The Secret Voice Teacher Goldmine

"One of the greatest repositories of knowledge for singing and for performance in existence"

What if you had 700 expert voice teaching tools at your fingertips—any time, any day?

In this episode of This Is A Voice, Jeremy and Gillyanne get personal about the Vocal Process Learning Lounge — a powerhouse online resource designed for singing teachers, vocal coaches, choir leaders, and voice users.

You’ll hear how the Learning Lounge came to life, who it’s for, and why it’s become a go-to CPD (continuing professional development) hub with over 38 accredited hours and growing. #CPDforSingers

Whether you want help with vowel tuning, stylistic coaching, teen voice changes, or even straw-based SOVT exercises — the Learning Lounge has it.

Plus, discover how our live Q&As build real community, create a sounding board, and help teachers implement learning that very same day.

Want to try it or ask a question? Visit https://vocalprocess.co.uk or drop us a message.

Topics in this episode include:

• Bite-sized adult learning for busy singing teachers
• Using reflection points instead of multiple choice
• CPD certificates and lesson-ready content
• Live community Q&As (with real teaching results)
• Bonus trainings from SLPs and guest experts
• New courses like “Creating a Safe Space” (polyvagal theory)

📥 Learn more at https://vocalprocess.co.uk/learning-lounge/

00:00 – 🎉 Birthday podcast! (Yes, we’re that dedicated)
01:15 – "The Learning Lounge is AMAZING" - West End vocal coaches agree
02:53 – Why we built a singing teacher’s dream
04:48 – Built for busy voices and busy lives
06:40 – Videos, workshops & songlists — oh my!
08:22 – Less spoon-feeding, more lightbulb moments
10:02 – CPD without the soul-sucking quizzes
11:50 – A vowel epiphany, courtesy of Steph
14:30 – Musical Theatre, resonance & genre wizardry
17:38 – Q&A sessions - your vocal agony aunt hour
22:06 – Vocal muscle training
23:27 – In person in London, you could touch us
25:52 – Adolescent voice change & tricky transitions
28:25 – SOVT straws and muscle tension
35:02 – Safe Spaces & polyvagal insights
37:10 – Where to find us + what’s coming next


Remember to like, subscribe, and hit the bell icon for more insightful episodes. Leave a comment below on what inspired you the most! 👇

You can find out about our Teacher Accreditation for singing teachers, vocal coaches and choir leaders and start your own journey here
https://vocalprocess.co.uk/teacher-accreditation/

We've also got this ↓

Get the One Minute Voice Warmup app here, it's got a 4.9star rating
Appstore https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/one-minute-voice-warmup/id1212802251
Google Play https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=co.speechtools.warmup&hl=en_GB  

Check out our Voice Journal, written with Rayvox's Oren Boder https://www.rayvox.co.uk/products/voice-journal?ref=VOCALPROCESS 
 
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📖 Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/vocalprocess

Transcript

Speaker: 0:11

This is a Voice, a podcast with Dr. Gillyanne Kayes and Jeremy Fisher. Hello and welcome to This Is A Voice, season 11, episode 10, the podcast where we get Vocal about voice. I'm Jeremy Fisher. And I'm Dr. Gillyanne Kayes. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Such a lovely trill. Thank you. And such a nice thing to do. Thank you very much. Yes, friends. It actually is my birthday and it's a sign of dedication, isn't it? It's that we're recording a podcast today. Yes. So what's the topic? What are we talking about? We're gonna talk about our Amazing Learning Lounge resource, aren't we? Yes. There's so much in the Learning Lounge, but we actually want to start with some feedback that we got on. Oh, that's lovely. Feedback on Five Minute Call Podcast that I did with Oren Boder and Claire Underwood. Nice. And we're just gonna play you the feedback. The Learning Lounge is amazing. You're in the Learning Lounge? I'm in The Learning Lounge, yes. In fact, you're both in the Learning Lounge. The Learning Lounge has 600 plus resources going back 22 years. Which is just, and it was interesting. It's just we decided just to put our stuff, all of it out there. I have to say the Learning Lounge in particular is one of the greatest repositories of knowledge for singing and for performance in existence. Thank you. And it completely flies in the face of what Oren and I have talked about before the kind of gatekeeping of information Yes. That you, it's just here. Here it is. Here it is. Come get it. Absolutely. And actually, 'cause let's discuss it, there's absolutely, and there's so much in it. If you want any help. I'm going through it, drop us an email and we still hold to that. Thank you Claire and Oren That was such a lovely thing to do, and actually it was so unexpected at that moment in the interview as well. The greatest repository. I'm happy, I'll we'll take it. Yeah. But also the other thing that, I can't remember exactly what you three were talking about just prior to that, but what Claire's implying is, we're not gate keeping the knowledge. Yeah. There it is. You know that this is how we work. This is how we work with teachers. This is what we have to offer. Come and get it. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and like I said, and we still stick to this, which is the Learning Lounge is so big, there's such a lot of stuff in it, that it can be really overwhelming when you first see it. And if there's something that you specifically want to find in there, then drop us an email and we'll show you where it is. Mm-hmm. If there's a topic that you specifically want to work with. Email us and we'll show you where it is. It's, there's no sort of bias. There's no side with it. This is the work that we've done for the last 22 years and we've put apart from the books, pretty much everything we've done is up on the Learning Lounge. You can really see our thinking process and our teaching process there, and that's really taking me to, why did we do it in the first place? Yes. Because. Really all the time. It's about what do singing teachers need. Yes. And nowadays, because there's so much. Interest in working with singers as in music leadership and singing leadership, which is a whole other way of delivering singing learning. I would say what do singing teachers and music leaders need? And we're evolving these resources all the time. All the time, which might talk about in a minute. There's something which I thought was quite interesting. Yeah. Which is, you and I had slightly different reasons for putting it up. And I know you are very much into educating, sharing, improving knowledge, information. Yeah. For the singing teacher. For the choir leader. For the vocalist. For the Vocal coach. For the conductor, yeah. And there's some stuff for SLTs and SLPs as well, isn't there? There is, yeah. And I had a very slightly different reason for doing it. I love creating stuff. I love producing stuff. I love all of the resources that we do, and I will, I'm quite happy to work in whatever genre or whatever style or whatever format that we want. And there came a point where I was thinking we are sitting on an enormous amount of stuff and it's just not getting out there anymore. And so for me it was what do we do with this huge body of information and techniques and knowledge. Yeah. And we don't have anywhere to put it really. And so we created the Learning Lounge as much as anything to put the information there so that people can get at it, they can see it, they can watch it, they can learn from it. And I think the other thing that's really important about it, and this is very much an, an aspect of modern life, that it is designed for the working teacher. The working singing leader. The working singer, the busy mom. Yeah. Which is it's bite-sized learning and apparently this is the new thing. This is the new best thing for adult learners who are in the workplace, that they can drop into something for about 20 minutes. It's really focused learning. Yep. They get something applicable. And we're really hot on that because it's not just information, it's applicability, yes, to your situation and always to the music. So you can spend those 20 minutes in there and you go, ah, light bulb moment. I can be doing that in my next class. It doesn't even have to be 20 minutes. Some of the shortest videos are two. Two minutes, that's all you need to get the information from that particular thing. I think the longest we do is something like 28 minutes. Apart from the live q and as, which we're gonna talk about in a minute. So also everything, I'm very much of the opinion that it should be called, whatever it is, it should be called, it's it's exactly as it says on the tin. So everything that we do has a title that pretty much says what's in there. So you can literally scan down the titles and go, that's interesting. Interesting topic. I'll have that one. Yeah. So we'll have an overall topic, for example, which might be taking technique into song, but that's subdivided into chapters. Yeah. So if all you want to do is look at how to troubleshoot certain aspects of genre, you might want to just pop into to that particular genre in that section. Yes, and it'll be there and you can apply it. So there's something else as well, which is because people learn in such different ways, and also they learn from different formats. So we have a whole load of live courses that we recorded. Mm-hmm. We have a whole load of live webinars that we recorded. Mm-hmm. We have lesson plans that we've created beforehand that are PDFs. We have databases, we have all sorts of things. It's like if you prefer videos, then we have 400 and something videos on there. If you prefer databases, we have three databases on there, which are song. I think there's something that's well over a thousand songs in those databases. So you have different formats that you can take and go, I'll just scan down this, or I'll just watch this video. Almost everything's transcribed. Is that right? If it's still working on that one? Yeah. Okay. But there are captions on Yep almost all of the videos and something that I think we started last year. How many languages can it be translated into? Five. With a click of a button? Yep. Yeah. A lot of this stuff has got language subtitles in as well. Yeah. And I couldn't quite decide which languages to go within the end. So I'm pretty sure we have Spanish. I'm pretty sure we have Korean, German, we have Korean, I think we have some in Mandarin. So there's a few. Oh, and hindi, it's Hindi. So we'd try to cover the globe as much as we can. But if you specifically want something in a language and you basically, the we are not clear enough in English and you want it in your own language, just let us know and I'll see if I can get that language in for you. Yes. I think I also want to say something which is. I've already indicated we're giving you tools. We also prompt you to think. We're very hot on this, aren't we? Which is we get you to think for yourselves. Which actually is what everybody does when they're working with their students, I would hope. Because your job is about enabling them to do it rather than telling them. So we don't just tell you, we get you to think. And if you like doing that, if you like working with people who make you think you're gonna love what's in there. Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And we expect you to take the information and make it your own. Yeah. Yeah, you can copy us if you want to, but it's actually much more interesting if you take the information and work it through your own set of filters. Now I want to say something about CPD, continuing professional development, certificates. Yes. Yes. A number of the resources carry a certificate, don't they? Yes. I can't remember exactly how many. I think we have over 30 hours. Of training in the Learning Lounge. That is CPD accredited. I think it's probably more than that now. Be Oh, it is more than that. Yeah. Must be. We must be up to 50 by now. Yeah. And I think what's interesting is that each course, we make it very clear in each course or each section, whether it's CPD accredited, and there's usually a form to fill in and there's questions that you can fill in for yourself, so it makes you think as well. And then we email a certificate to you, so you get a certificate, and that is all included in the Learning Lounge price. Yeah, absolutely. And working in an unregulated profession these professional development points can be really important. Yeah, I think, yeah. I just wanted to say something, Jeremy, I dunno if you remember, but was a while back sometime last year, someone who was really enjoying the Learning Lounge actually just gave some feedback on the feedback form saying, oh, I didn't have to do a test, but I still got a certificate. Yeah, let's talk about that. Yeah. When you get these multiple choice tests, are you really being tested? How much do you really learn? We would far rather we, that you use those reflection points that are we haven't really talked about the reflection points. Okay. Good. In a lot of the courses that we do, we have reflection points. They're like questions that we ask about a video that you've just watched or a resource that you've just looked at that enable you to look back and think, what is it that I've taken away from this? And those reflection points are incredibly useful for you to embed the information and also for us to know that you have taken it in, that you've learned something. And so they're incredibly valuable and we have a lot of them that run all the way through the Learning Lounge. And we think that is a lot more important than, checking some boxes in a multiple choice question. Sorry people. Hey, if you want a multiple choice question, I'll make you a multiple choice question. It's is nose skin off my nose? ChatGPT does them extremely well, but I'm not sure how valuable they are. If you are given the direct answers already and you just need to choose between three, I think it's much more interesting, yeah. If you are asked a question and you go what actually did I take away? What am I learning? And that makes you. I'm gonna say it makes you work a little harder, but that's not actually the case. It helps you to embed what you've learned. And if you're on the Learning Lounge, you are there to learn. There's no other reason to be there really. And that brings me very nicely Yeah. To Steph. Now we've we've got a little bit of feedback from three different teachers working at different levels actually. And Steph is on our Teacher Accreditation course right now, which means she's been in the Learning Lounge. And she is one person who really thinks and comes back to us and says, I don't understand the question in the reflection points. How am I supposed to deal with this? Yeah. Which just goes to show that, nothing is a perfect learning model because it's about how that person thinks and processes. Yes. So if you've been in the Learning Lounge and that's happened to you, or if you join it in the near future and you look at the reflection points and you think. I'm not quite sure what this means. We would love to hear from you. Absolutely. Yeah. And we will answer your email. Steph is a very interesting person to talk about because she is an experienced choir leader and kids group leader. But she is And singer. And singer. She's new to teaching one-to-one. So that's one of the aspects of the accreditation program that we're helping her develop. And she said. My biggest Learning Lounge aha moment was learning about vowel shapes and how they can affect the quality of your sound, and how certain shapes can be more helpful than others, depending on the individual's voice size, the shape, the genre, and the height of the notes. Since learning that, it has really changed the way I work with the students. I totally get that because she's working with quite small kit going up into teens. So there's going to be developing voice issues as you go through there and when you're working with them singing in chorus, optimizing the vowel shapes for those particular notes and for that particular sound quality you're looking for is super important. And I'm just, I just want to think, Jeremy, where is the vowel tuning. I think it's in Vocal Process Best, Best Practice Practice. Best Practice Update. Yeah, go and check that out. Vowel tuning. While we're on Best Practice Update, can I just mention Caroline and this is what she says, the vast range of resources Jeremy and Gillyanne have. Produced have been front and center in my journey of developing my knowledge as a singer and singing teacher. The Learning Lounge offers access to a wealth of brilliant training resources. I particularly liked the Best Practice Update, which brought together a wide range of their latest practices across many aspects of Vocal technique. And I think there are certain courses that we pick out, which we go, we loved doing that course. We loved creating it. And we loved teaching it, and people have had such strong reactions to it. My, one of my personal favorites is Mastering Musical Theatre, which we did. It's a, it was originally a five hour training that we recorded live. And people. We had people in that audience, and we've had people who've watched it since who know their way around musical theater. They've been teaching musical theatre for years. They, they work with musical theater. They coach people in the West End and they came on the course. And the way that we break down, not just the information, not just the Vocal techniques, and by the way, we do. Four masterclass sections in that. That course. But we also break down styles and genres and the expectations and audience reactions and performance techniques. There's so much packed into that course, and it's something we've been talking about recently because of the stage in fact that our um, Teacher Accreditation is on right now because. They're in month six and we just asked them to do some modeling of a particular artist. Yes. And to explore it in their voice. And I think one of the things that really came out of that session was that it wasn't just about resonance shape, which was the thing that we wanted them to focus on. It's not about what you're doing, with your Vocal tract configuration, of course that's there, what is the coordination that you're using. But there are so many stylistic and expressive elements that are features of a particular artist or a particular genre or a sub genre that. I think if you are a musician already working in that field, you've already absorbed those. But if someone comes in from another field and they can hear things, but they actually don't know how to unpack, yes, those differences, those performance elements, the musical elements, the phrasing, et cetera, et cetera I think that's something that. Between us, we are super good at. You don't know this, but I actually did that this morning on a coaching session. We haven't even talked about this. Where I was saying as a singer that this person, it was actually very skilled as a singer and is doing all sorts of things in that, in the lesson they'd said, oh, I gave this musical pattern to my student. And I went, you do realize that's actually a very complicated musical pattern. She said, oh no, it's really easy. And I said, no, it's easy for you because you have a history of doing musical patterns like that. But when you're dealing with a beginner singer, you need to break it down into smaller units so that if you want to build to that musical pattern, or that Punctuation pattern or that, consonant pattern or whatever it is you can build to it. But for somebody who is not used to being around singers or singing or doing it themselves, sometimes you need to break an exercise down into something that is much smaller and neater and much easier to handle. And it's one of the things that we do in Best Practice Update. We do a whole thing on onsets. In Mastering Musical Theatre, we do a whole thing on style features. So it's breaking stuff down in a way that you can then teach really clearly to somebody what they can't do to get them to be able to do what you want them to do. And Jeremy, that brings me to some of the Q&A topics. Yeah. 'cause am I right in thinking that we did one where we said what are Vocal exercises and what are they for? I think we probably did just a little bit. Yeah. We have lists here now. When did we set up the Live Q&As Because this is actually about digging deeper into how you apply things, how you break things down, and also something that we're. Really hot on, which is community and sharing and having a safe space. So for people to ask before we go to the list of stuff that we've covered I want to talk about the Live Q&As because I think that they're not necessarily unique, but they are close to in that the Live Q&As are built into. The Learning Lounge and we run a session which lasts about an hour. Anybody in the Learning Lounge is welcome to come and join in the session. It's live. We sometimes have a topic that we cover. We sometimes it's a free for all. Sometimes we have absolutely no idea what's gonna happen in the session. That's fun. But anybody can ask any questions, and it can be to do with something they've seen on the courses or read in the PDFs. Or it can be a problem that they have with a student that day. Yes. That they've just brought in. Yeah. And it's what would you do? And obviously we are there to say this is how we would break it down. This is. This is what we would do, or here are some suggestions, a whole field of suggestions, but also the people who are there with us watching the Learning Lounge, taking part in it. It becomes a community group where we all share ideas. Yeah. And we all share exercises and why we might do something and what the approach might be. And we've certainly had situations where we have done a bit of troubleshooting for a teacher. And they've gone off and they've put it into practice that day or in the next lesson, and they've emailed us back to say, wow, it worked. I think that's, for me, that's one of the most important bits. What we give you, you can use that day. Yeah. You can literally leave the Q&A, do a set, do a teaching session five minutes later and put those things into practice because you know how to do it. I want to talk about what Caroline has written for us. Their Live Q&As are fantastic. They give you the chance to ask follow up questions on training in the Learning Lounge, which helps bring real clarity as well as posing questions that relate to your current teaching practices, which means you have access to expert support and an invaluable sounding board, which is so unique. Don't we all need a sounding board. We really do. I mean, one of the reasons I think that that Gillyanne and I have survived so long is that we have each other to bounce questions off. Yeah. What I want to do is to read out to you, I actually got ChatGPT to do a precis of what we'd done in the Learning Lounge Lives. So going back to December, 2023, which was the first one we did. Wow. Okay. We focused on semi occluded Vocal tract exercises, SOVT, and their effects on bubble size and frequency. Vocal mechanism transitions, M1 to M two and Vocal offsets. Okay. January, 2024. Detailed explanations of head voice and register mechanisms, particularly distinguishing M1 chest and M two falsetto and concepts around the second passaggio. And notice we're using a whole mix of terminology there. Different lexicons. Yeah. Yeah. We're using M1, M two, chest falsetto, head registers, pass using all sorts of terms and. That usually we will use a term that people recognize, but if they don't, we are quite happy to switch lexicon and go, oh, this is what this means here. Or we might question somebody if they say, oh, it's this label that I give to it. And I say, do you mean this or this? 'cause they all come under that label. Let's get more specific. Yeah. So it doesn't matter to us really, which, which labeling system you use. And since we've talked about register mechanisms, the place to go to understand our approach to that and the terminology that we use is, once again, best practice. Best practice update, where we take the group through mechanisms one and mechanisms two, and playing around with them and playing around with them with range. Yeah. If you want to get your head around that, I think you'd find it a really useful resource. Yes. February, 2024. Discussion on Vocal muscle training. Oh, yes. My goodness. Specifically the thyroarytenoid muscle, TA, including slow versus fast twitch muscle fibres. Sometimes on these Q&As we go really deep into the physiology. This was a deep one and this one came up because one of our. Registered teachers had heard a report of someone's research and she came to us and said how much can we train the Vocal fold muscle, the one that we call the hyoid? So we had to run down several rabbit holes, didn't we? Very we do our Very interesting, we do our practice beforehand. Yeah. We really do all the research stuff beforehand. We love that you challenge us. Yes. Okay. So what was the next one? March was that March? Shall I read this one? Yep. We explored Vocal range requirements across genres, comfort zones, and that's to do with range, and considerations for Vocal longevity. Yeah, that seemed to be a range one. And we had such an interesting conversation about do different genres require different notes from people. Literal range. Do you need three octaves? Do you need four octaves? Do you need an octave and a half? What do you need? Yeah. In different music genres. And that was lovely for me because of course that was one of the topics of my PhD research. Yes. Yeah. May 24. Analysis of genre differentiation style elements and cross genre singing techniques. And we are going to be featuring in the BVA at the end of July, conference at the end of July, talking about cross genre training. The multi genre singing teacher think multi-genre singing teacher is what it's called. So do look out for that 'cause. And we're gonna be appearing in person in London. We're gonna be there. You could touch us. Rare appearance if we let you. Okay. Yep. So if we're looking now at the next one, which was July, 2024, we tackled technical challenges around gear changes. Gear changes are very popular topics, by the way. Vowel modification. Consonant transitions within singing context. That sounds fairly posh. Ooh. But it was really fascinating 'cause all of these questions come up from people going either I don't understand what other people are talking about, what do they mean? Or, I've hit this situation with a student of mine and I know that there's something going on, but I'm not quite sure what to do with it. Sometimes people send in recordings. Yes. And you can certainly do that. Or if your student gives permission, you can make a little video. I'm having a problem here. What's the best way to deal with it? And I have a feeling that with that one, that was the case. Yep. And if we're talking about consonant transitions, as Jeremy said, bit of a posh word, how do we move from consonant to vowel or vice versa? And after all, singers sing words. So the way that we manage those words is absolutely essential, and we have a fantastic two hour training resource again chunked up into little chapters called Practical Phonetics, which is in the Learning Lounge. Mm-hmm. Really good course that one. And you don't need to know phonetics to do it. That isn't the point. The point is to understand how it is that we make sounds and the relationship between, if you like, how the mouth forms them and what we see written down, and then what happens when we're putting it to music. I'll tell you something that I think that course does really well, and that's it sharpens your hearing. Mm-hmm. Because suddenly you start to understand some of the things that you are hearing that are word or vowel related and not tone related. Very interesting. And you can solve so many technical problems with that. Yes, I do a lot. Okay. You go next. September 24, investigated adolescent male voice changes, focusing on transitioning from boy treble to baritone. That was a whole session. On male voice change. Really fascinating. And I mean I think it probably still is the case that the majority of one-to-one singing teachers tend to be female. I dunno why that is. I'm sure it's changing. I hope it's changing. And it's gonna be difficult for them to understand. Obviously there is adolescent voice change in females as well, but it's not as dramatic as it is in males. So it's really important to understand that. It also highlights that as a singing teacher, you will often work with the knowledge that you either have learned or have felt and experienced. And I think the difficulty when women are working with male voice is that they haven't felt the type of change or the dramatic level of change that boys go through between the ages of nine and 17. And so one of the things that we want to do, because obviously. Gillyanne's female and I'm male and therefore we cover most of the bases, is that we are able to share experiences and knowledge and information on what happens, how it feels, what we can do about it where we can support people. There's all sorts of things that we can do. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. October. Okay. Interesting about vowels and consonants. So singing of words, again, an emphasis on vowel and consonant adjustments, specifically tackling issues with the American hard r coloring in vowels, as in the word hard. Yeah. So much musical theater and a fair amount of contemporary commercial music is based on American pronunciation of some kind or other. And it gets a bit vague sometimes, but it is really fascinating as English speaker, English English speakers, that there is a, there are certain adjustments that you need to make in order to sound authentic. Yeah. And the posh word for it is rhoticity. Yep. By the way, you can see how varied the topics are that we cover mm-hmm. Month by month. Mm-hmm. And like I said, most of the time we don't particularly know which topics are gonna come up. We normally have an idea of maybe one or two. We do a bit of a guide. Yeah. And then it's, it's live. Mm-hmm. So whatever people will have, oh yes. That connects with this. Yeah. And then ask a question. November 24, we addressed the physical aspects of Vocal exercises, specifically straw formation techniques and muscle tension. Interesting. We do a lot of stuff on SOVT in straw formation. Yeah, absolutely. People have a lot of questions about it. They know that it's good, but they don't know always how to adapt it to specific situations. And the first thing that I want to do is to point people towards SOVT one and two, which is and also the bonus science. Question. So there are essentially the equivalent of three courses in the Learning Lounge on SOVT, particularly, which we co-ran with Oren Boder. Yeah. Of Rayvox. Of Rayvox, yeah. And Oren is an SOVT expert. So you get the science and the practice, and you see us doing breakout sessions and little mini masterclass things. So that's huge fun. I had such fun doing those breakout sessions. Yeah. I'm still learning about using SOVT. I think everybody is. I think it's still an ongoing thing. Okay, so when we we took a pause in December, which is fair enough, isn't it? Yes. Christmas. Yeah. And then we, give us a break. We got to January and we covered practical aspects of Vocal health including using a nebulizer versus a steamer, to, hydrate the Vocal folds, which was better. And we had some input. Lovely input, didn't we for that? From Carrie Garrett. From Carrie Garrett, yes. Speech and language therapist. And we'll talk about the course she did for us in a minute. Yes. And also TA and CT muscle interaction. Thyroarytenoid and Cricothyroid. Yeah. Okay. There's so much in there. Yeah. And by the way, nebulizer versus steamer comes up a fair amount as a question. So we decided to tackle it head on, and we did a major, I think it was 20 minutes. On that topic. There was so much that we found in the research that we could go into. So if you like discussions about what's the research had there, what's the general level of knowledge Then that one, the January 25 one was absolutely great, will be really good for you. I just want to go back to the idea of Vocal health and voice problems. Yep. Because Carrie Garrett, again did a two hour popup for us called. I think it was a, My Singer Has A Voice Problem. And Carrie Garrett is a specialist speech and language therapist specialized in voice and she's also a singer. And a singing teacher and what makes and singing teacher, what makes Carrie so interesting. And a voice rehab coach. Yep. So what makes Carrie so interesting in this field is that she has a lot of angles that she's come from. Yeah. And an enormous amount of experience in different fields. So she can bring a lot of knowledge and a lot of information into the whole Vocal health conversation. So if you want to understand more about what it means to have a voice problem and what our role is as singing teachers, because it's almost impossible to work for several years as a singing teacher or a, a choir leader, I would say, without coming across someone who's having some kind of a problem. And we do need to know where the boundaries are between our profession and the medical profession, and ways that we can help our singers to navigate those tricky times. And I think that the course was particularly good for that. Plus there was a bonus aspect, which is that there was endoscopic footage Yes. Of Carrie using SOVT and different straw widths. Oh, that was so interesting. Mm-hmm. So you are seeing somebody comparing straws with a camera from the inside. Yeah. And that is absolutely fascinating. Really worth a watch. And then April 25 we focused on head and neck alignment issues, Feldenkrais inspired techniques and Vocal tension. So this is very much about the physicality of singing and setting yourself up to be able to sing, to be able to do what you do. Yeah, I think it is a very common topic, which is, what do I do if my singer's like this? Does it matter if the shoulders are up there? Oh, they seem to have a sway back. What's my job here? What's my role? So talking about the singing body, if you like, and again, understanding what it is that we can and can't do. For me, it's mostly about aiming to raise awareness. I think we used to be in, oh, this person isn't standing properly. Therefore they can't sing. Well hello. You can sing in an awful lot of positions. You don't have to be standing in a particular way. Yep. The moment you start singing on stage, you are in all sorts of positions because that's what your character is doing. And I think what I did by the looks of it, that we had some questions about this and I went to my own Feldenkrais teacher 'cause I've been doing Feldenkrais for about, six years. And I said, look, because she used to work in theater. I said, my singing teachers are talking about this. What do you think are some good ways into raising awareness? Do you know what Jeremy? I'd really like to mention the feedback that Martine gave us. Now, Martine is one of our Registered Teachers. She's been a Registered Teacher with us for a while, and she talks about the Learning Lounge being a place to go when she needs a bit of a boost of knowledge, and also she needs to refresh something, but key things as well, community and intelligence. Thank you for that, Martine. It's really important. The high quality resources and insightful mentoring are the cornerstones of the many ways the Learning Lounge elevates my teaching, especially the regular Q&A, which are always great fun and keep us connected. And I have to say, Martine, you always give us some really challenging and insightful questions. Absolutely fantastic. Yeah. If you want to find out more about the Live Q&As, if you want to find out more about the Learning Lounge and you are not on our database already go to Vocal Process dot co hello english Vocal Process dot co dot uk and sign up for our newsletter. Which means we will then be able to give you all of the information about what happens next, and we can tell you all about the Learning Lounge. And if you want to sign up, we will put the link to sign up in the show notes. And Jeremy, it is totally okay for people to email me when you receive your hello and welcome to the Learning Lounge. Email. Email me and say I'm looking for resources that cover this. Yes. Can you point me towards them? Yes. Now there's something important we've left out. What have we left out? New stuff in the Learning Lounge. New stuff. Because this is really important, we're evolving this and our profession is evolving. And our most recent course in the Learning Lounge was about Creating a Safe Space by applying polyvagal theory. Yes. With one of our own teachers, Franka van Essen. And this was a very popular course and a lovely course. Yeah. This is the thing is that we are still adding to the Learning Lounge. So I said in the five minute call interview that we had 600 items in the Learning Lounge. It's a lot closer to 700 now. We are still adding stuff. We still think that because of developments, because of people's interest. Yeah. Because topics come up and we go, actually that's really interesting. So let's create something about it or let's run a course and put a copy of it in the Learning Lounge. So there are all sorts of things we haven't even mentioned everything that's in there, but there are all sorts of things in there that we are still adding to. Yeah. I'm just gonna go back to the lovely course. Creating a Safe Space. There's a lot of talk these days about polyvagal theory, which is great. Actually it's about understanding what it is at the appropriate level for us as voice people and what we can do about it. And similarly with topics like anxiety, self-regulation, people being unregulated and again, also understanding our boundaries as trainers. And I particularly loved, one of the core aspects of Franka's course, which is if you are going to be dealing with students and you want to help them with their self-regulation, you gotta deal with your own first. Oh, yes. It's like part of the course is And who are you exactly? Yeah. And what's going on with you. Yeah. Yeah. Because actually we need to care for ourselves too, the work that we do, it's an energy exchange and it's a very demanding job. It is. Okay, we're done. I'm done. We're done. Good. Can I get on with my birthday now? Absolutely. So ask us anything about the Learning Lounge. Drop us an email info at Vocal Process dot co dot uk. Send us a message however you want to send us a carrier pigeon, however you want to get to us. Let us know and we'll ask you your questions. See you soon. Bye bye. This is a voice, a podcast with Dr. Gillyanne Kayes and Jeremy Fisher. This Is A Voice.