Life-changing voice training

university-of-waikato

Fri Jan 23 2009 13:00:00 GMT+1300 (New Zealand Daylight Time)

Life-changing voice training

Friday, 23 January 2009, 10:58 am
Press Release: University of Waikato

Media Release
January 23, 2009

Who’d have thought a bit of voice training could be life-changing? But students studying with voice training specialists at Waikato University Summer School say they’ve been transformed by what they’ve learnt during a 10-day Estill voice training course.

Thirty-six students took part (SUBS: runs till Saturday Jan 24) in the 10-hour daily sessions which focuses on the physiological and anatomical structure of the voice.

Student Athena Chambers said she knows “life-changing experience” sounds corny, but that’s what it is. “It makes you consider everything you‘re doing – you hear what the tutors tell you and apply it. Even though it’s complex, they make it sound simple and you understand why your voice isn’t doing what you want it to do and how to change it.”

The system of Estill voice training was developed by an American Jo Estill. International clinical voice specialist Paul Farrington, who’s also a singer, found out about it and became a tutor. The Harley street consultant is one of three Estill specialists who taught at Waikato for the week. “Performance singers are like athletes,” he says, “and they need to take care of their voices just as an athlete does. If they become tired or use their voices wrongly then their performances suffer.”

Farrington travels the world working with performance singers in West End shows, and in Europe and the US. He’s also a consultant to the Royal Opera at Covent Garden where he works on the young artists programme to ensure they and their voices stay healthy. For the past four years he’s been guest tutor at the New Zealand’s Opera School in Wanganui, but this is the first time he’s taught at Waikato.

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“The Estill system breaks the voice down to 13 separate structures and then you put it all together again...a bit like a recipe. You need to know what the voice is doing and how it does it and then you know why the wrong things start to creep in and how to fix it.”

Farrington says accents influence the way we use our voice. New Zealanders’ thick vowels, for example, mean we “mess around with the back of the tongue”, and that can cause tongue root tension, he says. Scottish and Northern Irish have different vocal problems, often due to their ‘o’ and ‘oo’ sounds.

Farrington was joined by Estill tutors Helen Rowson and Travis Baker for the Waikato Summer School. The sessions were a combination of theory and practical and among the students was Waikato University music student and this year’s New Zealand Aria Competition winner Julia Booth.

ends

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