Voice Care, Improvement and Maintenance

Ukulele Moon Girl from "The Toon Sketchbook" on Tumblr: http://toonsketchbook.tumblr.com/
Ukulele Moon Girl from “The Toon Sketchbook” on Tumblr: http://toonsketchbook.tumblr.com/

First posted on the Ukulele Cosmos Forum, 25 June 2013

I could not find much on Ukulele Cosmos to do with voice and singing – the search function does not help as all the terms I tried were rejected as being “too common“.

So I thought I would start this topic.  I started off calling it “Voice and Singing Resources” but there are too many schools of thought in “singing pedagogy”, so I thought it safer to call the subject “voice” but include some specific resources about singing. Everything that helps to look after, improve and maintain a good voice applies to both the speaking voice and the singing voice. This is sometimes called “voice hygiene” but “voice care” works for me.

On which note – the health warning

PLEASE READ THIS IF YOU READ NOTHING ELSE OF THIS POST

If you have a cough, hoarseness or any other voice problem that lasts for more than two weeks – SEE A DOCTOR!

  • This is standard medical advice, for good reason.
  • If a cough or hoarseness persists for more than three weeks, go back to your doctor. Ask for a referral to a “cough clinic” or a “voice clinic” depending on the problem. These are few and far between so you might instead be referred to a general gastroenterology or ENT (Ear Nose and Throat) clinic.
  • A persistent cough or voice problem might be the sign of something serious and the sooner you find out whether or not this is the case, the better.
  • If you have a persistent cough or a voice problem, you will need an ENT report before you can receive any help from a Speech and Language Therapist. These might be symptoms of an underlying pathology and this needs to be excluded or identified first.
  • Good voice teaching or singing teaching should help you to improve your performance without damaging your voice. A good teacher who has your best interests at heart will advise you to get medical help and vocal rehabilitation if you have damaged your voice.
  • I will do a separate post with information about voice clinics, specialist medical help for performers, etc. This wil be UK-centric but all of the sites and organisations referenced include links to international organisations and/or equivalent organisations in other countries.

OK – end of “health warning” – but please take it seriously – it is all in the news this week – search for “persistent cough Def Leppard” and you will get the idea.

Continue reading “Voice Care, Improvement and Maintenance”

Free CPD for SLPs via Twitter

If you are looking for Free CPD on the web, this is a good place to start:

Free CPD and resources for SLPs via Twitter

After a break from blogging I came back here and discovered, with horror, how difficult it was to find content that I know is here . . . somewhere.

One of the problems is with pages, rather than blog posts.

It is not possible to assign a “Category” to a page or to “tag” a page.

I run another blog, all to do with ukuleles, and over there I have routinely blogged links to new pages.  It might mean an extra step or two to get to a target page but at least there is a signposted path to follow.

So, to help make this site more user-friendly, it is time to blog some links to the pages.

Better late than never!

YouTube auto generated channels for SLPs

Quite by chance, I noticed yesterday that there was a YouTube auto generated Channel for Augmentative and Alternative Communication.  Remembering that Kate Caryer had asked members of the “Unspoken” Group for links to AAC media, I popped straight over to Facebook to post the link.

When I came back to YouTube, I could not find this channel again.  This time, it didn’t turn up in the search results for “augmentative and alternative communication”.  So back I went to Facebook to find and copy the link that I had posted there.  Only I could not find the “Unspoken” Group!  So back I went in my browser history to find it, resolving to bookmark the channel and subscribe to it, in order to save time in future.

I was intrigued to know where this channel had come from.  The answer is on the Official YouTube for May 4th 2012,  “Finding and following new channels you love“.  There is further info on the YouTube Support Page – extract below: Continue reading “YouTube auto generated channels for SLPs”