Perhaps I have been remiss, but I must admit I hadn’t realised that there was such a thing as World Voice Day until this year! However, I’m very glad that I am now rather more enlightened, as the day is a good opportunity to raise awareness how to take care of your voice and how important this is – both for work and pleasure! This year’s theme is “focus on your voice”.
The British Voice Association has some handy guides to caring for your voice, including their Ten Top Tips for maintaining vocal health. There’s also some advice on coping with respiratory tract infections, which is rather topical…
Whether or not you are a singer, there are plenty of good reasons to take up or keep on singing anyway – it’s good for your health and well-being, for a start!
For singers practising at home, the Jerwood Library offers online access to IPA Source:
“the web’s largest library of International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) transcriptions and literal translations of opera arias and art song texts”
You may already be familiar with the Alexander Street online resource, but the following are of particular interest to vocalists:
“a history database that allows people to hear and feel the music from America’s past. The database includes songs by and about American Indians, miners, immigrants, slaves, children, pioneers and cowboys. Included in the database are the songs of Civil Rights, political campaigns, Prohibition, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, anti-war protests and more.”
“contains five hundred hours of the most important opera performances, captured on video through staged productions, interviews, and documentaries. Selections represent the world’s best performers, conductors, and opera houses and are based on a work’s importance to the operatic canon.”
If you have trouble with these links, go to the the Library’s online resources page on Moodle and access the sites from there, so your login credentials will be recognised.
Finally, it is important to remember that the spoken (or sung!) word is only one way to communicate. One wonderful advantage of recent technological innovations, for both augmentative and alternative communication, is the way in which these have allowed many who are non-speaking still to have a voice – and be heard.
CHOPIN
Marc-André Hamelin: No limits
Jerwood Library of the Performing Arts blog 