SLT versus Singing Teacher. Boundaries, Referral & Vocal Health

What's the difference between a speech and language therapist (or pathologist) and a singing teacher? Where do those roles overlap and where should the boundaries be?

In this episode of This Is a Voice, Jeremy Fisher and Dr Gillyanne Kayes explore the similarities and differences between the work of an SLT/SLP and a singing teacher, especially when singers or professional voice users arrive with voice problems, vocal fatigue, or concerns about vocal health. The conversation begins after teaching a course for SLTs in Northern Ireland, where questions about overlap, gaps & boundaries kept coming up.

Gillyanne and Jeremy unpack the difference between a more medicalized approach and a more functional one, showing how clinicians may be focused on diagnosis, pathology, red flags and referral pathways, while singing teachers and vocal coaches are often focused on efficiency, stamina, clarity, range, coordination and performance goals.

   * when a singer should be referred onward
   * why singing teachers need to stay inside their scope of practice
   * how to think about vocal load
   * why voice problems are often multifactorial, a “perfect storm”
   * what singing teachers can legitimately observe and ask

00:00 Singing teachers training SLTs
01:30 Why this SLT training course was different
03:45 Overlaps, gaps and boundaries
05:57 Singing teachers can help retrain coordination
08:33 Medicalized vs functional voice work
11:42 Multifactorial voice problems and boundaries
15:43 Perfectionism, performance pressure and voice recovery
19:57 Case study, effortful voice through 2 different lenses
23:29 What to hear, see and ask before giving exercises
25:24 Why context matters more than generic exercises
26:33 What is my job today in this room?
28:00 Case history, profiling and trial interventions
31:34 Being a detective, testing and evaluating exercises

If you’re interested in voice therapy, vocal pedagogy, functional voice training, singing teaching, rehabilitation vs habilitation, and referral decisions, this episode is packed with practical insight from two voice experts who train speech therapists


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 ↓ 

For the best self-guided learning, check out the Vocal Process Learning Lounge - 22 years of vocal coaching resources (over 600 videos) for less than the price of one private singing lesson. 
Click on the link https://vocalprocess.co.uk/learning-lounge/learning-lounge-level-2-deep-dive/
 
If you want to discover if our singing teacher training programme works for YOU, message us - we can share the process for joining Cohort26. https://www.cognitoforms.com/VocalProcess1/TheAccreditationProgramme 

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 
 
Find us - follow us on the socials! 
🐦 Twitter - https://twitter.com/Vocalprocess   
📸 Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/vocalprocess  
📖 Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/vocalprocess

 #vocalprocess #teacheraccreditation #voicetraining

Transcript

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

Jeremy: Hello and welcome to This is A Voice, season 12, episode nine.

Gillyanne: The podcast where we get Vocal about voice. 

Jeremy: I'm Jeremy Fisher. 

Gillyanne: And I'm Dr. Gillyanne Kayes. 

Jeremy: And last week we were in Northern Ireland giving a course a two day course called Applied Vocal Skills for Client-Relevant Strategies, and we came up with some really interesting questions and also this whole business of speech and language therapists and singing teachers, and we are looking at gaps.

Jeremy: Overlaps. 

Gillyanne: And Boundaries. 

Jeremy: Boundaries, yeah. 

Gillyanne: And by the way, this kind of course is something that we've done a lot of. In fact, I think this is our fourth return to Northern Ireland. Thank you very much. A shout out to the health trusts over there for placing your trust in us to help you build these functional skills.

Gillyanne: And we've done them in other parts of the UK as well. So I suppose for, people listening to us, particularly perhaps people coming from the singing teaching world, you might be thinking well, yeah. But what are you doing helping speech and language therapists? What are you doing doing a training for them?

Jeremy: We think this course that, that we do is quite unusual. Mm-hmm. Because it doesn't separate singing, vocal function and clinical thinking. So we actually put all of them together and then we work out where responsibilities lie, what the goals are, and there's all sorts of things that we do. And it's a practical course.

Gillyanne: Yeah. And to be clear, it's not um, most of their client caseload would not be singers. Yes. Some of them might be avocational singers. 

Jeremy: Yeah. 

Gillyanne: And there obviously would be some SLTs or SLPs, we'll continue to say SLT folks if you're listening. 

Jeremy: Yep. 

Gillyanne: But know that it means the same things, 

Jeremy: speech and language therapist, speech and language pathologists.

Gillyanne: Yeah. Some of them will be working in specialist voice clinics and they may well specialize in singers, but this kind of a course isn't about that. It's more about us sharing our knowledge of Vocal function, how we elicit change in our clients and how we can map, help them map that across into their cases.

Jeremy: We have some specialisms, if you like, where we can create very specific targeted exercises and that depends on diagnosing the problem. So we do, we basically took two things in with us, which is we took the, our knowledge of Vocal function and style and genre and all of that stuff. But we also took in how we, not how we diagnose a problem, but how we diagnose the solution for it.

Jeremy: And we can then create an exercise that is absolutely specifically targeted to that person's problem. 

Gillyanne: So it was about sharing strategy? 

Jeremy: Yes. 

Gillyanne: And can I say as well that on this occasion we had a secret weapon? 

Jeremy: We did. 

Gillyanne: Who is our secret weapon, 

Jeremy: Laura? Laura Thomas, who is one of our registered teachers.

Jeremy: Mm-hmm. She's also a specialist speech and language therapist specializing in voice. And she came in, she beamed in from London on both afternoons in order to share her knowledge and her experience as well. 

Gillyanne: Yeah. It was great to have that, having her voice and using sort of clinical voice speak to really embed the relevance of what we did.

Jeremy: Yes. 

Gillyanne: It's super important. 

Jeremy: So I wanna start, because this is gonna be such a fascinating discussion. There's a lot of overlap, but there's also a lot of points where you go, and now I need to hand over to that specialist. 

Gillyanne: Can I just quote something that I think is relevant at this point?

Gillyanne: Yes. I have been looking at some nice posts by SLP Lori Sonnenberg and I did a course of hers. Last year, late last year on application of creaky voice in improving Vocal skills. 

Jeremy: Yeah, 

Gillyanne: so a shout out to the work that she is doing in her clinic because I, it's very singer relevant. But she did a post about what might be missing in many voice therapy protocols.

Gillyanne: So from that side of things, and, shout out for her targeted Vocal fold adduction. 

Jeremy: Yes. 

Gillyanne: So how often do we miss that? And of course, this is something that we do have to do in our voice training sessions. And she talks about how a lot of therapeutic approaches, and this is obviously to do with medicalization and clinical approaches.

Gillyanne: They're focusing on unloading the hyperfunctional behavior, unloading the voice getting rid of the strain and the tension and Vocal effort. And certainly some of the cases we listened to that was absolutely, the first line of action if you like. 

Jeremy: Yeah. 

Gillyanne: But it doesn't guarantee that the Vocal folds will close or co or coordinate properly again.

Gillyanne: And this makes me think of, years and years ago when I first met Jacob Lieberman at the British Voice Association, and he used to work in a multidisciplinary voice clinic in the uk. He's now in Hamburg and he talked about the, if you like, the laryngeal therapy that he was doing, he developed a whole series of protocols for laryngeal manipulation.

Gillyanne: He was a real, groundbreaker in that. And he said the thing is, as he's an osteopath, isn't he? Yes. As an osteopath, what he'd found, you could fix the problem, the patient could refer and then do whatever, undo the muscles. But if you don't change those habitual patterns 

Jeremy: Yes.

Gillyanne: Hello, what's gonna happen? It's going to come back again. 

Jeremy: Absolutely. 

Gillyanne: And this is where singing voice teachers with an interest in Vocal habilitation can really interface well with with speech and language therapists. Yeah. Not because we want to take the job. So we are very good at retraining coordination.

Jeremy (2): Yep. 

Gillyanne: And so, the whole course, this time you mentioned about, knowledge of anatomy and physiology. When I was putting the course together. 'cause I started that process, didn't I? 

Jeremy (2): Mm-hmm. 

Gillyanne: I didn't want to spend a lot of time showing slides of anatomy and physiology. They've already done that, they're already working in clinic.

Gillyanne: Occasionally we referred to things like that, didn't we? About, the why, but it was much more about changing the thinking. 

Jeremy: Yes. 

Gillyanne: Getting people to think in a different way and then giving targeted strategies. 

Jeremy: Yes. 

Gillyanne: Okay. I've rabbited on enough now. What do you want to say? 

Jeremy: I want to talk about the main job focuses, foci.

Jeremy: And the speech language therapists can come for me if necessary. If you have a, if you disagree with this, then drop a comment. Okay. We are aiming at roughly the same thing, but the background and the direction that we're coming from is very different. 

Gillyanne: And also the reason for the client seeking help is very different.

Jeremy: Yes. 

Gillyanne: There's a medical referral process. 

Jeremy: Yeah. 

Gillyanne: But when you go for a singing lesson, you generally book it yourself. 

Jeremy: True. 

Gillyanne: It's very different. 

Jeremy: Okay. So the speech and language therapy side will be working inside diagnosis. It's very much team-based care. So you have a whole team of people around you, all of whom may be contributing to the diagnosis and the speech and language therapist's job is to make sure that those things are put into place and also ongoing care.

Gillyanne: Mm-hmm. Outcomes have to be demonstrated. Yes. And it has to be by and large, based on evidence-based practice. 

Jeremy: Yeah. And the singing teacher or the Vocal coach is working more functionally, artistically. They're more likely to do one-off or very short sessions. Short-term sessions. And they're aiming to, on the whole, they are aiming towards performance.

Jeremy: It's not always the case. There are non performative versions of singing. Mm-hmm. Obviously, but in a way you are aiming to get somebody functional, usually over a wider range and usually with a bigger range of dynamics because singing requires contrast of some kind. So it's very interesting. And I put this into ChatGPT, everybody knows I'm a chat fan at the moment.

Jeremy: And it came up with this phrase, medicalized versus functional, and I went, okay, I am not exactly sure what that means. So can you describe for me what it means? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And it came up with two pages of stuff, and I think it's really fascinating. So here we go. It's looking, it's starting from a different point.

Jeremy: So medicalized means the voice is being viewed mainly through a healthcare lens that usually includes diagnosis. Oh, and by the way, diagnosis is not always done by the speech therapist. It's often done by surgeons or by people in, on the medical team. 

Gillyanne: It should be done as a result of scoping at least, and, a whole protocol of things that a team will need to go through.

Jeremy: So they're looking specifically for pathology or underlying condition, red flags, tissue status, surgical history, neurological factors, muscle tension, dysphonia, rehab goals, and the scope of practice and referral pathways. So they may be asking. The questions that they would ask would be, what's the diagnosis? What's safe? What has been impaired? Does it need rehabilitation or does it need compensation? So the rehabilitation to get back to what would be considered standard function might not be possible. So you then need to compensate in some other way, or are they okay as far as I'm concerned and now need referral.

Jeremy: And basically what outcome is realistic within this healthcare context? And obviously that varies country to country. 

Gillyanne: I like here what you've looked at, which is with regard to function 

Jeremy: Yeah. 

Gillyanne: And the bullet points there. Do you want to read those out? 'cause I think they're interesting and then I've got something to say following.

Jeremy: A singing teacher or a Vocal coach might say to themselves, how is this voice currently working? What is the person trying to achieve? How is their efficiency? How is their stamina? Mm-hmm. How is their clarity? How is their range, the reliability of the voice, their expressive choices? Are they able to make expressive choices? Habit and coordination across a much wider range?

Jeremy: And how does this function carry over into speaking, singing, teaching, performing, all of the situations that you're gonna find yourself in. 

Gillyanne: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 

Jeremy: So they may be asking, what's getting in the way of the task? 

Gillyanne: And I think as well, what I would add to those bullet points is how does the singer feel about their voice?

Jeremy: Yes. 

Gillyanne: Or how does the voice user feel about their voice? I think it's very important. 

Jeremy: I actually think this is one of the questions that speech and language therapists ask anyway, but I think also singing teachers should be asking this as well, which is what's changed. 

Gillyanne: Yeah. 

Jeremy: Because so often, you can hear somebody, particularly somebody who's a very experienced voice user, and they go, oh, as things have changed and you're listening to them and you go, well, I don't hear anything particularly going on, so tell me what's changed.

Jeremy: Mm-hmm. And it's from that information that you can often work out what's been going on. 

Gillyanne: That's true. That's a very good point. I just want to read some of the categories that our speech and language therapist Laura shared with me, which I, I used as a slide actually in the presentation.

Gillyanne: We all know that voice problems. 'cause at the moment we're talking about delivering something for people who are helping others with voice problems. We all know that they're multifactorial. So it's never just one thing. And I'm going to quote Laura quoting Nick Gibbins, which is when someone hits a voice problem, it's usually a perfect storm of different elements.

Jeremy: Yep. 

Gillyanne: So Laura said that she would ask people about their medical diagnosis and their, any general medical history. Boundary there for us, we can't be doing that. Yes. Okay. Unless our singer reveals that to us. And any medications. Boundary alert there too. What's the Vocal load? Not just what you are doing with your singing voice if you are a singer, but if you are a teacher or you are working in presentations at work, are you on Zoom all the time?

Gillyanne: Are you yelling at the kids who are upstairs, downstairs doing whatever? Do you go to football matches and shout there? You really need to calculate that full Vocal load. And by the way, singing teaches us that's something we can legitimately do. 

Jeremy: Yes. 

Gillyanne: In terms of helping our singers to understand the importance of Vocal load so that they don't get into this, oh, it's what I'm doing when I'm singing, and then perhaps having the feeling should I be on voice rest?

Gillyanne: That usually isn't about voice rest. 

Jeremy: Mm-hmm. 

Gillyanne: Diet, sleep patterns, exercise, alcohol intake, smoking. Again, there are some areas where we can't go and I think we need to be very careful about exercise. Implying that people ought or ought not to, but the type of exercise they do may be really important.

Jeremy: I wanna come in on the exercise thing. 

Gillyanne: Okay. 

Jeremy: Because unless you are fully trained as a personal instructor in that field, you don't have a say about what type of exercise does and doesn't work for a singer. Because it's none of your business.

Jeremy: The interesting thing is, again, I come back to the question, which is what has changed? 

Gillyanne: Mm-hmm. 

Jeremy: So if somebody is, has been doing heavy weightlifting for 10 years and actually has been singing perfectly okay for eight years, and then suddenly, something happens, the question is not what's the weight training business?

Jeremy: And you must stop weight training. You should never do it. The question is, what has changed around that? Have you kept weight training at the same level? Is there something else going on physically? The questions are around the change and not the habit. 

Gillyanne: Absolutely. And for instance, has there been a change in life circumstances. 

Jeremy: Yep. 

Gillyanne: And those things can often be the straw that breaks the camel's back. 

Jeremy: Yep. 

Gillyanne: In terms of the perfect storm, how about that for a few metaphor meta metaphors? 

Jeremy: Yep. 

Gillyanne: It's worth your while digging into that, if obviously as an SLP or SLT you would, but as a singing teacher, sometimes you can find that information out.

Gillyanne: But we do also have to be careful if we haven't done any kind of counseling courses, we don't want to be therapizing our clients. 

Jeremy: Yes. 

Gillyanne: And if your singer is having difficulties, it is not our job. You used the word medicalize, but it's not our job to patholog path. Pathologize, pathologize, Pathologize a voice difficulty. A voice problem. It really isn't. 

Jeremy: No. 

Gillyanne: So I think that's important. And we don't do that in sports training. People have injuries and difficulties and sprains and strains all the time. 

Jeremy: There is a side issue that I just wanna talk about because it was interesting. I was in conversation with a speech therapist yesterday about a client that we share, and something came up, which was about perfectionism.

Gillyanne: Oh, yes. 

Jeremy: And in fact, I've just re-released my article on I am a recovering perfectionist. Mm-hmm. Because this is also relevant. And it's the idea that you must produce something as a performer that is perfect. And perfect doesn't exist because you have, it's not like you are kept in a box with cellophane.

Jeremy: And then you take out, you take yourself outta the box and then you sing and then you go back in the box again. That life doesn't exist. No. So you are always dealing with whatever has happened that day, whatever has happened that week, how you're feeling physically, how tired are you, has anything happened, all of that stuff.

Jeremy: And so there is a, a level of best I can do today, and that's a mantra that I have had for decades. 

Gillyanne: I think this is really important. What is your sustainable best I can do today? 

Jeremy: Yep. 

Gillyanne: And this is particularly important for people who are using their voices professionally, not necessarily in singing.

Jeremy: Yep. 

Gillyanne: Who belongs to a category of professional voice users? What is it that you are normally able to sustain and what is it now that you can't? 

Jeremy: Yes. 

Gillyanne: What changes have you noticed? Something that um, Laura signaled us to was what about time of day does your voice feel worse or better at different times of day?

Gillyanne: Because that can tell you something about sleep patterns. It could tell you something about possible acid reflux. And again, how people are managing their general tension and, and stress levels. And it can help you as a teacher or a voice habilitator if you're a singing voice habilitator.

Gillyanne: I think we are naturally, I think we've been doing it for ages. It can help you to help people to plan their day, with little sort of breaks on SOVT bubbles and so forth and cool downs, and taking five minutes on the floor with your legs over a chair so you can just decompress.

Gillyanne: Small tips like that can make a huge difference to someone's day and their Vocal loads. 

Jeremy: And again, there are two things here, which I think are interesting. One is that the moment you take away the, here is the performance that I have in my head I must match it every single time. Mm-hmm. The moment you take that away, you take a whole load of pressure off yourself.

Jeremy: And in with that is you need strategies to use when you are having a bad day. Having, I, I went from, from my college days learning incredibly complex pieces where we'd have one performance or two performances, and if we had a run of five, that was immense. And I went straight into doing a summer season, which was 128 performances.

Jeremy: And the mentality for doing 128 performances are the same thing in a row, is just completely different. So you are constantly going, how am I today? What can I do? What, how? Oh, that was a good one. Oh, that's nice. And unfortunately, the good ones tend to be the rare ones. So there's something about the mentality of saying, this is what I'm doing today.

Jeremy: This is who I am, this is where I am, this is my performance. My level is high enough that most people will enjoy it. It will not be high enough necessarily for the person sitting on the front row with the score in front of them. I might make mistakes. Oh dear. But they're the rarities, the, they are the exception rather than the rule.

Gillyanne: Those are people who don't really want to enjoy the performance. 

Jeremy: No. They want you to be correct. 

Gillyanne: Right. Well, we're digressing here. 

Jeremy: The reason that I want to say this is because it is part of the equation. If you have a voice problem specifically, then part of that equation has to change. It's like you are working to get yourself back to the level that you were at beforehand, but you are not at that level right now.

Jeremy: You cannot just give perfect performance after perfect performance. Not at this point. 

Gillyanne: That's very important. 

Jeremy: I just wanna give an example and this is again I'm back on what chat gives as examples, and I think they're quite good. So a teacher comes in with an effortful voice.

Jeremy: Okay. The more medicalized lens, the speech and language therapist, may say to themselves is their pathology? Is their muscle tension dysphonia? Is their inflammation, paresis? reflux involvement, post viral issues?

Gillyanne: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 

Jeremy: And these are all questions that we as singing teachers cannot answer. 

Gillyanne: Mm-hmm.

Jeremy: Because we don't have the skill, we don't have the training and we don't have the equipment. Yeah. Do they need ENT, SLT, rehabilitation, Vocal rest advice or onward referral, all of which are really great questions. Because what you're saying is what's the problem and who's gonna be the best and quickest solution?

Gillyanne: Yeah. 

Jeremy: We might ask how are they doing all day with voice load. Mm-hmm. Exactly what Gillyanne has said. How are they breathing? What's the projection like? How is the pacing, how are they recovering? Can we find a clearer, easier, less effortful speaking setup? Mm-hmm. Can we transfer that into the singing setup? Because it will probably be different. 

Gillyanne: Can I just reframe, projecting. It is a word that, is commonly used in on our side of the profession. I would say how do they manage their, their volume levels? In other words, have you got a sense of calibration from quiet to loud that is suitable for their performing situation.

Gillyanne: Mm-hmm. I think that's really important.

Jeremy: That you're in control of. Yeah. 

Gillyanne: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 

Jeremy: And also people who've listened to the podcast before will know that I differentiate between projecting volume and projecting energy.

Jeremy: And I think that projecting energy is actually more important. Mm-hmm.

Jeremy: Mm-hmm. Because certainly if you're in musical theater or contemporary commercial music, you have a microphone. Why would you need to sing loud? 

Gillyanne: Mm-hmm. 

Jeremy: But energetically, absolutely. 

Gillyanne: Yeah. 

Jeremy: So the point I think is that we are looking at the same issue, which is what are the problems and where are the issues and how can we solve them?

Jeremy: But we're doing it from a different lens. 

Gillyanne: Yeah, I think that's important. And just to talk about, just to frame carefully I'm particularly thinking of the last podcast we did the last two that we did with Michelle Robinson. 

Jeremy: Michelle Robinson. Yeah. 

Gillyanne: Obviously at this point we're talking about the between, a singing teacher who's very well informed about functional voice and a speech and language therapist. So what we've said here is, what's the problem? We're not saying every time someone can comes into your singing studio, you sit there going, what's the problem? Because as a matter of fact, in our training, we always encourage every session, what is working?

Gillyanne: What do you hear that's working? What's not working? But we've all been sit in situations where singers have come to us and they do sometimes come to us first. 

Jeremy: First, yeah. 

Gillyanne: Yeah. Because they think, oh no, I don't wanna go and see a doctor. I want to work with someone who's gonna help me with my singing voice.

Jeremy: Well, and they have a relationship with us already. 

Gillyanne: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 

Jeremy: So that's useful. 

Gillyanne: Yeah. I sometimes have people come out of the blue. 

Jeremy: Yeah. 

Gillyanne: Possibly because what they want to do is to go straight into the functional, and that is where, and we might speak about this later, if you, we do need sufficient knowledge to go I think this is beyond my pay grade.

Jeremy: Mm-hmm. 

Gillyanne: And to have, find a way of referring on, which is something that we have been, having some training about within our Registered Teacher group. 

Jeremy: Yeah. 

Gillyanne: Delivered by Laura actually. Yes. Which is really nice. Yes. I would like to talk about the idea, 'cause where we started with this course was when I was putting it together. A client lands in your caseload, what do you do next? 

Jeremy: Yes. 

Gillyanne: So we shared something that we do with singers, which you've probably heard us before, which is a client comes into our studio, what do you hear? It's a good idea to listen to them speak and sing. 

Jeremy: Be, excuse me, before you launch into giving them exercises.

Gillyanne: Absolutely. Yeah. I'm going to, I have a caveat to that. What do you see? Okay, so how are they holding themselves physically? What's going on? What patterns do you notice? 

Jeremy: And also what energy do you pick up? 

Gillyanne: Yeah. And what do they say? What are they reporting? Give them time to talk about why they're there.

Gillyanne: If someone does come to you post voice rehab or with a voice problem, and if there's agreement for you to safely hear about their diagnosis or read their diagnosis. There are GDPR things protocols that we need in terms of special data. If that is going to be revealed, you need to be aware of it.

Gillyanne: And then you are going to make decisions. You're going to make a plan with that client as to what you're going to be doing, lesson by lesson and maybe long term. And what I wanted to say about exercises is that sometimes I will, if they haven't warmed up, I'll say, can we just do an exploratory warmup because this helps me to get to know your voice.

Jeremy: Fair. 

Gillyanne: And then I'm going zip. What's going on here? Oh, interesting. Breathing pattern. Right. Ah, that's the thing they've already spoken about that's going on up there. I wonder if we can talk more about that and then I always need to hear the song as well. 

Jeremy: It's that last bit, which is I, 

Gillyanne: that's so predictable.

Jeremy: I have known so many teachers who won't even hear the song until the last five minutes of the lesson. 

Gillyanne: Mm-hmm. 

Jeremy: And I'm going, what are you aiming at? What, please tell me what are you aiming at? Are you aiming at creating a perfect voice who can then sing everything? Please. Sorry. Doesn't exist. So please, can we do context?

Jeremy: Yeah. Which is, what is this person, and this is all for me. This is part of the question. Yeah. It's part of the diagnosis when people walk into a coaching session or a singing lesson, which is what are you aiming at? Oh, I want to sing this song. Great. Can I hear you sing some of the song so I know where you are.

Gillyanne: I know some people don't like the word diagnosis because again, it seems like medicalization and pathologizing because it implies something is wrong. But the thing is, we are making assessments. That's why people come to us. We are listening. They come to us to gain something, to improve or to have more joy, any of those things.

Gillyanne: If they're paying us. We do need to offer a service. And part of that service is being able to find out what it is that they might need. 

Jeremy: I'm going And 

Gillyanne: how you're going to help them find it. 

Jeremy: I'm going to now do a small caveat on that one because I think 

Gillyanne: the caveat of the caveat?

Jeremy: The bigger question is, what is my job today in this room?

Gillyanne: Fair enough. 

Jeremy: Because your job might be somebody who's come in who has not sung for a long time and doesn't have the place to sing, is surrounded by people who don't want to listen or whatever it is. And so your job might be, please just let me sing in a safe space. Yeah. And you create the space for them and that's all you need to do.

Jeremy: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So the question always is, what's my job today with this person? 

Gillyanne: And listening is very important. 

Jeremy: Yes. 

Gillyanne: Not just the singing part of it. 

Jeremy: Yes. I think the reason why I wanted to pick that up is there is a difference between what's my job today and what can I do. Because the do implies that you then have to be actively doing something and then you're just choosing from the list of things that you could do for this person.

Jeremy: But that person may not want you to do anything. 

Gillyanne: And I think this is something that singing teachers are rather prone to do. And I will say, for myself, which is when I'm being paid for this, I've got to make a difference. 

Jeremy: You've got to pack it all in. um, 

Gillyanne: you 

Jeremy: Got to be worth the money. 

Gillyanne: Yeah.

Gillyanne: And a lot of our teachers talk about this. They do. They, which is why we say no, that might not be the job today. 

Jeremy: Yeah. 

Gillyanne: Sometimes the job is listening to your client talk for 40 minutes. 

Jeremy: Yeah. 

Gillyanne: Holding the space and gathering information. 

Jeremy: Yes. 

Gillyanne: Let's just circle back to some of the things that we were getting people to think about.

Gillyanne: I'm just looking at some of our slides. So we just shared, you know, a very broad, client lands in our studio. What do we do? What's our process? What about for a clinician? 

Jeremy: We did when once we'd read this list out, we did check it out with the people in the room to go, is this accurate? Is what we think you do, what it is that you actually do?

Jeremy: And they said yes. 

Gillyanne: So they will take that client profile using um, some of the list of things we've already indicated. 

Jeremy: They're very hot on. I mean, Profiling is really strong and very detailed. 

Gillyanne: Yes. 

Jeremy: You and I agree with this. I don't know that you can get a full picture until you've taken a detailed profile.

Gillyanne: Yeah, I know. Maybe I spoke about this in a much earlier podcast. I sat in for three days at the Wythenshaw Clinic several years ago, just before the pandemic. Actually, I think it was 2019. And watching the lead speech therapist then, the wonderful Sue Jones, taking a case history. It was. Eyeopening. It was a masterful lesson in the way questions were gently asked to dig beneath initial responses.

Gillyanne: Mm-hmm. And of course, that is decades of experience. 

Jeremy: Yep. 

Gillyanne: And a very experienced singing teacher will be able to do that too. So what we came up with was, yes, take your case history, do your profile, listen and observe, listen to them speak. Yep. You can then be thinking about what are your priorities, depending on the diagnosis and what the client's told you, and also what you're hearing and seeing.

Gillyanne: Yep. You may need to hypothesize a bit. You know, what, what might be the thing that makes the difference and then you do a trial intervention, what is going to make the biggest difference today for this client? 

Jeremy: We've talked a lot. 

Gillyanne: That's a great question to ask. 

Jeremy: It is. We've talked a lot about interventions and we talk a lot on the Accreditation Programme about interventions and how you deal with them.

Jeremy: Mm-hmm. And when I'm, I mean we tending to be using quite a lot of medical terms today, but really what we're saying is which exercise are you gonna choose? Or what technique are you gonna, are you gonna pass on? 

Gillyanne: Which path are you going to take? 

Jeremy: Yeah. Yeah. And we talk a lot about trial. 

Jeremy: And we, there is a quite a pressure when somebody comes in and goes, fix me.

Gillyanne: Mm-hmm. 

Jeremy: There is quite a pressure on the teacher to go, here is the magical button that I'm going to press. And there you are, you are completely fixed. Mm-hmm. And. I think it's more complex than that. And so I know I've said this before, but I tend to set myself up when I'm dealing with somebody and they've asked me to solve a problem for them, and I've usually got a fairly good idea because I've done the listening, I've done the analyzing, I've done, I, oh.

Jeremy: Something I only realized a couple of days ago when we were having a conversation about this podcast is that I will choose an exercise in my head and I will run the scenario with that person's voice in my imagination to find out what it's going to do. And if I think it's gonna do a really good job, I'll use it.

Jeremy: And if fact don't, I'll discard it and something else. I run those things all the time. I can be running six or seven of them while somebody is singing a song. I'm actually running the whole process in my head, and that's usually why I choose the one that is gonna undo the knot the quickest. 

Gillyanne: Welcome to ADHD Land.

Jeremy: I thought everyone did that. 

Gillyanne: No, 

Jeremy: I thought that was completely normal. 

Gillyanne: Not even Dr. Kayes does that. I'm, I might, what I'm much more likely to do is run my checklist and think, okay I'm gonna try this out. Let's see what happens when I do this, and I call this when I'm, guiding our own teachers, I call this being a detective. 

Jeremy: Yep. 

Gillyanne: Allow yourself to be a detective, because then what you need to do is evaluate 

Jeremy: Yes. 

Gillyanne: And maybe you'll do it again and see if what you thought was gonna work actually does work. Has something changed? 

Jeremy: Ooh. And 

Gillyanne: what does that tell you? 

Jeremy: And when you evaluate, you are also evaluating whether they understood your instruction.

Gillyanne: Mm-hmm. 

Jeremy: So it's not just, did the instruction work, it's did they understand the instruction? Are they doing it in a way that works for them? So that's also part of the evaluation. 

Gillyanne: Yeah. So you tried something out. What changed? Does it tell you anything? What might be next. 

Jeremy: Yes. 

Gillyanne: I think these are really powerful things to do, 

Jeremy: and talking of what might be next.

Jeremy: We really need to finish this episode because we are running quite a long episode, and so we are gonna come back and do the second half of this next time. We'll see you soon.

Gillyanne: Bye

Jeremy: Bye.

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