This post is a bit of a departure from my usual music blogging, but since I spent all of last week at an Estill Voice Training Course – and I am now really wiped out from the combination of intense concentration and a very long commute – it seems appropriate to review it, at least briefly, for anyone else who may be interested in attending.
(Edited to add: briefly, eh? I don’t think that word is actually in my repertoire…)
The first thing you need to know about Estill Voice Training is that it packs an *enormous* amount of information and work into a very short space of time. I was very glad to have an extra week off work after the end of it, because I was absolutely exhausted by the weekend – I spent Saturday and Sunday wandering around the place like a zombie, occasionally pausing to inform Andrew that he was using thyroid tilt when talking to the cats, and to inform the cats that they had *excellent* retraction. (Mystery has the low larynx characteristic of an opera singer, whereas Mayhem is more of a belter. Neither of them have any problem with anchoring, or with producing sounds that resonate very well in the 2000 to 4000 Hz range to which the human ear is preferentially attuned)