the textures. I had this material for 10 years. I bought it 10 years ago, and I wanted to do something with it. And it's taken me 10 years to buy sewing machine.

Gillyanne Kayes  5:18  
Well, I think for a first effort, it's very good. And I can tell you that I've already put in orders.

Jeremy   5:25  
Yes, thank you. I'm not taking any orders from anybody else. Thank you. This was traumatic enough. But I am actually in the process of cutting out a jacket for Gillyanne. And it's like, because I also knit as well. And every time I knit something where I've sort of stopped that now because I'm doing sewing, but every time I need something for years, I would do a new technique each time. So each time I would I ended up with seven colour fairisles, lace and all sorts of things. And so this is the same I'm going to do a new design or a new outfit or a new jacket or a new new I mean, the one thing I am going to repeat is waistcoats because that was the reason I bought the sewing machine. I'm fed up of waistcoats that don't fit?

Gillyanne Kayes  6:04  
And because zoom!

Jeremy   6:06  
Yes, yeah. 

Gillyanne Kayes  6:08  
Which brings us back nicely from the top to talk about kind of where we are now, because I've been so many changes haven't?

Jeremy   6:18  
Sorry, your comment, your comment was just about I have to have outfits to wear on zoom every time I teach. That's what it's about. Yeah. So all my all my waistcoats should in theory be tax deductible, because they're all professional. Right? So that's who we are. Now, what we do, let's come back to zoom, because this has been such an extraordinary year.

Gillyanne Kayes  6:36  
It's what we're doing now really

Jeremy   6:38  
It's been an extraordinary year for everybody. More than a year, in fact, but it's been an extraordinary year for us, because we have pivoted pretty much everything that we do to online. Now we've been doing online stuff for I don't know, 10, 12, 14 years. I mean, it's the very first impact of the first downloadable thing I did was 2004/5. But we've been doing Skype coaching It was then. And we've been Skype coaching all over the world with various people have one client in 

Gillyanne Kayes  7:08  
Vietnam

Jeremy   7:09  
Vietnam, that we actually hadn't met for ages. And both of us worked with him. And then finally they came to London, and we worked with them in person, which was extraordinary. It was such a different experience. So what have we been doing? 

Gillyanne Kayes  7:22  
Oh, you're looking at me? Is it okay? If I talk about the 12 months teacher training, Accreditation programme,

Jeremy   7:31  
You can...

Gillyanne Kayes  7:32  
Can I go there?

Jeremy   7:33  
Can I put it into context?

Gillyanne Kayes  7:34  
I'm very excited.

Jeremy   7:36  
I'm very I'm very excited to but I want to put this into context. Because people so often I mean, the very first title that we did is who we are and what we do, because people so often a year ago, we're saying, what is it that you do? And the answer is a lot.

Gillyanne Kayes  7:50  
I think that's the problem as well, isn't it? Jeremy? I mean, speaking now about pivoting and also being a business. And a business really, I think in our kind of work is it's a holding place for doing the things that you want to do. 

Jeremy   8:05  
Yeah, very much. 

Gillyanne Kayes  8:07  
And it is a profession, not just a passion. 

Jeremy   8:09  
Yes, thank you

Gillyanne Kayes  8:10  
Yeah. And getting your business to focus, because if like us, you are creatives. And you can turn your hand to lots of different aspects of what it means to be a vocal trainer and a vocal coach and a writer, and a researcher and all of those things. Sometimes what happens is that on your 300 page website, people can't actually see who you are and what it is that you do. And as a matter of fact, that's one of the things that we think, has been clarified during the pandemic, because we had to get out online and chat to people. And suddenly, what we found was there's a whole load of people who've been kind of hovering in the background, or on the, you know, the peripheries and wanting to work with us, weren't completely sure. And suddenly, they were more sure, weren't they?

Jeremy   9:00  
Yeah, I mean, what's emerged over the last couple of months, because we've taken time off to go where do we want to go next? What do we want Vocal Process to do? Because as Gillyanne says, Vocal Process is like an envelope for us to do what we do. Although it's a business, although it's a limited company, it is essentially an envelope. It's a very creative place that we can create whatever it is that we want to do. And because of everything that's happened in the last 6, 7, 8 months, and all the online stuff that we've been doing our we've got more streamlined. And so what we've come up with is, this is the way that you can get to work with us. And in fact, there are something like eight or nine different ways that you can work with us and I just want to go through them because we're going to end with the Accreditation programme that Gillyanne was talking about. 

Gillyanne Kayes  9:45  
Okay, can I say ziggurat? 

Jeremy   9:47  
You can say ziggurat! Yes, I said it's the Vocal Process Ziggurat and Gillyanne said, What's the ziggurat I said it's a stepped pyramid.

Gillyanne Kayes  9:54  
Let's see if you can describe it without a picture.

Jeremy   9:57  
It's a stepped pyramid. That's it. So basically, each one of these steps will will either go into the next or you can drop in at any point up to a certain level. And I'll explain that in a moment. So if you want to get to know us, this is like, base level. Most of this is free. I mean, ironically, the podcast is right there. What you're listening to right now is a brilliant way of getting to know us. It's free. It's available to everybody. And we put one out usually once a fortnight,

Gillyanne Kayes  10:26  
and you get info and tips, lots of people have emailed us and messaged us saying that they learned stuff from the podcast, which is great, because we want it to be fun and educational

Jeremy   10:37  
I mean the podcast really is, again, it's an envelope. Because I mean, the reason I wanted to start a podcast and it was ages before they became popular, was because you can get your thoughts out in a way that you can't do in writing. And you can't really do it on YouTube video, because there's a whole lot more to do. I love spoken voice I always have done. I listen to... I don't listen to music in the car. I listen to audiobooks, and interviews, because that's my favourite thing to do. So the podcast will tell you who we are, what we do, what we think, our relationship or lack of it occasionally. All of that Gillyanne's just making a face into the camera. She says Is there something I don't know? And the other thing that you can do, which is completely free is the blog. I put up articles, I put up interviews, I put up all sorts of things on the blog, and that's Vocalprocess.co.uk

Gillyanne Kayes  11:32  
What's nice about the blog, I mean, it's nearly always you that blogs, there are a few from me on historically. But you know, Jeremy will be mulling over something as I'm sure some of you do, particularly if you're sort of voice geeky. And he'll be mulling over it. And then you know, he might say to me, Well, I've been thinking about this. And that interacts with that. And I think people aren't really understanding this aspect. And then he'll go off. And you know, an hour later, two hours later, at the most normally, a fully formed blog will be there. And actually they're very popular. I love your blog. 

Jeremy   12:07  
I mean, the thing I think God answers to as later fully formed blog, and again, yeah, two hours, two hours, and probably about three weeks of thinking about it. But just two hours to write and write and format and clean it up. And often with the blog posts, I want to clarify something and actually, to be honest, that's the reason that we've created pretty much everything we've done is because there's something that we want to clarify that we think is there's confusion out there. So you've got the podcast, you've got the blog, you've got the books, of course, there were 10 books, so far, and two chapters in the Oxford Handbook of Singing, so there will be something there.

Gillyanne Kayes  12:39  
So if you're looking at images, you can see these behind us behind us. This is our output

Jeremy   12:44  
Yes, so we have starting working backwards, I think, Why Do I Need A Vocal Coach is the latest one, How To Accompany Your Singing Students, How To Sing Legato, they're all published by Canu Publishing, which is our publishing arm. And then before that was the Oxford Handbook of Singing, then This Is A Voice going backwards. We have the Singing Express books 1 to 4, which is for kids, 

Gillyanne Kayes  12:44  
which aren't up here

Jeremy   12:47  
Which aren't up here because in fact I couldn't fit them in

Gillyanne Kayes  12:54  
Published by HarperCollins. Check them out if you work with kids. Yeah.

Jeremy   12:58  
And then going before that was singing, Successful Singing Auditions, and then Singing and the Actor, the original, which was 21 years ago. Yeah. Which is extraordinary.

Gillyanne Kayes  13:21  
Yeah. And January, it was right at the turn of the millennium.

Jeremy   13:25  
Yes, yes. In fact, you were writing it in 1999 

Gillyanne Kayes  13:28  
I was indeed in fact earlier than that 

Jeremy   13:30  
Feels like a lifetime ago. Yep. So yeah, and anytime you'll see us on masterclasses we're doing a public masterclass in September, you may have seen me on slocoach.co.uk

Gillyanne Kayes  13:41  
Public masterclass for the British Voice Association Choice For Voice. Yes, we're on in on September the fourth on a Saturday

Jeremy   13:51  
I think it is. But that's gonna be fun. Yeah. And so that's the way that you can sort of meet us you can find out what we do. And if you like, that's the base level stuff.

Gillyanne Kayes  14:00  
Can we have a shout out for the BVA in the show notes? Choice for Voice?

Jeremy   14:04  
Yes we can. British Voice Association Choice for Voice. Then going up into the next level, which is where you start to get more involved in what we do. And that's the Learning Lounge and the Learning Lounge is new. The Learning Lounge is going to be going about three or four months. And in the Learning Lounge. I am so proud of this Learning Lounge because it's 15 years of our resources. The Belting Explained DVD double DVD is in fact on the Learning Lounge in digital form for the first time ever. All of our DVDs are there. All of our Lesson Plans are there. All of our Webinars are the the there are courses that we filmed as a five hour course. Oh, I gotta tell you the story. Mastering Musical Theatre is one of our more recent things and it was a five hour course that we did in London that was filmed and it was all put up there chopped up into pieces. It's really good. Love that one. And

Gillyanne Kayes  14:52  
we did that for Oren Boder. SOVT straw, Rayvox and he filmed it for us. He was the one who talked us into it. Yes. Including a live streaming, which we've never done before, thank you for that Oren.

Jeremy   15:03  
We did our first live stream, thank you first live stream we ever did was on that course. And somebody emailed me and said, Oh, you know, I'm on the Learning Lounge, and I just wanted it for this particular technique that you did, which is the technique for taking people into the future and into the past. And it's movement, 

Gillyanne Kayes  15:21  
We call it Timelines

Jeremy   15:22  
Timelines is what we call it. And and I said, Oh, yes, you know, it's in Mastering Musical Theatre. I remember doing it because I remember seeing the footage of me walking up to the camera as I'm doing the Timeline thing. So I went on to try and find it and couldn't and it wasn't there. And I went, Oh,

Gillyanne Kayes  15:37  
you came to me, something's wrong, said something's gone wrong. And I said, I know we did it. I'm sure we did it, 

Jeremy   15:42  
I was actually starting to doubt myself that it was even on that course, even though I could remember visually watching myself walking up to the camera backwards. And anyway, the lost hour, it turned out to be an hour that was missing with three of my best techniques, two of which we'd never put on camera before, 

Gillyanne Kayes  16:00  
Front Foot Back Foot

Jeremy   16:01  
Front Foot Back Foot, Timelines and Answers on a Postcard. And in fact, we then put Answers on a Postcard into a masterclass situation, with one of the young singers that we were working with. Anyway, there was an awful lot of hard drives to get through, because I have literally a box full of hard drives. And we finally found it. And it has gone up on the Learning Lounge as a whole load of bonus footage, which wasn't there.

Gillyanne Kayes  16:24  
So if you're in the Learning Lounge already, and you enjoyed that course, or course it's similar to it. And particularly if you're interested in performance techniques, just go and revisit it. And you will see have you put it up separately as the lost hour?

Jeremy   16:36  
it is separate as the lost hour Yes, it's underneath Mastering Musical Theatre. Next goes down and it says Mastering Musical Theatre, the last hours or bonus hours or something like that.

Gillyanne Kayes  16:45  
And let us know how you find using this these techniques because they are so applicable across genres. We love them

Jeremy   16:52  
don't love using those. And they're so powerful. They're very simple, but they're actually very powerful. They're quite deep. And I use them in lots of different ways. I mean, front foot back foot I use in seven or eight entirely different ways. It's such a great physicality, exercise for doing dynamics and phrasing and emotions. And I mean, subtext all sorts of things that you can use that for. If you don't know what the Learning Lounge is. And if you've been under a rock and you haven't listened to this one before, the Learning Lounge is a Teachable course it's on Teachable.com. 

Gillyanne Kayes  17:28  
This is a platform that's new to us. And I have to say, We are very pleased with it. 

Jeremy   17:32  
I love it. It love it is so easy to use. And it's also so easy to upload stuff once you know what you're doing. So the the Learning Lounge is our is in the Vocal Process hub. And the Vocal Process hub is the sort of big overview one, the Learning Lounge is a very large part of it. And you can join the Learning Lounge. I think at the moment, it's £33 plus tax to get access to 500+ videos have hours and downloads and teaching stuff and quizzes and all sorts of things. And so please check it out.

Gillyanne Kayes  18:06  
Can I say we do still get people emailing us saying is it alright if I do one month? And then you know the Summer's coming? And I'm not earning much. And I want to take a couple of months off? Yeah. Can I rejoin? Yes. Yeah, you can. So you can dip in and out? That's totally acceptable. Absolutely.

Jeremy   18:22  
Yes, I will tell you that the price might be going up soon. But yeah, the absolutely you can,

Gillyanne Kayes  18:27  
there are a couple of people who've romped through everything in there. And we are so impressed.

Jeremy   18:32  
I have to say nobody has got through everything yet. Somebody has got through about 40% of it. But that's been they've been watching like constantly, because there is a lot of stuff in there. So the Learning Lounge is the next way to get to us. And that is entirely online. You can watch it at four o'clock in the morning, if you want to. You can watch it for 14 hours if you want to. Everything is there. 

Gillyanne Kayes  18:56  
Everything is also chunked up with titles, which is one of the things that people said they really appreciate it. So you know, if you have 10 minutes between students, and as a technique you want to check out, you can simply go online, check out that technique, maybe you'll have a look at Front Foot Back Foot, and then use it with your next students. And people have been saying they're doing this during their working day. Absolutely. I mean, we're so thrilled

Jeremy   19:20  
Do it!

Gillyanne Kayes  19:21  
That's exactly what we set it up for 

Jeremy   19:23  
Do it, yes. 

Gillyanne Kayes  19:23  
But there's more than that in the Vocal Process Hub. 

Jeremy   19:29  
Well there will be, there will be in fact that I've got lots of little private areas in the Vocal Process Hub, which if you join that particular course you will get access to that bit and I'm at the moment building a an Accreditation Hub which is going to hold another several hundred videos available for the Accreditation people but we come into that later.

Gillyanne Kayes  19:49  
Yeah, but I was meaning about the Popups being in the Hub. 

Jeremy   19:52  
the Popups aren't actually live quite yet. I've got one so you're revealing all our secrets. We have been recording some of the Popup... I'm going to come to the Popups in a moment. But we've been recording some of the Popup workshops that we've been doing. And I just about I have uploaded the first one, I haven't released it yet, because I'm still doing background notes and quizzes and stuff like that to put in on it. But there will be the first of the the Popups on the Learning Lounge in a separate area, which you can join. So as soon as we have actually finalised, all of that, I will let you know. So now I want to get to the Popups

Gillyanne Kayes  20:31  
Zip up about the Popups, Gillyanne!

Jeremy   20:34  
That was a surprise to me. So now I want to get to the next level up, which is working with us in person online, which is the Popups and these are two hour Popup workshops. They are very practical. We do do theory we actually started at one point we announced on one of the Popups no PowerPoint, this is entirely practical. So we had sometimes we have a tiny bit of PowerPoint just for visuals, but mostly they are practical stuff. And with the Popups, I think we have run seven different Popups in the last five months. just extraordinary.

Gillyanne Kayes  21:12  
We created these Popups because you know, in the course of us working for five days at a time with singing teachers, we found that there were certain topics that would come up and that people felt they needed to dig deeper. So for example, you know, how do we work with other genders? And so we did a Popup on that. How do we know if our student has a voice problem? And what do we do about it? What is belting? 

Jeremy   21:40  
That was a very popular 2-hour Popup

Gillyanne Kayes  21:42  
And then of course registers mechanism 1 & 2, which are our favourite topics of ours. Yeah. And we did something on Practical Phonetics.

Jeremy   21:50  
We did Practical Phonetics 1. We've done SOVT 1 and 2. 

Gillyanne Kayes  21:54  
Yes

Jeremy   21:55  
I think there's another one as well in there that we've forgotten. But there's this, I think the seven or eight that we've done this year. And they come around occasionally. Because actually now our timetables getting busier. But we we throw a Popup in every so often. And we just let our database know. So if you're not on the database, do go to Vocalprocess.co.uk and fill in the newsletter form or just download our larynx from Vocalprocess.co.uk and I think it's the free stuff section, you'll see build your own larynx, because you get added to the database if you do the larynx as well. And it just means that you get to know about the Popups they do sell out, we only normally do 20 people on a Popup because

Gillyanne Kayes  22:37  
If there's two of us that we don't like more than that. 

Jeremy   22:40  
Also, we like to see everybody we like everybody to be involved. And we like to know that everybody is actually getting something out of it. So the Popups have been really great because people have been able to work with us. They've also been able to work in groups, we have breakout sessions, we split people up, they talk together, there's all sorts of things that goes on in a Popup, we really like that forward

Gillyanne Kayes  23:02  
is very much that family feeling as yet. I mean, obviously that some people come to Popup after Popup. And goodness me there's a tongue twister in there somewhere. But so that people already know each other, and particularly when we have been, you know, so isolated from each other for months and months. That's been very important. But there is very much this sort of peer learning. And this, you know, I think that what we do is we create a safe space for that peer learning. And we kind of hold the space for you and guide you through it. And we think that our Popups are quite special from that point of view. 

Jeremy   23:42  
Well, yeah, and we are all we're we're still on top of the latest educational techniques. So we're actually already incorporating stuff. I mean, I'm intending to incorporate stuff in the next Popup that I read yesterday. So there's some really interesting things that we do which help. They're not just we're going to fire a lecture at you and you just sit and listen. That is long gone. As far as I'm concerned. That is not a way to learn online. So yeah, really interesting. That's the Popups. Okay. Okay. And then up another step, we go to the Online Singing Teacher Training Week 1.

Gillyanne Kayes  24:17  
And we've got a new date for that. Haven't. Do you want to just say that? 

Jeremy   24:21  
I think it's August the 24th to 28th. About August the 24th to 28th. I think it's Tuesday to Saturday

Gillyanne Kayes  24:30  
And we did have a completely full waitlist. And I know some people have signed up already

Jeremy   24:35  
And again, we only take 20 on that course. People have said to us but it's online, you can take hundreds and I'm going no actually we can't because we don't we like the sort of level of interaction that you get where you can see everybody you can talk to everybody, you can see their reactions. And everybody gets a say everybody actually stays involved with what we're doing. The thing that we don't do is we don't do a lecture. Then, you know, once you turn the camera off and sit back and do nothing, not happening, sorry, we don't do that. So, yeah, Online Singing Teacher Training Week 1, and this is two hours a day for five days, it's 10 hours in total. And we set up this format, we sort of fell into the format, and then realised that it worked brilliantly. And so we've refined it,

Gillyanne Kayes  25:25  
I think one of the things that teachers tell us they like about it, is that it can often fit into their working day, particularly those who run their own studios, because they're rarely working in the mornings. And so they'll do this course. And then maybe they'll start teaching at three or four in the afternoon. And, you know, they they come on to the Facebook group that we've been running together with the OSTT and they say, Oh, I tried that technique out today. And it made such a difference with my students.

Jeremy   25:53  
I love that I love the fact that we can give somebody a technique or an understanding. And then we'll go that day and try it out and go, it really works. Or it works for me, or this is the version that I did.

Gillyanne Kayes  26:05  
And now up until now, we've been running a Facebook group concurrently with the training. But in fact, we are now going away from Facebook for this partly because GDPR, safeguarding, and wanting to have a really private space.

Jeremy   26:22  
So we have just yesterday, in fact, launched our new Circle community which is Circle.so and this is a brand new platform that's been set up by people who are running courses, people who are doing marketing is actually specifically set up for people like us. And I'm not a Facebook user. And this is so close to the way that Facebook works. It's got a few more things in it. But I went on it and I went, Oh, I love this. This is really easy.

Gillyanne Kayes  26:49  
I think it's education meets business meets - and I'm going to say social media in the sense of social media groups. Yes. And it seems to have taken the best of all three. So people who perhaps are familiar with things like Asana, and Slack. I'm trying to think of some of the other platforms. Well, we think this is better. We think it's more user friendly.

Jeremy   27:15  
It's also private. Yeah. Which actually becomes really important when we're talking about voices. So we are moving that section of our social media when where people are involved in courses will be going on to the Circle community. 

Gillyanne Kayes  27:32  
Exciting!

Jeremy   27:33  
Week 1, Week 1 is done. And then Week 2 happens. And you can't do Week 2, unless you've done Week 1. So really, from now on, anybody can come into the podcast to the Learning Lounge to the Popups, anyone can join Week 1. But once you get past Week 1, this is where things start to narrow down a bit. So Week 2 happens. And Week 2, we take what we've done in Week 2, we move further. We also do live masterclass. For the teachers, we explain what we're doing. There's a lot of stuff that is much more geared towards teachers by Week 2

Gillyanne Kayes  28:06  
there's a big section on resonance, if I remember right.

Jeremy   28:09  
So Week 3 happens. And then you get to Week 3. Now Week 3, by this time, Week 3 is invitation only. We only let you go on Week 3 if we think you're ready for it. And Week 3 is quite a step up from Week 2.

Gillyanne Kayes  28:23  
And Week 3 is pedagogy in practice, which means that we watch your lessons. Yes. And we all discuss what's going on. And we brainstorm what's going on. I mean, this I feel for me, this is such a privilege to be able to do that with teachers to look at what's being done in a lesson. Because, I mean, often what happens, you know, when when a student comes into a lesson, you okay if I talk about the brain dump?

Jeremy   28:54  
Absolutely the brain dump, I brought the brain dump very early on in Week 3, and it's been such a smash,

Gillyanne Kayes  29:00  
Because what we do is singing teachers and vocal coaches is so multifactorial and so multi skilled. When the student comes in, we're doing a kind of brain dump. Yeah. And as you go through the brain dump, then you kind of sift you know, what, what category might this belong to? What kind of area are we looking at here? Is this a musical area is a physical area? Is it performance area? Is it a vocal function area? Is it something to do with understanding? Is it something to do with audience communication? Is it something to do with how my student understands me? Is it something to do with their history, what they're carrying with them. And these are all things that we need to take into consideration if we want the lesson to be focused and to have good outcomes. And then moving forward which we'll talk about how we work at a higher level on our own teacher training, how we track a student's progress across time

Jeremy   30:00  
Yes

Gillyanne Kayes  30:01  
Ooh, I got excited there.

Jeremy   30:04  
And in fact, the brain dump just to explain that is that somebody walks into the room. And I think everybody does this, your brain goes, Oh, this and this, and this, and this, and this and this. And that could be there. And that can that's fine that and your brain just does a whole world when you are listening to somebody for the first time, because you are wanting to identify what it is that you're going to work on. That involves a huge brain dump. And what we do on Week 3, is we actually get that brain dump out of your head and onto paper. And then we start sorting and things get categorised. It's a really interesting way of working out what's the most important thing, and then we discuss what is the most important thing to work with that student. And on Week 3, I think we do two days a masterclass is where we coach your student live. And then after the student has gone, we explain why we did something and why we didn't do something else. It's a really, really great course love Week 3 always have done. So once you get past Week 3, and I mean, by now you will realise that we're sort of into the teacher training thing. But Week 1, anybody can drop in Week 2 is as long as you're on Week 1, Week 3 is by invitation only. And then the next level up, which is what we are about to start next week is the Vocal Process accreditation training. And that is by absolutely by invitation only, nobody jumps the queue on this one.

Gillyanne Kayes  31:25  
It's a 12 month training programme with a three to five months new teacher phase 

Jeremy   31:33  
learner drive 

Gillyanne Kayes  31:33  
learner driver.

Jeremy   31:34  
Yeah, it's really interesting. And we have done the accreditation programme before. But we haven't done it quite in this format. And we haven't done it in the way that we're planning to. So it almost feels like this is a brand new thing. And we have I think it's 16 people starting on the crustacean training next week, which is so exciting. And we have people from all over the world doing it, which is again, really exciting.

Gillyanne Kayes  31:59  
I can we say this is not a course for beginners? 

Jeremy   32:02  
Absolutely not. 

Gillyanne Kayes  32:04  
If you're start if you're thinking oh, I want to start teaching singing. That's fantastic. But not this course

Jeremy   32:12  
Not with us

Gillyanne Kayes  32:13  
All of these people I've been teaching for actually most of them have been teaching for about 10 years, and more and more. And they want to dive deeper into their practice. They want to grow, they want to advance the level of students that they work with, they want to change their studios.

Jeremy   32:32  
And it's exciting, because I mean, What's also great with the system that with the ziggurat that we're going now is we're reaching towards the top now. So after the 12 months plus the learner driver bit, you become an accredited Vocal Process trainer. Now, we already have accredited Vocal Process trainers, and they will be helping us at certain points in the course. And we already have an Associate trainer which is the highest level we do. And that's Anne Leatherland who actually co teachers with us. She's worked with us a lot. And we are right at the top of the pyramid, we are now going to start an Associate programme so that people can basically do the things that Anne does, so co-teach and create their own courses. And in fact, you can't do that, as usual in a ladder like this, in a ziggurat like this, you can't do that until you've done the Accreditation programme.

Gillyanne Kayes  33:23  
And what's nice about the Associates is that it's something that we'd thought about, but we didn't really know how to format it. And in fact, some of the Accredited trainers came to us and said, but can we be Annes? We want to be an Anne. Yeah. And so what we're going to be doing is helping them to find their own speciality and develop their own speciality. So again, we'll be creating our own courses. And the four people that we've got each got their own areas of interest haven't they?

Jeremy   33:57  
Absolutely so and it's it's going to be surprising how much of the Associate programme we've got some formal structure in it, but a lot of it is bespoke, because people have their individual strengths. And it's those strengths. It's the thing that we do not to do is turn out carbon copies. Absolutely not because everybody who comes as a teacher has their own history, their own strengths, their own interests, their own resonances. And one of our jobs as sort of the trainers is to find out what those are, and to help them express it. It's one of the reasons I'm getting right back to the beginning of this podcast. It's why we really set up Vocal Process in the first place to become an arena for us to experiment, experiment and to express ourselves. And we want the same thing for our Accredited and Associate teachers. 

Gillyanne Kayes  34:49  
What shall we talk about next? If anything? 

Jeremy   34:53  
I was going to say, is that not enough? I tell you what I want to do. I want to read this out. We wrote a couple of paragraphs

Gillyanne Kayes  35:03  
I did a brain dump.

Jeremy   35:04  
And and then I refined it, which is actually what often happens. Because Gillyanne goes splurge. And I go, yeah, that fits there. And that fits there and that fits there and that works

Gillyanne Kayes  35:12  
How dare you refine my braindump!

Jeremy   35:16  
So I want to read this out, because I loved him when when we both came up with this.

Gillyanne Kayes  35:21  
And the braindump is about, do you remember, I was saying earlier on about multifactorial, that's what singing teaching is. And obviously, you know, as we're getting ready to do this 12 month training, my brain is uploading with, what is it in fact that we do? You know, we have all this knowledge and we learn this stuff? What is it? how can how can we frame it. And this was the result of some of that conversation, and the sifting thereof

Jeremy   35:50  
And this is really, it's not just a description of the Accreditation programme, it's actually a description of how we work in general. And I just want to read it out. We do holistic training. So you as the teacher, you as the person, you as the driving force. We begin by focusing on your current clients, you'll never be able to do a proper case history if you can't profile them, and therefore you won't be able to move them on. So we talk about profiling, how it works, what it is and how you do it. 

Gillyanne Kayes  36:19  
Now we've got a bit about that in our Webinars 1 and 2, haven't we?

Jeremy   36:23  
We have, yeah. Lesson observation is seeing what you and your colleagues are doing right now. We're working with your colleagues, you share practice, insights, ideas and communication skills. Then we do understanding diagnostics, interventions, vocal function, communication, these are the meat and potatoes, of course, we're doing group trainings, we're doing Pedagogy Practica, and they are going to be moving you forwards all the way through the course. And then this is where it gets really fascinating for me, as you go further into the programme, your ideal clients emerge, your focus and direction for your studio appears. And your what you then want to do with your work with your life with your students with your skills emerges. And I love that. And the thing I want to say is don't fret that one, because that's an emerging thing. It's not a pattern that you decide at the beginning, and then we all work for it. It's not that at all.

Gillyanne Kayes  37:21  
I think what's good about that, what you've said in that last thing about, you know, your, your ideal clients emerging is that in a way, what you're doing is you're working on yourself, and you're working on your own practice. And you're refining that. Because I think what often happens is that we see what other people are doing. And we'd say, Well, why can't I do x. And it could be that, in fact, x isn't really what you need, it might be that you need to do y and that your strengths are with that. And once you found those strengths, people literally find you. 

Jeremy   38:01  
That's absolutely right. It's so interesting that when you see other people doing something that you think you should be doing, you're often seeing somebody who is in their own strength. And it may not be yours, you may have strengths that you absolutely don't realise, years and years ago, I came up with the phrase falling off a log. In fact, 2002 the Successful Singing Auditions book, we talked about the Falling Off A Log process, the FOAL Process. And this is to find out the things that you think do behave, react, just exist in the way that you live, that you don't even realise the strengths because they're so innate. They're so in you, they're so you take them so much for granted that it's only when other people say, Oh, you do that so well. And you're going What? What what I don't understand, why can't you do that? That's so easy. And it's those, it's so easy moments that I really love looking out for because that tells me where somebody is real strengths lie. By the way, if you are interested in the Accreditation programme, and I know we have a waiting list already for the next time, please join Week 1 because that's the entry level to get in Week 1 August the 24th to the 28th. Week 2 dates to be announced. So and the idea is that we do at least two Week 1s and Week 2s a year, and we do one Week 3 a year and then the Accreditation programme starts. And the Accreditation programme. It's probably about a year and a half apart. So there's quite a long time period between them.

Gillyanne Kayes  39:35  
And I'm just thinking for somebody who's maybe never worked with us and you're not sure you quite like the sound of what you're hearing today. 

Jeremy   39:42  
Oh the Learning Lounge

Gillyanne Kayes  39:43  
Pop into the learning lounge and when some of these Popups are available as streaming courses, then you get to see / witness / experience what it's like working with us. Yes, and see if you like it. 

Jeremy   39:56  
Yes, absolutely.

Gillyanne Kayes  39:57  
Because it's got to fit you too.

Jeremy   39:59  
So I think we can finish there. Thank you for listening to series two. That was the last one in series two series three will be out shortly. Thank you very much. 

Gillyanne Kayes  40:09  
Bye 

Jeremy   40:09  
Bye.

Announcer  40:21  
This is a Voice, a podcast with Dr. Gillyanne Kayes and Jeremy Fisher.