Angela Caine AGSM LRAM (8 May 1937 - 22 July 2011)

The History of Voice Gym as told by Angela

"VoiceGym was borne out of the need for physical exercise in the development and training of the voice.

Nowhere in my musical training had exercise been mentioned and I gained a diploma in the teaching of singing at aged 23 (I could have taken it at the end of my training at 21) without ever opening an anatomy book. I learned all the answers from books on singing, where anatomy diagrams illustrated only those surrounding structures considered by the author to be relevant. There was no cross reference to any other physical discipline. No books other than those on singing or music repertoire were recommended as part of my course.

The cartoon above is from a feature in TimeOut, April 1984, on the voice workshops Angela ran, while teaching voice on Alexander Technique courses in London and Kendal. She now applies the principles of good use, as promoted by Alexander himself, but only within a more interactive system of training based on up-to-date information about functional mechanics

When I began to have voice problems I could only concentrate on trying to solve running out of breath, singing out of tune, missing entries and being generally unrhythmic, but eventually, many years later, I realised these were only symptoms. The causes were in the imbalance in the rest of me, not in my voice itself.

Having realised the importance of connecting voice and body together and developed some exercises to bring it about I felt I knew the answers to good voice training so I wrote my first book about it - The Voice Workbook, published by Hodder and Stoughton - and added a tape of the exercises I had developed.

In 1991 I realised I needed to teach singing in a gym where people could move, and so I set about discovering what equipment was necessary to aid singing and not merely provide a distraction. I wanted singers to have reference for those parts of themselves they were using to sing so that they knew which muscles to strengthen. The first major singing tools I discovered were the physio ball, or Swiss ball and the climbing frame. The first permanent "Voice Gymnasium" opened in Havill Hall, Camberwell, South London, in 1991.

Angela's first Voice Gym in Camberwell, described in the Daily Mail on 30th June 1992 (see below), featuring balance boards, exercise balls and a climbing frame

This is the first picture of an exercise ball to appear in the British Press (this is actually a variation called a 'peanut') and it illustrates the embarrassment that this now common exercise tool created when Angela introduced it. The picture appeared in the London Evening Standard on 15th July 1991, in an article about the newly-opened Voice Gym in South London.

But this was to be only the beginning of developing the real work. The answers to the voice problems only began to be discovered as a result of working voice and body together. By 1994 the Voice Gym had moved to the Voice and Body Centre in Southampton, and my research on voice had extended to dysfluency, early development, tongue position, cranial therapy and pelvic stability. Voice Gym as it is today had begun to emerge.

The present Voice Gym has developed over the last fifteen years into a complete voice and body diagnosis and exercise system that is now used extensively for the development and maintenance of professional voices.

Since the first edition (above), the VoiceGym exercises have grown from 72 to 82 pages and from 33 to 48 audio tracks

It has been refined so that you do not need to build a climbing frame in your garden, but whole body stretch is managed by a stretchband and a balance board, although the indispensible physio ball is still part of the kit (and if you can have a climbing frame as well, that would be marvellous). A text book, the VoiceGym Book, which will be regularly revised - to keep it up to date.has been added to provide background information and references. The second edition has just been printed.

This work opened a field of research hitherto totally ignored by voice therapists and singing teachers. The results have enabled me to introduce singers, actors, teachers and other professional voice users to the dangers of ignoring functional anatomy, dentistry and skeletal misalignment. I have now established a multidisciplinary network, involving cranial chiropractors, osteopaths and dentists who are voice–aware. Singers and other professional voice users can now find answers to, and support for, problems they encounter along the way without the immediate panic of 'am I losing my performance ability?".

VoiceGym has expanded to include Early VoiceGym and other teachers are now training in both to make them available over a national network. Within the next five years there will be a teacher near to you who can provide the VoiceGym pack and also teach you how to use it."

Angela's obituary

It is with great sadness that we have to announce that Angela Caine, the founder of VoiceGym, passed away peacefully on 22nd July 2011, after a short illness.

Angela was a gifted musician, teacher and researcher who worked tirelessly to develop a simple, effective and practical approach to the development and maintenance of professional voices and musicians.

Angela was borne in Nottingham in 1937. She moved to Rhyl in North Wales in 1945, where her parents established a boarding house, providing full board for 52 holiday-makers during the summer months. It was here that she learned her considerable home-making skills and a very strong work ethic.

From a very early age she loved anything to do with music, singing, playing the piano and when at 17 she gained a place at a Guildhall School of Music, to study piano and voice, she believed that she was on track for a life as a professional musician and singer.

After a successful debut with the BBC as an emerging singer she was given a scholarship for a further year at college to study opera. However, by the completion of that scholarship year Angela was beginning to have problems with her singing voice. A second concert for BBC Wales was politely acknowledged with a cheque and a closed door. She later wrote that "I anticipated the closed door knowing as I stood there in the packed hall eye to eye with the conductor that we were both thinking the same thing - 'This is not good enough'. I tried in vain to make some sense of what was happening to me. My voice, always there for me before with so little apparent effort, became unpredictable. I became terrified of auditions, colds, getting tired, singing out of tune, making mistakes."

Within a year she gave up the rigours of life as a professional singer and became a schoolteacher. Although she was still playing lead parts in amateur operatic productions, and singing oratorio, she was plagued by throat trouble, loss of voice and tonsillitis.

She sought help from teachers of singing and voice therapists, but nothing they suggested was of any help and her voice continued to deteriorate. Eventually she could not sing at all and was advised to concentrate on the teaching of singing because of her extensive knowledge of the singing repertoire and its performance. It was then that she realised that the training she had received covered only the music she had to sing, and she knew nothing about the voice itself: "When I began to have voice problems I could only concentrate on trying to solve running out of breath, singing out of tune, missing entries and being generally un-rhythmic, but these were only symptoms. The causes were in the imbalance in the rest of me, not in my voice."

Angela first attempted to correct this imbalance through the Alexander Technique, while she taught singing part-time for several years at Highgate Alexander School in London. Eventually she embarked on a three year full-time study at Fellside Alexander School in Kendal. During that time Angela had a chance meeting with a physiotherapist and a dentist who were members of Cranio Group. She quickly realised that the Alexander Technique did not address all the potential problems affecting voice mechanics. She embarked on a long experimental research programme on the effects of orthodontic and chiropractic interventions on the voice, with herself as the principal subject, helped by a number of interested Cranio Group clinicians. Angela's research on voice eventually extended to early development, tongue position, cranial therapy and pelvic stability. As a sportswoman (Angela played county league hockey up to age 45) Angela also recognised the importance of physical exercise. She wrote that...

"In 1991 I realised I needed to teach singing in a gym where people could move. I wanted singers to have reference for those parts of themselves they were using to sing so that they knew which muscles to strengthen."

The first permanent 'Voice Gymnasium' opened in London, in 1991 and moved to Southampton in 1994. Over the next ten years Angela developed the VoiceGym voice and body exercise system that is now used extensively for the development and maintenance of professional voices. Alexander Evans, a former student, wrote…

"I first met Angela in the mid 90's as a student at Southampton University. I became one of the first in a pilot study to see what effects Orthodontic and Chiropractic work would have on the voice. At the age of 18 I had lost my ability to sing though there was nothing pathologically wrong with the voice it became clear throughout the study that the way to recovery from my vocal problems was to explore what these professions could do for me and others with similar problems. Angela taught a number of students from the University, many who went under similar treatment. We embarked on a study that was to continue beyond University where I studied alongside my colleague Simone Laraway at the Voice Workshop, to become Voice Gym instructors. After University the three of us continued to teach and run workshops together and further developed the programmes that became VoiceGym, and Early VoiceGym.

Once I had become stable enough, I began to embark on what to date has been ten years of a career as a professional Singer, Actor and Musician which has taken me across three continents singing both opera and music theatre, on tours and into London's West End: a testament to the power of Angela's work and the work of her associated clinicians.

Though many steps have been made there is still naivety amongst the singing profession in ignoring the dangers of functional anatomy, dentistry and skeletal misalignment. As Angela wrote in my first music score, 'Beware the chiefs! Stick close to the Indians'."

Angela continued to work successfully with many professional singers whose voice problems had defeated everyone else, supported by what is now a global network of voice-aware clinicians. She was an active member of The British Society for the Study of Cranio Mandibular Disorders (BSSCMD www.jawache.com) and one of the founding members of an International Functional Association (IFUNA ifuna.info/), promoting functional orthopaedic and orthodontic treatments that start to treat at an early age and involve the whole body. Helen Jones (BSSCMD member) wrote…

"As a functional orthodontist I was pleased to receive many patients referred to me by Angela. She totally understood the connection between structure and function. These patients had voice difficulties and she recognised that narrow palates resulted in compromised tongue space and that this was often a fundamental factor in regard to their problems.

Working together we were able to enhance their singing, improve their health and help them reach their full potential. Angela lectured extensively and I am sure that she will have inspired others to follow in her footsteps. She will be sadly missed, not only by her family, but also by her many professional colleagues."

She has written extensively in various journals, and presented at multi-disciplinary conferences throughout Europe on development of vocal potential, performance stress and the effect of both inappropriate dentistry and inappropriate training on performers' voices. She also published books of voice and body exercises, including audio CDs, for both adults and children, a text book for the development and understanding of the voice and an autobiography, The Devil Within (2006). The books can be purchased, and many articles can be downloaded from this website (www.voicegym.co.uk/publications.htm).

Her constant pushing of boundaries often lead her into conflict with the voice teaching establishment. Roger Thomas (BSSCMD member) wrote…

"She was not afraid to fight controversy and in fact seemed quite prepared to meet it head on. It must have been a great comfort to her to find that over time her views were gaining ground… Angela was one of the most charismatic, gifted and innovative speakers that I have been fortunate to meet, being able to make use of her own artistic talents in her voice and on the piano as well as those of her students, to make her lectures come alive and be such fun."

Angela was passionate about the well-being, education and development of children from the earliest age, helping them to achieve their full potential. She worked with osteopaths and chiropractors, using stretch, rhythm and voice exercises to help children with motor difficulties. She also worked with orthodontists, developing exercises to aid recovery and prevent regression of treatment in children with severe tongue thrust. Alison Holden, a Chiropractor who uses Early VoiceGym in her practice with children having developmental difficulties, says…

"I am very privileged to have been able to learn from Angela. By the time I met her she had pulled together an amazing package of ideas, tying many concepts from many different professions. She had an amazing ability to look beyond her own knowledge base and pull out the relevant threads from others. This form of working functionally requires familiarisation with multiple facets, and Angela had excelled in the work she did. She was passionate about her work, and I am relieved to hear that it will not be lost. She will be missed. I had hoped to share ideas and learn from her for many years more. Unfortunately that was not to be."

Angela's principal aim, after learning that she had terminal cancer, had been to be well enough to give her planned presentation to the 5th congress of IFUNA in November. Professor Michael Gorbonos, director of IFUNA, wrote…

"Angela was a big figure in the world of Functionalism. She did many things that others would be afraid to do. She was always on the edge of progress, fighting for her beliefs. She was one of the first to join IFUNA, and in everything that she could, she was always first to help. Personally, for me she is an example for what an individual can achieve. During the 5th Congress in Argentina IFUNA will give her an award for her life contribution to Functionalism."

Professional wind players are now also using VoiceGym to provide the understanding of the mechanics and physiology of performance not acquired in their traditional training. Sue Dent (principal horn player and teacher) wrote…

"As a hornplayer and teacher I often encounter lack of resonance and clarity of articultion in students' playing. As a devotee of Angela's VoiceGym programme I appreciate the extent to which resonance is achieved through nurturing the suspension of the laryngeal mechanisms and the correct recoil of the tongue. It was her belief that as children are often denied rough and tumble play, their tongue and larynx doesn't assume it's adult position. Lack of resonance and clear fluent diction can be heard in their speech.

Angela's tireless work was cross disciplinery and involved practitioners from many fields. The legacy she leaves will be continued by all those who like myself benefitted from her valuable work."

As Angela Lewis, Angela was also the much loved wife of Chris, mother of Huw and Sian, and Grandma to Harry and Phoebe.

Angela's Qualifications, Experience and Associations

• AGSM in piano and LRAM in singing with scholarship year to study opera (Guildhall School of Music and Drama).
• Qualified teacher with thirty years experience in the teaching of singing and voice in schools, training colleges and universities.
• Three year full-time study of The Alexander Technique at Fellside Alexander School, Kendal.
• Member of the Musicians' Union.
• Member of Cranio Group, an international organisation of clinicians (including dentists, orthodontists, chiropractors, osteopaths and physiotherapists) to promote the understanding, function and management of the whole body.
• Member of The British Society for the Study of Cranio-mandibular Disorders (BSSCMD),a study group promoting the multidisciplanary treatment of dental and structural problems.
• Speaker at International Conferences introducing VoiceGym concepts to dentists, orthodontists, osteopaths, chiropractors.

Teaching

• Teaching of singing and music in Warwickshire schools (1960-70).
• Voice tutor and singing teacher at University of Warwick, University of East Anglia, Highgate Alexander School and University of Southampton (1972-1999).
• In-service teacher training on voice for Warwickshire and Norfolk schools (1978-1992).
• Performance Workshops in association with professional singers, musicians and recording Artists.
• Workshops on voice development and maintenance for teachers.
• Training courses and workshops on voice and presentation skills for Law South, House of Colour, Southampton and Hampshire County Councils, London Gay Men's Choir, Royal Academy of Music, Royal College of Music, HSBC and the NHS.
• Workshops on Early VoiceGym as part of the National 'Sing-Up' programme (2008).

Performance

• Professional operatic roles including Susanna in the Marriage of Figaro (Mozart); Pamina in the Magic Flute (Mozart); Adina in l'Elisir d'Amore (Donizetti); Elvira in Don Giovanni (Mozart) and Elektra in Idomineo (Mozart);
• Principal Soprano in Oratorio including the C minor Mass and Requiem Mass (Mozart); Requiem Mass (Brahms); Mass in C (Beethoven); The Creation (Haydn); Gloria (Poulenc); Judas Maccabeas and The Messiah (Handel); The Magnificat, St Matthew Passion and St John Passion (Bach); Messe Solennelle (Rossini) and Elijah (Mendelssohn).
• Appearances in cabaret, shows and concerts involving all musical styles, including lead roles in musical shows, including Annie Get Your Gun; The King and I; Glamorous Night; Kismet; South Pacific; The Dancing Years.
• Has directed and produced various operas in schools and colleges, including The Telephone (Menotti); Amahl and the Night Visitors (Menotti); Hansel and Gretel (Humperdink); The Impressario (Mozart); HMS Pinafore and The Mikado (Gilbert and Sullivan).

Research, Publications and Presentations

• For the last fifteen years Angela researched the problems of professional voices in performance. Her research has resulted in a number of articles and presentations addressing development of vocal potential, performance stress and the effect of both inappropriate dentistry and inappropriate training on performers' voices.  She has run workshops and presentations on the subject at international conferences including:
  • International Conference on Health and the Musician, University of York, UK, 23-27 March, 1997.
  • 2nd Pan European Voice Conference (PEVOCII), University of Regensburg, Germany, 29-31 August 1997.
  • 3rd Barcelona Orthodontic Meeting on "Multidisciplinary Treatment in Orthodontics", Catalonian Dental Association, Barcelona, Spain, 13-15 March 2003.
  • 9th International Symposium for Facial Growth Guidance, UK, 6-9 May 2004.
  • 3rd Annual Symposium of the British Society for the Study of Craniomandibular Disorders, London, UK, 20-21 May 2005.
  • Inaugral meeting of the International Functional Association, Paris, 8-9 November 2007.

Television and Radio Appearances

• Concerts with BBC Welsh Symphony Orchestra, BBC third programme, 1958.
• The Health Show with Angela Rippon, BBC radio 5, 18 July 1991.
• Woman's Hour, BBC radio 4, 2 September 1991.
• This Morning, ITV, 31 March 1992 and 9 November 1993.
• Summer Scene, BBC1, 14 August 1992.
• Various appearances on Julian Clegg's Breakfast Programme on BBC Radio Solent, March to May 2000, to train (on air) the Radio Solent Music Live Choir.
• "Would like to meet", first shown on BBC3, 27 July 2003 and repeated on BBC2 in November. Angela puts Julian Small through the Voice Gym course to improve his prospects.

Angela's Journal - selections from past website postings

26th April 2011

On April 5th I was due for a bilateral hip operation at the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital. However, four days before that date a blood test diagnosed me with anaemia and the operation was postponed until appropriate tests could be carried out to rule out any underlying chronic clinical problem. Because of the two-week referral targets within the NHS, four major tests will take most of May. Then, everything being clear (two are already clear), I should be able to have my hip operation and pick up the threads of the interesting connections mentioned in my last journal entry.

I would ask everyone involved or interested in these directions to have a little patience (I have to too!) and wait to be contacted. If you wish to be added to this contact list please leave your email message and a phone contact and as soon as a way is clear a plan will be made.

In the mean time I am reading and rereading, knitting a cardigan, maintaining the hand/eye/motivation connection with some slow careful piano playing and watching the woodpecker in the garden. I feel overwhelming gratitude for all of the support I have had since this whole saga began, people have emailed me from work we have done several years ago as well as those interested in where those connections are taking us now in developing a stable fundamental platform upon which to build an enjoyable and satisfying career in performance.

6th July 2010

There is a weeping birch outside the office window and apples and plums further down the garden. The huge willow at the very end has had to be severely pruned. Willows usually hang over water but then in the early days of this cottage there was a moat. Now the willow is in danger of breaking with the height and weight of foliage, so it has had to be restrained. Four other trees have been removed because two were forest trees - larch -heading for a 60 ft view of the sky. The other two were elder - not very attractive and a not very well crab apple.

We have been in St Martins Cottage for two whole months. VoiceGym has been subverted by the need to learn to live in this dynamic and powerful landscape and a good thing too. After two weeks here I was feeling the isolation from people whose motivation was the improvement of the voice. There were no conversations about grounding, connecting, and pelvic stability, the strength of the pharynx or the position of the jaw. When we arrived broad band could not be connected as a man had to go up a pole across the lane and H&S deemed it necessary to introduce traffic control before that could happen. The daily email based questions and calls for advice stopped, as did the telephone for the same reason. Having spent the last 20 years investigating the connections between voice, body and brain either actively or through the literature there was nothing but an overgrown garden, a beautiful 1850 cottage and a dairy which had lost the cows to house my 1937 Berlin Bechstein Grand standing on a pinkish stone flagged floor.

I could sing, I could play the piano, make curtains. I could explore the area, make any possible inroads into the natural wilderness of garden created by years of neglect, but I had lost all contact with my work because I axed it to move last November 2009 and then we were trapped in legal wrangling until June 2010. Robinson Crusoe must have felt the same when he landed on the island and realised he was alone. My work has always involved others, indeed I have preached multidisciplinary consultation and treatment on the grounds that the human being functioning at the peak of excellence is much too delicately wired for one discipline to manage, and if this excellence for some reason loses its peak there is no way one discipline can return it to peak performance. Music teachers beware of the ego that tells you exactly what this person needs to develop that excellence.

After about a month of what I initially viewed as frustration I began to see that I had never had such an opportunity. While cutting down the roses that straggled the front fence I leisurely reviewed the connections I believed I had made between voice and dentition and realised that whenever a variety of clinicians discussed a treatment plan for a singer with a jaw problem the dentist made the final decisions on treatment protocol. I sat on the grass under the willow tree and thought "Now why is that I wonder?" The connection between the condyle of the mandible and the space it inhabits in the temporal bone is less of a joint and more of a moment within the constantly changing balance of the skull on the spine and the systems suspended from it, one of which is the jaw. As never before I saw that the dentist is the least competent clinician to make these decisions, being the one whose treatment protocol is designed to prevent moment and fix the jaw in a position of maximum advantage (dentally speaking).

I am about to receive a new denture. At 73 I belong to a generation that suffered from extraction policies. "You have pain -which tooth is it?" Each tooth was struck with a little hammer until "OW" Then that tooth was removed. In all my years I have never had a tooth removed that wasn't perfect. So I have a partial denture in the lower arch of teeth. This new denture will be totally flexible and move with everything else that moves within the flexible and responsive matrix of head and neck. As a VoiceGym teacher I know that flexible response is picked up by the ribs and through the internal and external oblique muscle systems to connect and stabilize the voice via the pelvic floor. Well well. For all that to become clear I needed to stop thinking about it and watch for the greater spotted woodpecker, which nests in the telegraph pole behind the garage, ( who these days needs a garage) telegraph pole behind Chris's workshop.

While putting books on shelves I came across a book that was a present, but that I had ignored for three years. Why? I was too busy advising on troublesome voices. Catch 22! The more advice you give the less able you are to see the true picture. You are too busy, too muddled in your head or too fixed in your head to step out of the box and see the simple cause and effect. No one is safe from this, however acute their thinking in the beginning.

The book was "The Brain that Changes Itself" by Norman Doidge, MD. ISBN978-0-670-03830-5

It was bought for me by a Frenchman who came to work with me. As it turned out he may have s given me a greater step forward than I gave him.

This book is about neuroplasticity and demonstrates by reference and report that we accept too readily the limitations of genetic disposition, injury, and ageing because we are never taught how to exercise the brain. Very early in life we accept our intellectual lot, or our intellectually limited lot, without considering that the brain can also be developed throughout life. Continual school testing sets our main intellectual parameters and few of us are lucky enough to meet those who have rejected those parameters and found their continued development for life.

Gosh, what a huge input and challenge I have received by stopping everything I was doing. It had always seemed so important to fight the received wisdom but I see now that I was as stuck as the systems I was fighting.

Einstein defined inanity as 'doing the same thing over and over again and expecting it to change'. From this new perspective what was I doing over and over and expecting change? I am nervous of setting it down in case it is not yet sufficiently considered but here goes on the grounds that I can write again and improve my conclusions because I now know that knowledge is itself a continually moveable feast and I can say at any time, "What I wrote was wrong. I now know better but I could only know that at the time". Just writing that removes from me the fear of failure. Why did my school teachers never tell me that?

All of my life my body has been a problem. First awareness came when I so wanted to dance and was taken to classes in Nottingham at about 5 years old. I saw very clearly that I was a different shape from other little dancing girls. They were longer in the body, not so wide. Even though I was not fat I looked it compared with the other dancing girls. When I saw this I didn't want to go any more, but if I got off my legs I could do anything. I could play the piano, write, read. In fact do any given school work in half the time with excellent results? But I was sitting down to do all of this so my pelvis was supported and my legs had no specific working role.

As I moved into puberty my developing adult hormone system began to prepare me for sex and for the same reasons that I was inadequate in the dancing I was also inadequate in this most unavoidable of human development. There was a social clumsiness in me from about fourteen onwards that I felt but that no one else picked up because my ability to compensate for it had developed alongside the innate problem. The brain is like that, its bottom line is to avoid immediate trouble and keep us working adequately within our environment.

The rest of the struggle can be read in 'The Devil Within' but that was written in 2006. I wrote it and thought I had wrapped it all up. I was considering using R L Stevenson's poem in R. Vaughan Williams setting for my epitaph. Here are the words minus the music…

I have trod the upward and the downward slope;
I have endured and done in days before;
I have longed for all, and said farewell to hope;
And I have lived and loved, and close the door.

Well, how wrong can you get? This is not the end.

In 2007 my feet began to hurt and walking became uncomfortable. That was the beginning of a wake-up that demonstrated how many teachers must be teaching what they can no longer do themselves, because I was continuing to teach VoiceGym even though I was demonstrating the balance board while saying to myself "You can do this, you just have to give the directions and follow them yourself"; hardly personal competence. I was making the differences my clients wanted, but what differences could I make by setting a real example of my original VoiceGym vision?

That's when I decided to get a new denture. The journey has started all over again. I'll report on it next time.

Finally loaded onto the website September 4th 2010: we've been having French drains put in. You'll have to look that up on the internet.

13th February 2010 - The New VoiceGym CD

A major contribution to the development of VoiceGym and Early VoiceGym has been provided by the people who have worked with it. Many of these can be seen in the photographs in the VoiceGym exercise books and heard on the accompanying CDs. These voices have developed and improved, so a new CD has been recorded to show the changes.

Simone Laraway (www.simonelaraway.vpweb.co.uk)

On leaving University in 1996 with a degree in Music and English Simone worked as the manager of the Voice and Body Centre so that she could also train to be a VoiceGym teacher. She then used her VoiceGym training to attend the Royal Academy of Music to study Music Theatre, where in 2000.she gained a Postgraduate diploma. But she then discovered that she needed treatment from a voice aware dentist and osteopath to help to stabilize the voice. The business she set up while correcting these problems can by found at www.flourishnewbiz.co.uk. So she missed the first CD and first appears on the Early VoiceGym CD recorded in 2006. Now in her early thirties the result of VoiceGym exercise supporting this realignment can be heard in three of the recorded songs. Her career as a singer is now increasingly invading business time, with regular performances in London and Milan.

Andrew Gill

Andrew is the youngest voice on the CD. He is 24 so the voice displays the youthful
exuberance and lack of sophistication that, if left to grow and develop in its own time, will ensure him a voice for life. He has a degree in music and a teaching qualification and is supply teaching in London to give him time to practice. He has always trained with VoiceGym and so has the efficiency of speech required for teaching at secondary level. He is currently seeking performance experience, but he will not attempt to pursue a professional singing career until both he and his voice are ready.

Alexander Evans (www.alexanderevans.com)

The early history of Alex's voice can be found in an article at http://www.voicegym.co.uk/doc_misalignment.htm entitled 'Structural Misalignment: its Effect on Performance (see case study 7). Alex came to work at the Voice and Body Centre to maintain the exercise programme throughout alignment correction and subsequently began to audition as a professional tenor. Now in his early thirties he has a West End Musical and an Olivier award nomination to his credit and is equally at home singing the material on the CD or singing opera.

Angela Caine

If you are young and sing well, like Andrew, you risk being pushed by schools, colleges, the media, music producers and the celebrity culture to short term success. It becomes almost impossible to achieve a long enjoyable, problem free and constantly developing professional career singing the music you sing best. Where I am at 72, singing is encouraged only as a 'sing for fun' activity and definitely all together, for confidence. But losing solo singing and with it a sizeable chunk of personal power does not begin in the 60s. It is a gradual deterioration, through poor maintenance that actually loses us confidence, in singing and everywhere else. Provided you learn how to go about it you can go on singing across a considerable range of music written for the solo voice all of your life. By solo singing to an accompaniment you are making much more meaningful decisions faster and more accurately than in a group with a conductor. So although you may not ever stand up in front of an audience, you will keep your personal power and probably your brain power too. That is why I am on he CD-to prove that point. There is VoiceGym and there are albums of songs with backing tracks to encourage you.

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
Begin it now...

Goethe

If you are working with the VoiceGym or Early VoiceGym programmes you can discover the improvement these four singers have made by sending a stamped addressed padded envelope to the Southampton address (until notice is posted of our move!) and the free new VoiceGym CD will be posted out to you. This offer applies only to those who have bought an Exercise programme

14th January 2010 - 'Ay is for 'orses

When was it decided to change the pronunciation of the indefinite article in the English language? And who decided it? More and more people are using phrases like 'ay fundamental principle', 'ay definite plan'. Do they imagine that this gives emphasis to the point they are making? I suggest that the numerous politicians, TV presenters (my goodness even that master of informative dialogue, Jon Snow, is doing it!) it) and other makers of vocal emphasis to consider this.

'Ay' can be most easily articulated with a high larynx. The correct indefinite article, 'u' as in muck 'n brass sends the larynx down to its most efficient, resonant and rhythmic position for speech and singing. It is not necessary to know your functional anatomy, just say the two phrases yourself. 'Ay' definite plan' puts emphasis on 'ay'. 'U definite plan' puts the emphasis firmly on 'definite' which is, after all, the important bit you want to get across, or do you?

If you are not sure of your information, the weaker the rhythm in the voice, the less we immediately grasp. By trial and error politicians may have realized that words difficult to digest need a strong 'ay' in front of them to soften the blow. If you adopt this as a technique your voice will eventually become higher than is natural and lack the verbal seduction the listener craves in a speaker. A good test for speaking from the heart and mind is to ask them to sing. A habitual 'ay' in your language removes this function from the voice.

I must surely be wrong about this. After all, it is everywhere. Schoolteachers, lecturers, councillors, all do it. Children are being taught to read 'ay' for 'u' I have to correct them when I deal with their voice problems. Surely it must be an effective tool for communication that I have missed? So try reading this aloud…

I wandered lonely as 'ay' cloud
That floats on high o'er vale and hill,
When all at once I saw 'ay' crowd
'Ay' host of golden daffodils.

Got the point?

5th January 2010 - New Development for VoiceGym

When VoiceGym began to evolve, through dissatisfaction with the established disconnection between speech and singing … it was a simple move really, I mean, where is the functional logic in taking one instrument and splitting it down the middle? … .it was clear that this was the beginning of a different thinking and a different working and like all beginnings, the worst thing you can do is decide where that thinking is going and plot a route.

But I was lucky. I was surrounded by young dissidents who constantly prodded me and said "What I want to do with my voice is right in my head and my imagination, but the instrument that performs it doesn't do it. It doesn't come out as I intend it. Certainly not as good". The interdisciplinary work crossing related clinical disciplines that has become the fundamental working practice for VoiceGym was begun out of solving this problem for everyone who believed they could be vocally more proficient and it worked in a way that I could not have imagined. This stage of VoiceGym has been developing for twenty years and has had the following results.

" Natural functional tongue resting position has made it into public and particularly parental awareness.
" The early development of voice, face and dentition in children has been found to be fundamental to a good life.
" Singing is not just a 'feel good factor'; it is a fundamental to lifelong health in body and mind.

Three other people are now trained in supplying this information, this belief system, while hundreds of people world wide are now working with VoiceGym and benefitting. More and more professional voices are using VoiceGym as a development and maintenance system for a long working life. That all belongs to seventeen years in Southampton when I wrote the books and my husband Chris - already with a responsible role in human vibration research - took the photos, formatted the text and supported the various projects.

The next stage is open-ended like the last. We move to Diss, in South Norfolk for a large vegetable growing garden, more family time, Chris's retirement and a large open and unstructured space (presently a double garage - who needs a double garage?) that could become yet another place for a further thinking and the opening of yet another forward route.

The address is
St Martins Cottage
The Heywood
Diss IP22 5TA
Norfolk

The telephone number will be posted on the website when we move in January. The email will remain the same. Diss is on the main London Liverpool Street to Norwich line with a regular fast service (approx. one hour thirty minutes). We are a ten minute taxi ride from the station but far from the 'madding crowd'. I think this a perfect place to discover something new (or maybe something old but neglected and currently forgotten).

Angela

11th August 2009

I am horrified to discover that my last journal page was back in January, but this has been a difficult year for everyone. In the first half of the year people lost their jobs, their houses, their pensions due to sudden and unexpected changes outside their control. I too had a sudden and unexpected change.

It began as a decision to take more care of myself, time for some serious maintenance. After all it was over fifteen years since my major orthodontic and alignment programme had alerted me to the connections between singing, balance and coordination.

I was experiencing some niggling pain and stiffness. In a busy life this is the usual and often only trigger for stopping what you are doing and examining what is going on in you as opposed to around you. The pain was not specific, it was more a general prevention of doing what I wanted to do, which to me is pain. All movement had been a bit limited but it wasn't until 'limited' became not being able to easily squat to pick up things from the floor that I decided something had to be done. When I mentioned this in general conversation faces broke out in wry smiles. I have had a senior rail card for some time and regularly receive through the door advertising for stair lifts, walk in baths and funeral insurance. That I am not retired seems to be a worry in quite a number of contexts. When I make appointments it is often assumed that I can come anytime.

The philosopher Carl Gustav Jung recommended that as death is inevitable one should live one's life as though it were for ever, which my practical father translated as 'when you know you are going to stop, you slow down". While taking this to its logical conclusion would leave a legal and financial mess to be cleared up I look around at the ageing population and I do see Jung's point ...

… so I embarked upon an exercise programme to correct the stiffness. It did correct it - for about an hour, and then I tightened up again. Then feet hurt when I walked, so I didn't walk far. Obviously getting old and slow was inevitable. Time to retire, time to hand over to the young and fit. No more to offer in the body department. I reduced my work load. Not quite true. My work load reduced itself. How is it that a reduction in your easily flowing creative energy can broadcast itself so far - the world demand for VoiceGym suddenly went quiet? This provided what seemed to be the next stage of my life and I looked forward to advancing my piano playing, finding an accompanist to play while I sang, moving over, unwinding.

Unfortunately my piano playing and my singing were as unsuccessful as my squatting. I had thought to return to Bach, Beethoven and Chopin and unlock the extensive song repertoire still in my head from so many years ago that I believed accessible 'if only I had the time'. But what was in my head would not translate into music. It lacked ease, rhythm, accurate articulation of fingers and voice. In fact, I could only move the music like I could move my body. So what now?

The correction I embarked upon twenty years ago was not because of physical pain but because of the emotional and spiritual pain caused by losing my voice for which the received wisdom had no satisfactory reason. The next stage was to make this information available because I became aware of the numbers of people who had similar problems that capped development of their person potential. VoiceGym, Early VoiceGym, VoiceGym Book were born of these aims. The last line of The Devil Within - and the story of the struggle with it all is…
"I thanked her and turned down her offer. I could now go and get on with my life."

It seemed to be another 'crunch time 'for me. Time to find another life to get on with. I started with a thorough check out, but not with the doctor. Firstly a functional dentist checked me and discovered the body shifts over the last twenty years, not all of them good, rendered my denture, providing two molars lower right and three lower left and thus skeletal support, inadequate for the job. It also had a metal bar, metal that might be toxic to my system. It was now resting on a jaw where bone had been absorbed through lack of stimulation from molar teeth - extracted in my twenties, hence the denture. It was replaced with a denture of total plastic but with much greater bulk at the back to crank up the vertical dimension,1 which may never have been sufficient.
The resultant stretch to the soft tissue of soft palate, tongue and pharynx (throat) was excruciating and lasted about three weeks, during which the height of the denture was adjusted as my body pulled itself up by the boot straps. At this point I discovered through experience that the time required to revitalize muscles and stretch the fascia connecting them to bone, increases with age. Is this one of the reasons for the widespread use of painkillers?

• Step 1 - You move the ageing body in a way it is not used to and it hurts
• Step 2 - Pain is seen as an indication of pathology
• Step 3 - You take a pain-killer, probably drug based.

Maybe you should use the pain as positive feedback and get moving more until the pain stops.

A paediatric cranial osteopath supported and advanced the changes to my denture - more pain to hips, knees and other parts I would not have imagined were involved in kneeling down -like my right shoulder blade. The dentist has done with me but the osteopath continues to stabilize the changes that are still occurring and will do so until Christmas as my body is not keen to change. It eventually complies, but it argues more and takes longer.

It has taken best part of a year to begin to feel different. I have sung and played the piano regularly throughout the last six months, and the improvement has been an effective measurement of progress. Two other experienced VoiceGym teachers, Simone Laraway, listen to her demo at www.simonelaraway.vpweb.co.uk and Alexander Evans www.alexanderevans.co.uk you can hear him on the VoiceGym 'results' page, took responsibility for teaching me the VoiceGym exercises from their perspective, demonstrating how important it is for a teacher to regularly return to fundamentals to check they still understand what they are doing and why.

I now feel terrific, purposeful and motivated. The best thing is that I have lost the stiffness and the feeling that I must wind down, step back and find something less to do. I am now practicing the repertoire I sang so many years ago with a professional accompanist who declares me fit for purpose. The voice has always been there but the initial damage to the instrument was so severe that the first recovery twenty years ago seemed like excellence, but was only relatively so and a greater awareness, a more informed application was needed from the clinicians, from the teachers and from me to get me to the next level. Singing the repertoire I sang fifty years ago feels strange. One is supposed to be too old to do this, and yet I now have more understanding of the music and the words, well honed by experience. What did I know of death and loss when I was twenty? Maturity has always been welcomed in instrumentalists, so why not of singers of sixty and more? There are a few, but it should be the rule not the exception. And have you noticed they are all men?

… For age is opportunity no less
Than youth itself, though in another dress,
And as the evening twilight fades away
The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.

Extract from Morituir Salutamus (1875) Written and delivered by Longfellow at the 50th anniversary of the class of 1825 in Bowdoin college.

Angela

1. Vertical dimension is the height of the molar teeth and how they come together, which affects the function of the jaw at its joint with the skull (the TMJ ) Insufficient vertical can lead to dysfunction and pain in this joint (TMD)

27th January 2009

I had intended to make these journal pages weekly but that was optimistic of time available. They will now appear when a burning 'voice' issue cannot be ignored - which is generally about once a month.

Books have always been a popular Christmas present, but the press reported in December that sales were down. Is this the recession or do less people find reading a pleasure?

By the beginning of January the 'Today' Programme on Radio 4 reported that at least one publisher was attempting to woo children back to reading, so as to develop a new adult generation that will buy more books. To this end they have produced books that enclose a CD and interact with a computer. This would appear to abandon the very nature of a book. No longer can you take it in your pocket down the field to lie and read in the grass on a summer afternoon; hide it with a torch under your pillow for when you should be asleep; curl up with the cat and transport yourself far away from the cold and windy weather. Are we still able to call this new 'thing' a book?

We seem so often to be changing the rules of early growth, learning and development just to promote instant gratification. But this short-term and easy investment actually betrays learning and development. With the demise of the 'silent read' we lose the brain's own consideration of sentence construction, imagery and story-telling, unhindered by teaching methods and surrounding noise.

Information gathered thus is later reflected upon and stored for the moment when we hunt for a way to express thoughts and ideas. It is fundamental to the development of communication skills which, like so many other personal skills, are on the wane. We do not need to have a government review to discover this. It can be heard and experienced all around us, in home and school, in the street and in the workplace.

Is reading a 'Voice' issue? Absolutely yes it is. Fluent reading is a two-part process. A book is just text until it is translated into language. Once your brain has processed the words you have read you need an instrument to play them on, and to be able to translate the text in the book into language, which has pitch, tone and colour, you need a competent voice at whatever age you read.

The voice supports the second part of 'reading', which is probably the most important. The passing on of information, whether it be the story of the three bears or the theory of evolution, is the part that fulfils the bigger educational picture.

The voice and its sophisticated speech patterns have been developing for some 100,000 years. Writing, on the other hand, is only 5,000 years old. When we are motivated to think we feel the need to communicate our ideas. We then write them down so that others may read them. We must never lose sight of the long term purpose of teaching children to read. We are giving them the pleasure of learning new ideas and concepts - the delight of language - not of the text. A book is a voice that speaks to you in a myriad of sounds and colours, and to appreciate the extent of those sounds and colours you have to have your own voice for the book to stimulate, so that after reading it you want to tell someone about it.

Maybe you have never thought of your voice as a musical instrument because you don't sing, but you do not speak like a Dalek. Every utterance has pitch and tone that depends on what you want to say and to whom. So you play your thoughts and ideas, most of which are stimulated by reading, on your own unique vocal instrument.

So how is your voice? When you read to your children is it flexible and mechanically efficient enough to turn text into music and fire their imagination? Do you read poetry to them? Do you sing with them, or to them?

All of these activities excite children to read, so that the next time they see you curled up in a chair reading with a 'do not disturb' bubble over your head, they may make a copy of you and do the same. Afterwards you can both complete the loop, by describing to each other the new ideas and thoughts that the quiet reading together has stimulated.

Angela

1st December 2008

I have just been to the opera - no less a production than live from the Metropolitan Opera New York. Live from, as opposed to live at... and this possibility may change the audience for opera for ever.

Followed closely on the heels of the Met., which began directly relayed performances to cinemas in 2006, firstly Covent Garden and now Glyndebourne are busy employing the technical wizards that translate opera into a 'full frontal' medium.

In the production of Le Damnation D'Faust there were underwater scenes and galloping horses bearing away Faust and the Devil. These were projected images. But there were also soldiers striding vertically up walls and devilish dancers suspended to support earth bound sprites as they hung precariously over balconies a long way from stage level. This was for real.

The two romantic leads in this production obviously did not believe it necessary to do more than sing the role. No hanging off balconies for them and whoever costumed them did not expect them to, for although Margarete took off her dress early in the seduction scene, she obviously did not remove her corsets and so walked about as though preparing for her coronation. There was a droll moment when Faust seized her and she almost choked upon his perfectly white, folded and starched neckerchief, which came between them like a frothy meringue. There was no intimate love for each other, only for the sound of their own voices.

This is unkind and non appreciative of the many wonderful opera singers who have given up 'acting the part', as did mainstream theatre some fifty years ago, and replaced it with 'being the part'. I have been transported by Fleming, Hvorotowsky, Vagos, et al. in the same season on the big screen. I could believe Fleming was seventeen in Onegin and that Vagos could fall to his death leaping precariously as he fenced Marcel with a stick across the roofs of Paris.

So ROH and Glyndebourne, a word in your ear. It takes only one performance to lose an audience, especially the unforgiving audiences who have seen performances where the danger, the emotion and the nitty gritty was lived and seen to be lived, on stage and screen

UK Singers have all the muscles and the spiritual and emotional equipment to deliver such performances but unfortunately this is not developed as part of singing training. There is too much music and not enough physical training. Before young singers work on opera repertoire they should be learning how to express themselves without music and use their bodies to hang, climb, balance, go up ladders and all those other things you have to do easily and naturally within a multidimensional production. The muscles of facial expression do not need to contort to say the words. Vowels are shaped by the pharynx. All pitch is made in the larynx. Neither affects what you do with your face. Your face is part of the total physical expression of emotion.

With the development of cinema actors had to learn that less was more and that 'less' had to be at all times natural. Singers also have to be brought out of the virtual reality they call 'performance' and into an inner quality that can only come from knowing more about how movement, voice and expression naturally connect and work together Otherwise filmed opera will be no more then a classical 'X' factor - a lot of effects around a singing puppet.

Angela

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