The big news!
We've
got some very big news to open this 40th edition of the Vocal
Process eZINE.
We're
moving house! While we were on holiday in June, we saw the perfect
house to set up a training retreat - something we've been thinking
about for years. Before we tell you where it is, just have a look at
some photos of our new house and garden...
With
a river running through the garden, and only one direct neighbour,
it's a very peaceful setting on the outskirts of the local town. The
house has six bedrooms and three bathrooms, and is ideal for holding
small residential courses or two-day one-to-one intensives.
We'll
be coming back to London every fortnight to teach at the Marble Arch
studios, and we'll still be running courses in London over the next
year. And we'll continue to travel to Glasgow and Motherwell, and to
Aberdeen in May. In fact, we've already received invitations to
travel around the country for courses, INSETs and masterclasses in
2010.
The
house is on the outskirts of a border town called Presteigne, in the
Welsh Marches between Herefordshire and Powys. In fact, the house is
10 metres into Wales, and the border runs through the grounds.
After
we'd decided to move, we were delighted to discover that the Daily
Telegraph and Country Life magazine had chosen Presteigne as number
two of Britain's top ten best places to live. The drive from
Presteigne to Aberystwyth was voted one of the ten most beautiful
drives in the world by the AA, and if that's not enough, we actually
have a designated Site of Special Scientific Interest in our own
garden!
This
is a sort of return to our geographical roots for both of us - we
were both raised in the Midlands around an hour away - Gillyanne in
Solihull and Jeremy in Shropshire. After a combined period of 53
years in London, we're looking forward to expanding our business and
our lives in such a beautiful location. We'll keep you posted!
For
more on the move, read on for the competition!
Private lessons in Central London
We've just released the dates and times for our private clients to
see us in Central London. We are each offering up to three days a
fortnight with dates finalised until April 2010. We're already
booking the January and February dates, so make sure you
email us to find out more and to reserve your lesson time.
We're
happy to work with you on vocal technique, performance issues,
troubleshooting, programme preparation, teaching techniques and
practical application, and vocal health referrals. We'll also be
seeing our Integrated VoiceTM participants for their personal
mentoring sessions, so grab a date when you can.
We're
going to be setting up a private email address and an online diary,
so you will be able to see our availability online by invitation.
We're also using Blackberries when we travel, so we can pick up your
emails and phonecalls quickly. If you would like us to add your name
to the private clients' list and invite you to view our online
diary, please
let us know by email, even if you're not sure when you can come.
We're
looking forward to working with you in London!
Vocal Anatomy for Voice Professionals
Here's a reminder that our
Integrated VoiceTM
Training Programme Module One begins again in January 2010 with
the Muscles Alive! and Vocal Anatomy and Physiology in Depth.
We start on Saturday January 23
at RADA with the popular
Muscles Alive! day with osteopath and psychologist Jacob
Lieberman. We already have participants coming from as far as Greece
to take part, and there are only
5 places left. Here's a
taster of what you will discover on the day.
Debunking the posture myths – the mistakes people make
Attractive
posture and efficient posture are not necessarily the same
thing
Discover how posture affects the voice
Understand
when to correct posture and when to leave it alone!
The Jaw
Big
Jaw Little Jaw - how jaw positions can affect the voice
The laryngeal mechanism – theory and practice
Discover
the impact of laryngeal tension on the voice with hands-on
exercises; how to identify potential problems in your
students
Your burning questions
Chaired by Gillyanne, get answers to those niggling posture
questions
And on the Sunday and Monday (24-25 January) we are
running the excellent
Vocal Anatomy and Physiology in Depth course with the
extremely knowledgeable Tom and Sara Harris. These two days are now
being held at the Space Centre on Judd Street, a few minutes walk
from Euston, Kings Cross and Russell Square tube stations. We now
only have 2
possible places left. If you want to attend this course, or both
courses together, please book your place now - once we reach the
cutoff number, we won't be able to accommodate you!
For more information
about both of these courses please click on the
links above.
To book straight away, visit our
Forthcoming Courses
page
Singing Express
You
may remember that Gillyanne has been commissioned to write again for
A&C Black. Singing Express is a series aimed at schoolchildren and
their teachers, to help them improve their singing skills. Singing
Express 1 (ages 5-6) has just been published (see below for the
competition) and is full of new cross-curricular singing materials
including new songs, backing tracks, song movies and specialist
singing help.
Gillyanne and her co-author, Ana Sanderson, are currently writing
and recording book 2 (ages 6-7), the final book for Key Stage One.
From
January 2010, Jeremy will be joining Gillyanne and Ana as co-author
for the Key Stage Two books (books 3-6). It's a crazy schedule with
all of the books to be published within the next 18 months! Jeremy
will be heavily involved in the commissioning of new songs, creating
the vocal specialist material and the teacher notes, and will be
overseeing the video and audio recordings of the backing tracks,
song performances and video footage for the whiteboard experience
DVDs. Gillyanne, Jeremy and Ana have collaborated before on the
Successful Singing Auditions book (now seven years old!). We're
really looking forward to another fruitful partnership with our
publishers A&C Black.
Singing and the
Actor is back in stock
As
you may remember from eZINE 39, we had completely sold out of two of
our top-selling products. The last of the Voicebox Videos DVDs went
to the
Royal Academy of Music in London. and Singing and the Actor second
edition had sold out once more.
Well,
both of them are now back in stock. A&C Black pulled out all the
stops to get another print run in before Christmas (there, that's
the only mention of the "C" word I'll put in this eZINE), and we
received our batch in time to get a major order to Motherwell
College. Singing and the Actor and Successful Singing Auditions are
both recommended texts at Motherwell, and we'll be going back there
in the Spring to give more masterclasses in voice and performance.
The
Voicebox
Videos are also in stock, now in their third pressing.
Even when we had run out of copies, we continued to get orders from
Speech and Language Therapy departments around the country - we're
glad to have been able to fulfil them so quickly, so thanks to our
friendly DVD pressing company for their quick turnaround.
You
can visit the
Vocal Process products page to get your copies now.
We're starting to Cheer again...
You'll remember in the last eZINE that I talked about my Good Cheer
emails, and the emailing programme that was on the blink. The makers
of the programme have confessed that they don't know what went wrong
or how to fix it! But so many people have emailed and said how much
they enjoyed seeing Cheer in their inbox, that I've done some
tweaking and deleting behind the scenes. I'm going to start sending
the emails again.
We're
starting with Cheer 11, so don't worry if you've just joined us and
are wondering where 1-10 went. If you do start receiving multiple
copies again, just drop me an email and I'll sort it out. I'm doing
a lot of this by hand now, so please bear with me!
For
those of you that have preferred not to receive the Cheer emails, I
have personally unsubscribed you (again) by hand and have removed
your details from the database system manually. Please do tell me
if, by any chance, that hasn't worked and you continue to receive
them.
If
you want to unsubscribe from the Cheer emails, just
drop me an email with "Unsubscribe Vocal Process Cheer" in the
title - you will continue to receive your eZINE as normal.
The Competition!
It's
that time of year - you know, the one I said I wouldn't mention
again? We've got a special competition for you, with two prizes:
-
A copy of the new Singing Express 1 book and DVD by Gillyanne
and Ana Sanderson
or
-
A Vocal Process DVD of your choice (Voicebox Videos, or
Constriction and Release - The Techniques, or Nasality and the
Soft Palate).
And
we've even got a choice of things you can do to enter!
1. Send us a
Happy New Home email message - we'll print them up and stick
them on the boxes we haven't unpacked yet!
or
2. If you're feeling creative, send us a
caption for this photograph of 'Fingers' Fisher, taken from
our recent How Your Voice WORKS course in York.
