What People Say - From cringe-worthy review to powerful testimonials

Celebrating 90 episodes of our This Is A Voice Podcast! Dr Gillyanne Kayes & Jeremy Fisher share how they deal with a bad review - and this one's just plain rude.
And they celebrate 20 years of their groundbreaking voice teacher Accreditation Programme.
Welcome to This Is A Voice Season 9 Episode 1, the podcast where we get vocal about voice.
00:00:00 – Stodgy & Humble – the dynamic duo of voice training
00:01:20 – Unpacking a Cringe-worthy Review
00:04:49 – Dealing with Criticism - a Catalyst for Discussion
00:07:16 – Celebrating 20 years of Training Teachers
00:09:59 – Creating the Accreditation + Our Guest Experts
00:13:33 – Innovative Voice Teaching and Energy Exercises
00:18:23 – Evolution of Voice Training Towards a Holistic Approach
00:22:20 – Working With the Singer in the Room
00:26:28 – Effects of Being on the Accreditation Programme
00:30:39 – Embracing Cognitive Dissonance in the Learning Process
00:33:42 – What Happens in a Mentoring Session
00:37:18 – Why You Don’t Need To Know EVERYTHING
00:39:24 – The Enduring Power of Curiosity in Voice Training

Dive into this insightful episode to explore the intersection of voice mastery, personal growth, and the vibrant community of voice professionals. Whether you're a seasoned voice teacher or an aspiring vocal coach, there's something in this episode for everyone passionate about the art and science of voice. Stay curious and join us on this vocal journey!

#VoiceTraining #VocalCoaching #SingingTeacher #

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Transcript

What people say - From cringe-worthy review to powerful testimonials

This is A Voice, a podcast with Dr. Gillyanne Kayes and Jeremy Fisher.

Hello and welcome to This Is A Voice, Season 9, Episode 1. The podcast where we get vocal about voice. I'm Jeremy Fisher, a stodgy English vocal coach who condescends to his singing teacher wife. And I'm Dr. Gillyanne Kayes, who was scientifically minded, humble, and willing to admit when she doesn't know something.

Gillyanne, where the devil are my slippers? Just you wait, 'Enry 'Iggins, just you wait. 

Okay, what on earth are we talking about? This may seem a very interesting departure for, this is our 90th episode, is that right? This is our 90th episode, yes. Wow, okay. So, seriously, what are we talking about? What we're talking about is, I think everybody gets a bad review once in a while.

And there's some aspects of this review that we really want to unpack. Oh, it's a cracker. Actually, interestingly, we didn't find this until a couple of months after it was written, but it's a corker. So, yes fans of My Fair Lady will love this podcast, wherein a stodgy English vocal coach condescends to his singing teacher, wife, and business partner about her voice.

And you know what I think is very interesting about this review? As a woman, What I would like to say is, okay, I'm all right then, because I'm humble. Yeah, I know, I objected to that one as well. You know what, that really worries me.

And you know what, they also said they'd like to hear less from Mr. Jeremy. Oh, can I just point out a very interesting little, little detail? It's Dr. Gillyanne and Mr. Jeremy. It's like Jeremy does not have a PhD and I'm just going to point that out. Okay, thanks. Can I just point out that you interrupted me there?

This is an offensive behavior. Oh, I love this. I just want to say this because, you know, as your collaborative worker and having seen you coach people many times. And I know that a lot of our listeners have worked with us and may have been coached by Jeremy. You know, it's one thing to say, actually, there are things wrong with this podcast.

I'm not enjoying it. I don't like the personalities. That is totally your choice, friend. But then to say that Jeremy strikes you as likely to be the kind of vocal coach enamored with the sound of only his voice and who interrupts the singer every few bars to opine and bloviate the whole time. Jeremy, quickly explain bloviate.

Oh, we loved learning this word, by the way. It's to talk it's basically to talk a lot of hot air. To sort of blow off hot air. Yeah. I mean, how can you make a review where what you're saying is. You're complaining about statements without veracity, delivered with confidence. And then you come out with this because you cannot possibly know anything about Jeremy's coaching.

And I have to say, as a wife and business partner, that makes me pretty miffed. Can I just talk about my coaching? He's got it so wrong. Because it's one of the things, not only that I have done for the last 40 years. But I also train other teachers to do, which is just, excuse me, STFU and allow the singer to sing.

And can I say something as well? You started life as, and are still, a collaborative pianist. Yes. What, how, how successful would a collaborative pianist be if they opined and bloviated the whole time when they were working with other musicians? I mean, come on. It's a cracking review. So yeah, we all get them.

And honestly, you read them and you go, how much of this is relevant? And how much of this is taste? And how much of this is just nonsense? And half of this review is actually nonsense. About a quarter of it is taste and a quarter of it was quite interesting. This person did put up a second review and by the way, gave us five stars.

Because apparently we had solved all the problems that he'd mentioned. Now, that was really interesting because we'd actually solved them before he mentioned them. Yeah. But anyway, that's fine. So whatever. And one thing I want to say, because whatever Some people, I think, you know, we'll, we all rubberneck. It's human to rubberneck, isn't it? You know, you're going to go and look for that review. Do go and do it. Yeah. One thing you will notice is that this is an invented handle. Is that right? Is that right? It's a pseudonym. It's an anonymous review. Yeah. I think when you start going into something personal, making personal statements about people and you do an anonymous review, I can say from my perspective, I regard that as cowardly.

It is unfortunately a sign of our times that this happens. And I think, one of the reasons why we mentioned it, you know, aside from it being, you know, a great way to bounce off our 90th podcast. It's because other people get these kind of reviews and so please know that if you get a bad one, you look at it, is there anything in this that I can take away with me that I can be positive about?

That's really important and the rest of it, it's like, okay, That's your opinion. There's something else that's sort of connected with that, which is, and I learned this a long time ago, which is you don't just look at what someone has said and decide whether you're going to take it on or not, you actually look at their level of experience and you go, do they actually have the authority for me to pay attention to it? And of course, we can't know that if they're hiding behind a pseudonym. Well, I'd be very interested to hear his podcast. And this is a really interesting one, which is, you know, when people criticize the books that we've written, it's like, can we read yours? So if If, or they don't like something that we say on a course, it's like, can we come on your course?

When, once you start putting yourself out there as creators, and you are creating something like a course, or a book, or a podcast, or a performance, or a whatever, people are going to criticize because you don't do it in exactly the way that they want to, or that they believe you should do, or whatever it is.

Yeah, it's human for people to have expectations. Absolutely. And then I think it's how, how you deal with them. Yeah. And I mean, once you get to, to real international status like Taylor Swift, then you are, it's just a barrage of stuff that people dislike you for. And it's like that, you know, you can not watch it.

Yeah. You can not go to the concerts. You can not turn up at the gig. You can not. So, listen to the podcast. podcast, please stop. There's loads out there. Yeah, we don't want you. Okay, so, I mean, let's hope that we haven't now lost 80% of our listeners. Bye! Do you know what I want to do, Jeremy? I actually want to move on to some shameless celebration.

Oh, I love shameless celebration. And the reason for this is It is our 20th year of running training courses for teachers, not just individual training courses, but a teacher accreditation training. It is. 2004. I know. Do you remember the first one? I wish that I had a look. I did a hunt and I tried to find the, you know, the booklet that we used to have. Oh yeah. And we call this course Integrated Voice. Integrated Voice. Because one of the things that we wanted to do was to get, and I remember this was 2004, to get singing teachers, not to think just about the singing voice.

Mm-hmm. But to think about the voice holistically, you know, the body and the voice. And for instance, we had a course that was run by David Carey, wasn't it called With One Voice. where we were looking at the links between singing voice training and spoken voice training and allowing people to explore that because David was teaching at RADA at the time.

Yes, I think, I think he was, I think he's in the US now. And one of the reasons why I wanted to do this was actually because of my own journey as a vocalist. I mean, I've spoken frankly before about the fact that I had a voice problem in my early 20s, and amongst other things, I sought advice from some of my colleagues.

One of whom was a voice teacher at one of the colleges and we did a skill swap and what we found out when eventually I went to a voice clinic was that the issue was my speaking voice and not my singing voice. So, as a matter of fact, I remember very clearly singing I could have danced all night and they said, well, this is fine.

Look, you know, the vocal folds are moving beautifully and there's nothing wrong with them. It's nice and even. But when you speak, we're getting a lot of, you know, glottal attacks and it's not a very smooth rendition. So I sought advice from the late Lyn Darnley, mm hmm. And it was because of that that I began to realize the importance of understanding the speaking voice when working with singers and the speaking patterns.

So that was our first iteration and Well, I mean, we, we now have put speaking voice stuff into our trainings all over the place. So often, if somebody is trying to find a particular vocal setup, we'll get them to do it in speaking voice first.

I would like to talk more about how we designed this course originally, because what we'd looked at was sort of models of MAs that were practical. There was one in particular at Reading University at that time. I've forgotten what it was called, but it was in three modules. Didn't we go and present on that one?

We did, but that's quite a long time ago. So, I don't know that I remember much about it, to be honest. I do. I do. I remember all the equipment going wrong. Yeah, yeah. Okay, well let's, let's stay in the positive mode, shall we, which is, and we sought advice from a number of colleagues who were working in academia.

And we put together several modules, and one of our modules was delivered by the late Meribeth Dayme. And it was wonderful to have her deliver a module on anatomy and physiology. And at that time we had essays, people had to write essays, as well as doing practical work. And they did have to write essays on anatomy and physiology and boy, Meribeth was quite strict with them.

You know, if she didn't like the essay, it, it came back. She was so good at absolute clarity. That was one of her things. And I think we must have had about 16 people do that version of the Integrated Voice course. And so if you're out there listening to it and we've lost touch, do drop us a line.

We'd love to hear from you because it's just, it feels really nice to have that. that history of people that we've hopefully impacted in a positive way. I think it was groundbreaking. Spread it, well it was at the time, it was absolutely groundbreaking. Nobody had done anything like that. And that's quite typical of us, isn't it?

Yes, we don't tend to follow trends. No, no. So, Anyway, I mean, as, as we moved on, I want to say something about the way that Meribeth began to teach. This was probably around about the last time we ran this course in which she contributed before she moved. And what we noticed was that the way that she was teaching the respiration part of anatomy, anatomy and physiology was very different.

She was doing kind of more exploratory work. She called it a breathing lab. She also did those Tai Chi exercises, which I want us to talk about in a minute because they're actually very interesting. And I remember being there and thinking. Ooh, this is going a bit woo, shouldn't we be doing all the science and everything?

I've never had a problem with woo. Mm hmm. I know you're, you're more woo than I am, much more woo. And it was just so interesting and I, I think it took us a while to get our heads around that. And of course, people who know Meribeth's work will know that she eventually developed the Core Singing. And there is now a book about that work, which was published last year, which we will pop in the show notes for you.

So I think it was very, I think Meribeth is also a trailblazer. And she, at that moment, she was several steps ahead of us. And I think the way that when we work now with people on, you know, talking about the respiration aspect or breath management aspect of singing, we work on it also in a very different way than we used to.

Can we talk about the energy exercises? Oh yeah. Can you remember the sequence? I I think it's the similar sequence that we put into one of the songs in Singing Express. I wrote the lyrics for it and someone else wrote the music. Yes. And that was Moveability. Moveability is a great song. And it's really interesting because when people find out about it, they start using it as a warm up exercise.

And it's a physicality and energy warm up exercise. And yes, I can. I don't remember the sequence. Okay, tell us what the sequences are. Okay, so chop, which is hands going up and down in front of you. Huh. So it's like you're chopping something with the sides of your hands, squeeze. I love the squeeze.

Oh, the squeeze is great. Yeah. And the squeeze is like playing a double hand accordion, you know, the little round accordion boxes. And it's really interesting because just doing it now, you chop and then you squeeze, and I can feel the energy between my hands. It actually feels like a little draft. between my hands.

So chop, squeeze, stretch up above your head, push hands flat in, pushing out in front of you, fan the face with the energy that you have just created. Hang on.

An ski. Yes, I think that's right. So, you act, you're holding two ski poles and you put them down and then you ski forwards. And you can do it in slow motion or you can do it fast and honestly doing the sequence route. Oh, bounce. I've missed. Bounce. Yes, you have. I knew there was another one. Miss spans comes before ski.

So you have a very large beach ball and you band sit in front of you. Yeah. Yeah. That's quite, I I really like that one. Yeah. And. Yes, you're right, because not only is it in the Singing Express series, but it's been used by people who work with undergraduates, you know, as a warm up because we turned it into a song.

It was actually written for seven to eight year olds, I think. Something like that, yes. But the, the undergrads love it. And it's also used by choral leaders. Yeah. And again, I think it takes me to How we started to change the way that we were working with teachers and how we started to change the way we were working, thinking about the voice, you know, because back in the late 90s, everybody was thinking, well, now we're learning all about the mechanism.

We must know where our origins and insertions are and we must think about this muscle and that muscle and the mechanism. And when we wrote the Singing Express series, what we had to do was absolutely pare down that knowledge to, what are the, the, the fundamental principles that we want to get over.

And we had to write a book, and we had a number of coauthors as well. We had to write a book that. Allowed a totally non musical, ooh, I don't want to say the word non musical. Non music, non singing. Yeah, a generalist teacher. Generalist teacher. A generalist teacher to deliver enjoyment in singing, exploration of music, and certain sort of, vocal skill targets, for want of a better word.

Mm. in a user friendly way. So all of the targets had to be embedded in the song material and the exploration material. I think it's a really interesting challenge and I don't know that people understand just how challenging it is when you take something that is actually a very complex concept that you want to explain and you need to explain it to people who have no idea what you're talking about.

So they don't know the, the, the jargon. I mean, you could say, oh, well, you mix that. It doesn't mean anything to somebody who hasn't had singing lessons, or is not really, really fascinated by singing. So you're having to create and, and explain concepts in really simple language. And we did that in the Singing Express series, there are four books on that.

And then we did it again in This is a Voice, where the brief was. Intelligent, documentary watching, man in the street who doesn't know anything about voice. Okay. Yeah. And, you know, while I'm thinking about this, it seems to me that You know, because we took these steps of authorship, and this is very much about how we like to spread, oh yeah, spread the word, if you like, spread, spread our knowledge.

That's, that's who we are. That's how we think. Both of those projects were very challenging in terms of sort of, where we were at that time. And as a result of that, facing those challenges. I'm very proud of both those books, the series and the This Is A Voice book. You then evolve as a result of it.

You have to. And where I want to go next is that by the time we got to 2012, we had to stop doing the accreditation because I was writing up my PhD. By the time we got there and we got sort of past that to the point where I said to you, I want to start training teachers again. We were thinking about things in a very different way, and we knew that it was super important for people to learn the practical.

You know what I think it's Kitty Verdolini who puts it so well, where she says, It's not just about knowing that, it's knowing how. So we've moved away. And I'd add knowing when as well. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And how often, and also when to shut up. The three second rule. Yes. So, I think that's really important in terms of our evolution.

Yeah. And then obviously as we got further on when we evolved the, the the training courses again during the pandemic, you know, for us, it was a positive thing that we had people coming on courses for singing teachers with us and getting to the end of the third course that we've done. So we sort of created three levels for them.

And can I, can I just talk about that specifically? You may interrupt. Thank you. So humble. The, the fascinating thing about the courses when the pandemic happened and we, we went online, we had been teaching one to one online for possibly a decade before that. So we were quite used to using Zoom. We were quite used to using Skype, we were doing all of that stuff.

But we'd never done a group training online. We'd always done them live. And so we set up the first of the Teacher Pathway courses. And we did that and everybody went, well, you've got to do part two. And we're going, oh, okay. And it's always come from the people out there who say, you have to do more here.

We, we want more. Yeah. So we put part two up, course two. And then they went, well, you've got to do course three. Yes. And I remember one person said, could we have a pedagogy practicum? Yes. And that's how we designed the course that's now the Gateway to the accreditation. Yes. And it was such a brilliant idea.

Thank you for that. So this is about reacting to what people want. Yeah. Yeah. And then by the end of that third course, they were all saying, well, you have Accredited Teachers, we want to be Accredited, can we be Accredited? And we stopped and thought, how can we run that, given where we are now, you know, because at that point in time we were still in the pandemic.

And we'd realized that actually we could do it all online, online in person and Online live. Yeah. Yeah, and we're in our third cohort this year. We're just just starting to collect our fourth cohort. Yeah Yeah, and it's, that was, that was really fascinating deciding what you can and can't do in a relatively short space of time.

It's it ends up as being four hours live a month And then, and then a whole load of support stuff as well. And it's really fascinating to see, we have a timetable, we have a set of targets, we have a set of topics that we discuss. Every cohort has required slightly different things. And that's been really fascinating to go, well, we're not going to just deliver the same course.

We're not going to show you the PowerPoint and sit back and go, well, just watch this. And then, you know, you can learn it from that. That's not what we do on the Accreditation Programme. We actually go. individually and as a group with whoever is in the room. And you know, when, when we, in fact, when we even put more than a masterclass together, where you work with the singer in the room, that's for me, the most important thing.

It's like, who's, when somebody walks in and you go, hello, who are you and what are you bringing? That to me is fundamental baseline. I am not going to fire stuff at you unless I know that you want it or need it or that's part of what you're here for. We talked about this a lot, didn't we, with Lisa Perks about singing training and possible, you know, trauma in singing training.

who is that person in the room? So, I think what we've endeavored to do, and I think we are successful, is to walk our talk when we're working with teachers. And I think this is really important that, you know, a teacher who comes on our course, someone who is already teaching, or I prefer to, you know, to say the word guide or coaching, they already bring something with them.

And it's important to acknowledge that something and to perhaps unpack it, unpick it and say, you know, why are you doing that? What's the value of it? Can you see that perhaps that links well with this concept? And over and over again, we've had people come to us and say, Oh, now I understand what I have been doing all this time in a deeper way and it's more effective.

I want to, I want to unpick that because I think it's one of the most important things we do. The first thing is it's an extension of hello, who are you and what do you bring? When anybody comes to work on the Accreditation Programme with us, they are already experienced teachers. So they already have a way of doing things, they have a whole bank of knowledge that they use, they have musical skill, they have technical skill, they have all sorts of things that they do, and they come specifically because they want to improve, they want to grow, they want to upgrade, essentially.

The thing that we don't do is to say, yeah, sit in the corner, we're just going to teach you how to teach, we're going to tell you what you should be doing, and then you go off and do it. Because that denies everything that they bring. It doesn't just deny their level of knowledge. It actually denies them as the person as well.

So it's one of the reasons why it's actually quite intensive for us to teach this course because we want to be there and uh, and explore with each person individually and with the group and with smaller groups within the group as well. So it's quite intensive for us to be able to deliver this. What we think it does is it helps the person who comes on the Accreditation Programme find out what it is that they do, what it is that they do best, where they really shine. I talk about falling off a log stuff in the book Successful Singing Auditions, and it's always been really important to me that we find out what somebody can do that is so easy for them to do that they go but that's not even important.

Yes, it is because you can do that really easily and somebody else can't. If you can find those things out, the things that you love doing, the things that you really resonate with, the things that you find so simple, that makes your career from then on so much easier, more interesting, more vibrant for you.

And we might talk about that a bit more. I just want to sort of interject just to sort of, If you like, emphasize, when you do a training course. It's not just about the information. No, it's actually about you. It's about the relationship that you have with the other people on the course. It's about the relationship that you have with us.

And it is about ultimately knowing yourself better. And, you know, apologies if this sounds woo, but this is what people who've been on our courses are telling us. And it's, Something that, in a way, surprises me, and I'm just, just gonna say I, I, I did a a mentoring session the other day with someone who's on the course right now.

What she said, it's transformative. And I know that's a word that's used a lot. And this is a person who would not use that word lightly. It is transforming my teaching and I was very thrilled.

There's some, I mean, people have been giving us amazing feedback on this course and I do want to read a couple out to you because there's one that's absolutely specific to what we were just talking about this is Karin Hylander Ulken in Germany.

I did expect to learn loads and to be more confident at the end of the Accreditation, but I did not expect the profound positive impact it had on my life. Sort of a snowball effect of positivity that is affecting every aspect of it, making it larger, creating unexpected possibilities. Starting with a safe space of respect, acceptance, encouragement that allows the aspiring accreditees to use and discover every tool available to them.

And I love that. It so sums up the effect of what happens with the people on the Accreditation Programme. You find out that The things, the tools that you have that you didn't even realize you had. And I think it's more than that. I think it's about being in alignment. You know, we have, excuse me, we have a whole unit, don't we, on values, which is led mostly by our associate trainer, Anne Leatherland who is also a life coach as well as a voice coach. And she she really brings to the party something very special there where, where people really explore their, their values. You know, I mean, how much do they want to earn? How important is family?

How important is the type of work that you're doing? And that when you do that, you begin to align your skills with those values. And there's no doubt that there is, you know, in, in terms of getting better jobs um, growing your business. People are also saying, I feel happier. I mean, what a joy that we have created something that enables us to facilitate that. Interestingly when we do the training programs, we're not necessarily focused on you have to put your prices up and you have to increase your studio and you have to make more money. One of the things if people's one of people's values is family, then we work the material to make sure that they can spend time with their family.

There are various ways of doing that and it's something that's come up in a couple of the the comments that people have made. I mean this is not a business coaching program. This is a teacher vocational coaching. The fascinating thing is that business coaching ends up being part of it and quite successfully part of it as well.

It's not the reason that people come. The reason that people come is that they feel they want to be more effective for their students, more effective as teachers. There's something missing for them or they want questions answered. By the way, I mean, if we haven't said it up to now, We love questions. I mean, it's almost like it doesn't really matter what the question is, because what a question does is it helps us to know where you are in your level of knowledge, in your area, in your interests, and also you as a person.

And sometimes we're just listening to the wording of the question that you're making and going, oh, that's really fascinating, that reveals this. That is also very good for us because we do Engage with the questions and sometimes a question comes up and you think, I personally haven't thought about it in that way.

Maybe there's something, you know, we do both acknowledge gaps in our knowledge. And one of the reasons why I think our training course is so successful is because of the collaborative work between you and me and Anne, our associate trainer, and sometimes we bang heads together. Yes, we did, we did a half hour of banging heads together after one of the courses because a question came up about breathing and molecules, and it was so fascinating because all, all of us are going, well this, well this, well this.

And we're still able to do that type of discussion without getting heated or angry or anything like that. Because this is all about how do we make this the clearest way possible for the person who asked the question. And sometimes you, you know, you just have to be prepared. I mean, you talk a lot in coaching about the joy of wrong.

No, I don't talk in coaching at all. No, I just let the students say. Okay, right. I do. The joy of wrong. But also as a, a trainer, you know, you come across something, a new bit of information, this happens to all of us, and you think, Oh my God, I've been saying this. Oh yeah. Okay right. And you, you always said, Jeremy, first of all, you have that moment, acknowledge that moment.

And then what matters is, What you do next. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. So you, you're given a piece, and this is cognitive dissonance. You know something, you believe something with your whole heart, you pass it on to people. And then you come across a piece of information that you go, that doesn't fit. And you have cognitive dissonance.

It's like, but I believe what I'm doing, but that doesn't fit and I can't, I can't make it work. Or, but I thought, or, but I've been told, and we all go there, you know, we, we. go there regularly. Oh, I mean, there are loads of reasons for that. It could be that somebody is using a shorthand that you thought you understood, but didn't.

And they mean something different to you. It could be that somebody is passing on their info, the stuff that they've been taught, without necessarily thinking it through. And so to them, it's gospel, and it becomes gospel to you. I mean, there's loads of reasons. But the thing is, it's not, the cognitive dissonance is very useful to to know about cognitive dissonance, which is where something really crashes your gears and you go, well, it's actually what you do next that's important.

You can go, well, I'm not paying attention to that at all. That's, that's obviously not true. That's wrong. And it's evil. You could go, I don't know what to do with that. I'm going to park it until I do. That's very useful, by the way, because it's a, it's an interim step, which means I haven't rejected it completely, but I need time to explore it. Or you could go, Oh, okay, that's a completely different concept. I can see how that works. Right. I'm taking it on. And sometimes you will fight against that concept. Quite often. And I think I think that's okay too. I mean, I mean, maybe one of the things, I'm not a life coach, but maybe one of the things first is to notice, how does that make you feel?

Yeah, 100%. You know, does it, does it make you feel ashamed? Does it make you feel scared? You know, if you're one of those people who says to yourself, What if I've done it wrong? I need to go and check it out. Look for support. This is one of the reasons why we run the programme in the way that we do and why we have a Registered Teacher membership, so that people can support each other going through that process.

Specifically, Cohort 22 really bonded together, and they are still meeting weekly, even after they finish the program. And I had a mentoring session with, because we carry on doing the mentoring sessions. Oh, I'm so glad you're mentioning this. Yeah, we, we carry on doing the mentoring sessions after the Accreditation training has finished and they become Registered Teachers

and Cohort 22 have been really killing it on some of the questions that they discuss together and then bring to us. They're, they're reviewing all of the trainings. Yep. And then coming back to us, because that's the thing is that all the trainings that they did are still available. If you, you know, when you're a Registered Teacher, you can go back and look at all the trainings that we videoed.

Mm-Hmm. . So they can still go back and check stuff. So I had a mentoring session yesterday with one of Cohort 22 and the questions and again, we were talking about breathing and molecules and, and space and resonance and all sorts of things. Some really deep questions. And didn't they say to you, well, I watched Training 5 and you were talking about Training 5, Video 26. Yeah, and then I watched Training 6 and you contradicted yourselves. And I went, I went really. And so, she sort of said what we'd said in, in, in Training 5 and I went, yeah. And then she said, and this is what you went in Training 6. And she said, yes, that face, because I was making the, What?

Why did we say that thing? And it was really interesting because where we ended up was we were talking about similar topics in in training five and six, but we were talking about this different aspects of the same topic. We were talking about resonance and harmonics and stuff. Harmonics and formants and all of that stuff.

And it was really interesting because Both of them were accurate, but they were referring to different things. And it was so fascinating in that session because she'd already worked a lot of this out and she wanted to run it by me to see if it was accurate or not. And she did ask a question that I went, I have no idea.

No, one's ever asked that question before. And I have no idea. Yeah. And so we have to go off. down rabbit holes. We do. And explore that. And what's a really good thing at this moment in time with Cohort 23 is we're coming up to exactly the same training. We are. So yeah, watch this space, everybody. Jeremy, I want to talk a little bit about, obviously, I mean, I hope that we've indicated that being trainers is an ongoing learning process for us, but one of the things that I think is very important for us in our voice profession is to engage continuously in learning and to make adaptations when you feel confident about applying what you've learned.

You know, it is very much that it takes a village. Nobody can know everything. So much out there that we could engage with. And I think it's quite easy for teachers to go, Oh, but I don't know that. I don't know that. Oh, I must now follow this and I must do do that. But going back to how we manage it. is that we go to conferences, we talk with clinicians, you know, we hang out with people and say, you know, this question comes up.

We're still not clear. We both read papers and we also discuss. between us, what's going on. I think it's very important to have colleagues at different levels. You know, I have colleagues that I know on Facebook that I can go to and say, you know what, you've talked about such and such in your post. I have no idea what that is.

Could you give me a dummies guide? And someone who's out there who just wants to spread knowledge and to have open discussion will always reply with generosity. Absolutely. There's, and there's a second aspect to this, which is, is you mentioned in passing as a singing teacher, you go, Oh, I must know everything.

I must know this. I must know this. I must become an expert in that. And I know we've talked about this before. You cannot become an expert in everything. You can't, it's not possible. There isn't enough time and there isn't enough brain space for it. So this is in a way, and we're going back to values and Beliefs, which is the session that we do.

I think it's about month nine. Yeah, it's month nine. Right. Watch out Cohort 23. Yeah, coming up. It's coming up. Yep. If you know what your values and beliefs are, and you know where you resonate, and you know where your interest lies, then immediately that goes, well, there are certain things that I've been told that I ought to learn, or that everybody is talking about this thing now, or that whatever, that you go, actually, it's not as important for me as knowing the practicalities of how to train somebody in this area, or how to train someone in this genre, or how to deal with this cohort of people.

And how to work, for instance, the difference between working with avocational singers, they just want to sing karaoke, or just for themselves, and then working with people who perhaps are aspiring to move into higher education, or who are already in higher education and want to be professional performers, or people who want to songwrite.

I mean, there's a myriad of different client types in that respect, let alone learning styles, where they are in their life cycle, and so on. I do think it's interesting that once you know where your tribe is, or the people who get you, then you start to want to work with them more and more, and you start to change the way you talk about yourself, change the way you talk about your studio, you change the way you advertise yourself as well, and you start to attract people who really get you, and everyone wins.

This is so good. I think we should probably stop there. I think we should probably stop there. I just wanted to say something about curiosity. Yeah. Because learning is really about curiosity, being curious about any information that you're given, being curious about yourself, and being curious about the people that you choose to work with, or who choose to work with you.

I think curiosity keeps you young. I think I'm so happy to hear this. I think curiosity has an energy of its own. It is not a static energy. It's a forward momentum energy. And I think the more you stay curious, the better you are. So our message today is. Stay curious, folks. Stay curious. Thanks very much.

See you next time.

This is A Voice, a podcast with Dr. Gillyanne Kayes and Jeremy Fisher. This is A Voice.