#169. Insights and Strategies for Maintaining Vocal Health with Lori Sonnenberg

Episode Transcript
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Dr Marisa Lee Naismith (00:01):
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www.leadbywisdom.com and unlockyour full potential.
It's Marissa Lee here, and I'mso excited to be sharing today's
interview round episode withyou. In these episodes, our

(02:44):
brilliant lineup of guests willinclude healthcare
practitioners, voice educators,and other professionals who will
share their stories, knowledgeand experiences within their
specialised fields to empoweryou to live your best life.
Whether you're a member of thevoice, community, or beyond your

(03:07):
voice is your unique gift. It'stime now to share your gift with
others develop a positivemindset and become the best and
most authentic version ofyourself to create greater
impact. Ultimately, you can takecharge, it's time for you to

(03:30):
live your best life. It's timenow for a voice and beyond. So
without further ado, let's go totoday's episode.
In this episode of a voice andbeyond, we dive into the
complexities of vocal healthwith our brilliant guest, Laurie

(03:55):
Sonnenberg. Laurie is a Chicagobased licenced speech language
pathologist, clinical voicespecialist and singing voice
specialist renowned for herexpertise in treating voice
disorders. She is also thefounder of Sonnenberg voice, a

(04:17):
clinic dedicated to providingcomprehensive voice care for
speech, breathing and singing.
Voice issues often stem fromvocal fold injuries, overuse or
inefficient use of the vocalmechanism. These issues can
severely impact one's ability toperform daily tasks,

(04:40):
particularly for professionalvoice users, such as singers,
educators, actors and publicspeakers. Lori's clinic
specialises in treating muscletension dysphonia recovery from
VA I see injuries, professionalvoice care, post operative voice

(05:02):
recovery and addressingtechnical voice issues or
singers. In our conversation,Laurie offers a detailed
overview of what an initialconsultation at her clinic
entails, including thediagnostic process and treatment
strategies. She emphasises theimportance of prevention, and

(05:28):
shares insights on how voiceteachers can identify potential
voice problems in their ownvoices and those of their
students. Laurie alsounderscores the necessity of
seeking specialist help promptlyto avoid long term damage.

(05:50):
Laurie highlights the importanceof supporting singers through
their vocal challenges. Ratherthan shaming them, debunking
misconceptions about vocalpathologies across different
genres. This episode is a mustlisten for anyone interested in

(06:12):
voice health. Whether you are aprofessional voice user, or
simply someone looking toimprove and maintain your vocal
quality. Tune in to gainvaluable insights from Laurie
Sonnenberg and learn how tobetter care for your voice. So
without further ado, let's go totoday's episode.

(06:48):
Welcome to the show, LaurieSonnenberg. It's such a pleasure
having you. How are you?

Lori Sonnenberg (06:54):
Hi, Marissa.
I'm doing great. Thank you. Howabout you today? I'm

doing well, except my cat is meowing
Charlie. He needs to know hislips. But no, it's such a
pleasure having you and there isso much information that I want
to extract from you. I'm totallygoing to be geeking out. You're
Yeah, I'm

excited. I can't wait to geek out with you.
Yes. So

you're the first speech pathologist
that I've interviewed and Itruly have a million questions.
So let's start unpacking you.
Let's start getting to know you,Lori, you are a licenced speech
language pathologist, a clinicalvoice specialist, and singing
voice specialist. And you'rebased in Chicago, one of my very

(07:41):
favourite cities in the US. Andyou're also a soprano, you have
you have a Bachelor of Musicdegree and a masters of music.
There is so much to learn aboutyou. So let's start with and I
love doing this with all myguests is finding out. Okay, so

(08:01):
as a child, did you think andwhen did you actually figure out
that? Okay, I'm not such a badsinger.

Yes, I'm pretty sure I have memories. I don't
really, really have a lot oflife memories that don't involve
thinking I have memories fromsuch a young age thing. My whole
family was musical both bothsides of my family were musical.
And my mom really wanted me toplay piano and expose me to a

(08:35):
lot of music growing up. And soI started studying piano very
young as well about age five.
But I got memories of doingsolos and little music clubs and
things even at that early age. Ithink my very first public Solo
was preschool graduation.
Somewhere Over the Rainbow. Oh,of course. What else? Yes. And

(08:58):
my parents don't have like acassette tape of me singing it.

Oh, I would love to hear that. You'll
have to put it up on socialsometime.

I know. That would be great, wouldn't it?
Yes. So So I did. I did a lotearly on. Just thinking for a
week. I grew up in a reallysmall town in Northwest
Louisiana. But surprisingly, wehad a really robust music
community. The music teacher,the national music teachers
association had a club there.
And so I had a my very bestfriend's grandmother used to

(09:32):
host these old timey salongatherings in her front parlour
with her grand piano. And Iwould go and seeing for all
these these old ladies at themusic club meetings and so that
those are my earliest earliestmemories of doing that, but then
I really feel like church waswhere I started kind of being

(09:56):
shaped as a singer and musician,it was a great outlet for me to
play and and to sing. I startedparticipating in choirs and so
forth. And I had a choirdirector who took an interest in
me, I was about 11 years old.
And he went to my parents andsaid, There's something here,

(10:18):
like, you know, there'ssomething going on here, and we
need to foster it. And so thosewere that was kind of how it all
began, I started taking voicelessons and never looked back.

Well, thank goodness for that. So you
went on to study voice and vocalpedagogy formally, what
happened? First, I know thatyou've done some teaching,
you've had a performance, littleperformance career, you've done
some teaching, and then youtransitioned into speech
pathology. What was thatjourney? Like? What order did

(10:51):
all that happen in?

You know, I started out like a lot of young
singers who were gifted in inthe classical realm. So I, my
voice was really well suited toclassical singing. And I was a
high soprano. I was also reallystrong musicians, so I could
learn and seeing very difficultmusic. And so I was really

(11:15):
focused and motivated about justpursuing a big performance
career in opera, right. I mean,that was what I thought I wanted
to do. I would envision myselfthe Met and in Europe and
galavanting about and singingand doing all and knowing and
learning all the languages and,and that was really my focus for
most of college, I was stillpretty focused on that. But

(11:38):
during college, I took my firstpedagogy course, which is kind
of unusual for undergraduates atthat time, that was in the 90s.
And it was an old book, but ithad these hand drawings of the
lyrics and the anatomy andphysiology. And we started
learning about injury ran, Inever had injury and not I was

(11:59):
fortunate as a singer to neverhave really struggled. But I had
a lot of friends who were musiceducation majors, who were
struggling and getting diagnosedwith nodules and different
things. And so I was sort ofobserving all of this as a very
young singer, and want to beteacher. So I tried teaching
very young, I started teachinglessons when I was like, 19,

(12:21):
which I would never want someoneto do that now. But I look back
and it was just a good fit. I, Iwas good at teaching music to
young people. And so I use mypiano skills, and just my
budding skills as a voiceteacher to you know, start
playing around in a privatestudio setting with other

(12:41):
voices, and realise, hey, I'mpretty good at making changes
and the sound. Yes, you know, Ican listen to them. And I can
sort of internalise that anddiagnose it by introspection,
what do they need to changeabout what they're doing to make
it sound better, or different.
And so I think I started doingthat sets at such a young age

(13:02):
and, and then when I went to mymaster's degree, I was recruited
for that degree by a professornamed Norman spy v. And it was a
new programme at that time, andthey they there weren't that
many of them. Masters andpedagogy were just unheard of.
And they recruited me for thatgave me a teaching

(13:22):
assistantship, and I just lovedteaching. I was just I felt like
I am born to teach voice. But Ihad a good instrument too. And
so I was really torn. You know,I had it, I felt like maybe I
had the chops for theperformance thing, but I wasn't
sure. And I just couldn't getthe vocal injury rehabilitation

(13:43):
piece out of my head. Sure. AndI lived really close to
Philadelphia at that time when Iwas doing that degree. And so I
started observing and spendingtime and learn got analytic
ology clinic.

Well, so that opportunity came up for you
very

early, very early. And, and there weren't
very many, I really wanted to bea singing voice specialist. I
didn't want to do the speechpathology piece, I just wanted
to do the singing voicespecialty. But here in the
States, you know, there arestronger lines, the somewhat
between the practice of thosethings. And I realised after

(14:26):
talking to people that Iprobably would not get to really
be all that involved in themedical side of things. If I
didn't do the speech pathologydegree. Sure, sure. And so I was
still I was in my mentally 20s.
And I said, you know, if I'mgoing to do this, this is the
time and I actually gone on andstarted my doctoral work.

Really, so you started. Well,

I had started my document musical arts. Yes.
And, and I just couldn't getthat I was envisioned In this
role where fingers can have veryspecialised support for
recovering from injury, yes.

And isn't it strange in life,
sometimes you have that calling,and you can't move away from it.
That's it. That's all you wantto do and nothing else and you
can try other things. But whenyour hearts in something, you
just have to go for it, don'tyou

that? That's exactly right. And I think that
that's a great way to say thatbecause that looking back, I do
think there was just this deepsense of calling and, but I was
scared, I was scared. I devotedmy entire life to cultivating
the craft of theming for my, formy own instrument. And I

(15:45):
actually remember the day that Icame home and officially said,
Okay, I'm doing this, I'mleaving performance behind and
making this this change here.
And it was tough. I wasdepressed for a while it was the
big thing to give up.

But that would have taken a lot of
courage, so good on you to makethat call. Because look at you
now, it's all been worth that.
Work. You're doing such amazingwork. Okay. Now, I want to ask
here, and this may be a reallyignorant question. What is the
difference between a voicetherapist and a voice
pathologist? And is there adifference? into use of the same

(16:28):
thing?

I think we interchange them a lot. He
especially here in the States, Ithink everyone kind of calls
themselves something just alittle bit different. I use
voice pathologist sometimesbecause I am involved a lot in
the diagnostic process. And thatthat pathology diagnosis of and

(16:56):
I don't know it it for me, itreally feels like it gives me
some credibility on the scienceside of thing. Absolutely. Yeah,
but I think a lot of speechpathologists just use that. You
interchange them voicetherapists. To me, it's a little
more or less colloquial. Thepathologist sounds a little more
credible sometimes, I guess. So

it sounds a little bit more
qualified, more formal, moreimportant. And we've made and
yeah, we want to be all thosethings. Right. Right.

And my favourite, my favourite, you
know, title to use in hisclinical voice specialist. I
feel like that is probably thebest representation of what I do
in my day is yes. So

in your work as a clinical voice
specialist, what are the mostcommon voice pathologies? Or do
you call them disorderspathologies versus disorders? Or
is that another range of I

don't use the word pathology to me refers very
specifically to a lesion on

the vocal hold. All right. Okay.

Right. So, so I probably say disorders, okay,
or, or injury more often, but Ilike disorders, because I feel
like disorders is a little morea correct sort of categorical
description, right to types ofthings, because so much of my
practice is devoted to what wecall functional voice disorders.

(18:32):
Because muscle tension dysphoniafalls in that functional realm.
Yes, yeah. And so, so muscletension dysphonia with or with
our pathology is, is the numberone diagnosis in my clinic.

Really?
Well, we I was going to ask youabout that a little later. So,
but I'm happy to go with youhere. So muscle tension
dysphonia, that is reallycommon, and it's more common
than what people realise. Andit's actually something that
I've suffered from myself in thepast. And it came at a time when

(19:09):
I was completing my PhD. I wasworking five days a week, as
well as doing completing my PhDon a full time basis. So I had
no life. I was absolutely justrunning on adrenaline the whole
time. And I was tight as inevery part of my body, and I was

(19:32):
diagnosed with muscle tensiondysphonia. Now, do you want to
explain what that is?

Sure. Well, muscle tension dysphonia I I
mean, one of the things I wantto make sure I say first is that
it is a bit of a it's a bit of awastebasket term. Oh time. And
no, no, no, no. Just seeinglike, a lot of things go in the

(20:02):
bin. And here and here's what Imean by that. Because when we
means that it's a big umbrellaterm rubber, when a doctor
doesn't see anything wrong froman organic or physical
standpoint with a larynx, whichis what we want, right? We don't
want to see anything. Yes. Evenif they don't really see muscle

(20:23):
tension, it's it's kind of hardto see that. They'll that's what
we diagnosed the person with.
And the voice is a little, youknow, something's not working
correctly or well, about thefunction. Yeah. And so it
encompasses so many things. Itcan be primary or secondary.
That basically the way I like todescribe it to my patients and
my students is that there arevery particular muscles

(20:47):
intrinsically in the larynx thatare responsible for vocal fold
vibration, and closure,abduction and that process, and
we don't really want theextrinsic muscles and operators
involved a hole, right? Iunderstand. And so what happens
in muscle tension dysphoniausually is that there are
muscles that are not supposed tobe involved in that process

(21:11):
become involved, we startrecruiting help from them. With
compensatory strategies. Yes.
And then, you know, the bodylearns what it learns.

And it becomes habitual.

That's right, the brain learns it. And we're
looking and especially singerslike we're looking at, we're
from the moment somethingdoesn't sound right or feel
right, we start looking for away around it. Yes, yes.

I call that manipulating, we start to
manipulate. And that's whyoften, like when it comes to my
singing students, I can tellmore so in their speaking voice,
if there's a disorder, ratherthan their singing voice,
because in their singing, we allwhen we see we can learn to mask

(21:57):
it and as you said, work aroundit. But it's very hard to
disguise in the speaking voice.
Yeah,

you're right.
Well, because we're not as awareof technique. Usually, you know,
one of my mentor talks aboutlike, how, as singers, we were
really good at dressing up ourvoices. Like we put all the
layers on we put our mostbeautiful gowns on and our and
our coats and our hats and ourscarves and we dress it up. And
and we're good at that. Yes,we're really good at that is. So

(22:27):
it can be it can develop all byitself as the primary issue, but
a lot of times muscle tensiondysphonia is a secondary
diagnosis to another diagnosis.

Really, I guess there's so many
questions here. One, what causesmuscle tension dysphonia? So
what are those primary andsecondary problems that are
going on?

So the most common example is, well, there
are two I can think of one is islike nodules, or polyps, but
especially nodules, very commonfor singers to develop the
muscle tension patterns whilecontinuing to sing and speak
with injury present.

Okay, so that's pretty serious, right?

And then there's a lot of Muddy Waters
sometimes in treatment, becauseI have to sort of suss out
what's the main issue here isthis Are we dealing with an
issue, because of overuse isthis person truly overusing
their instrument, and that's whythey can't get better, or is
muscle tension, the primaryissue, and I were paired with a

(23:39):
group of laryngologist, here inthe Chicago area, who are super
super savvy at diagnosing muscletension dysphonia in the singing
voice, and that's why so much ofmy practice involves that
usually what we see on an examjust to be really clear here, we
usually see a gap of some sortbetween the vocal folds where

(24:01):
they do not come all the waytogether from front to back,
really.

And that was what I was going to ask you
is when just say I'm a brand newpatient, or client, and I come
to you I've never been tobefore, what is the diagnostic
process that one goes through?
Typically,

when I evaluate a patient, the majority of them
have already seen alaryngologist and a diagnosis
has been confirmed. Right? So Ibegin there are really three
major components to my my timewith them, and that initial
visit one is a very detaileddive into their history. We're

(24:43):
going to talk first Yes, I'mgonna learn everything I can
learn about that person. Andtheir their personal life, their
professional life, the role thatvoice plays in their lives,
what's going well, what's notgoing well. What is your voice,
not do that you need it and wantit to do right for you? Yeah,

(25:04):
no. And so the history is firstand that sometimes that's not a
big deal. And sometimes that's areally long, deep deep dive into
a lot of medical things. Thesecond piece is the actual vocal
assessment or assessment of whatI call vocal capabilities that
I'm trying to find out what isthis voice capable of? And then
what are its limitations?

Right.
So how do you do that? Is thatthrough like a spectrograph or a
scone? Not,

not right now, when I was me, I'm primarily
still virtual and teletherapy.
Right now, though, the majorityI started did away with a lot of
my more formal assessment thingsonline. I've also been doing
this a really long time, andI'm, I'm pretty good at just
assessing things with my earsand the keyboard. So I do we do
speaking samples, I try to findout like what what can this

(25:56):
voice do all the things that itshould be able to do? Yes. And
in the speaking way, meanmeaning louds and softs and
highs and lows and authoritativeand then we do a lot of
sustained sound making so longsounds holding things out. I try
to assess the way the breath isworking. Are there limitations

(26:16):
in the breath? I'm listening totone and coming up with how do I
describe this tone? Is this aclear tone? Is it is it horse?
Is it husky? Is it breathy? Isit Are they straining? Are they
working too hard? And thensingers? If it's a singer, which
it is, yes, we go into more moresubtle nuances to Kotti. I want

(26:41):
to know what can what can theydo with staccato legato lines
and transitioning between vowelsand and what is the range? Like
is this? Is this a balancedvocal range? From a registration
head standpoint? Are there a lotof imbalance?

That's amazing. And what causes muscle
tension dysphonia usually, wellwhat is the most common cause
that that you see in yourpractice?

Usually, the voice either there's there's an
overuse component, or that iseither one time or repetitive,
where they're never quiterecovering to their baseline and
then they fall into thosecompensatory strategies show. I

(27:33):
call it just kind of getting offtrack. There's also lack of use.
So you know, the disuse or toomuch, too much vocal rest. That
happens a lot. People arescared. They rest too much for
too long. Uh huh. And then theytry to come back to singing and
then it's not working like it'ssupposed to you.

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another circumstances getting sick
getting

and people what perhaps returning to
work a little too soon and notflavour recovering,

right or the body, the physical body comes
back to normal, but the voicenever quite comes all the way
back. There's just something alittle. And the thing is though
singers like I said, we'rereally good at making things
work. So I think a lot ofsingers that just bandaid things
for a little while. Yeah, and inthe muscle tension grows. The

(30:45):
other thing I just want to makesure I mention because this you
had asked about the primaryversus secondary, another very
common sometimes under diagnosedissue that where muscle tension
can be secondary to it is vocalhold courageousness Oh, okay.
Which is which is a weakness inthe nerve. Right? Okay, then the

(31:07):
nerves and so there's weakness,there's sometimes the vocal
folds get kind of poppy or one'snot vibrating and moving the way
it's supposed to. And that'svery common in the singing voice
to

Okay, so how do you treat muscle tension
dysphonia? I know when I wasdiagnosed, I was given like
accent breathwork. To do, I wasgiven strong foundation, puffy
cheeks, that kind of thing. Butworking on breath, and I know at
the time, because I was sohighly strong that I was holding

(31:44):
my breath

a lot. Yes, yeah, the breath holding is very
common with muscle tensiondysphonia.

Yes. And that came from tension. And also
the back of my neck was reallylocked. So I was given a lot of
exercises to loosen the back ofmy neck. Yes,

yes. You know, every person's priority list is
a little bit different. Ofcourse, I am a little out of the
box, as a speech pathologist inthe way that I that I treat
voice, I don't follow like thetypical methods, I sort of
create little blends of my ownthings based on what I think is

(32:23):
going to work. And I really relyon my skills of the singing
teacher. And therapy, I rely onthose skills so much. Yes. And,
and so usually there's, I referto it as kind of an unloading
process. Yeah. So we begin with,let's make sure the breath is a
lot. We're going to move, we'regoing to work with flow, we call

(32:45):
it flow phone, we flow thebreath. Yes, usually, there's a
component of like laryngealmassage, and I do something
called trigger point therapy,where we're sort of isolating
specific areas and applyingpressure. And in trying to
figure out, what does that do,does that change what's
happening? So then we begin withunloading, but I'm really

(33:08):
particular in my process,because even while we're
unloading, I'm being verysneaky. About getting other
things going without the personknowing. Yeah, that's what I'm
doing. Yeah. So. So while we'reunloading, I'm already choosing
downs for their therapyexercises, where I can tell that

(33:31):
they're getting really clean,clear, adduction, and better
vocal hold positioning, reallyefficient voice thing. So
really, I just use my ears in atrial and error sort of way to
determine what results inreally, really efficient voicing
for this person. Yes. And thenthat's all we do for a little

(33:54):
while. Okay, so

it's just repetitive work to begin
with

very repetitive. We start with very
short, frequent practice, and,and we get results, usually, I
mean, very quickly, usually, theperson is feeling better when we
finished the first session, andthey go away, and they do it.
And as the voice becomes moreefficient, and we're unloading
and peeling back the layers oftension, and so forth, and we

(34:21):
get in there and we startbuilding, and we're going to
build and we're going to startto work on resonance and aural
shaping and vocal tract shaping.
And then we move into vowels andtongue positioning. And I mean,
it's just a lot of differentthings.

It's like a massive can of worms. It
is, it's a lot, isn't it. That'sit. It's incredible. I just want
to move on to now there was whenwe had a meeting some weeks ago,
you talked about vocal foldsswelling as well. That is
something that is very, verycommon and many Voice users who,

(35:01):
like professional voice usersdon't realise that they have it.
So do you want to talk a littlebit about what that's all about?
Yeah, so

I'm gonna talk about, oh, well, I have learned
that this kind of comes from myknowledge about swelling and how
it comes and goes in the life ofa singer or a professional voice
user comes from taking peoplethrough that process of
resolving swelling and injuryand helping them learn the day

(35:33):
to day, week to week balance ofhow much voice and how much
silent, right? balance can be.
And so vocal folds swelling, Imean, really swelling is our
body's way of trying to protectus. So we, you know, vocal vocal
fold vibration is a biologicalthing, it is not infinite there.

(35:56):
And so there is a limit. Yes,there is we all have a limit,
your limit and my limit aredifferent. And, and so the thing
about fouling and vocal foldvibration, you know, did you
know that there is no othertissue in the human body that
gets subjected to the kind oftrauma that vocal folds do on a

(36:16):
daily basis?

I'm not surprised because we're
constantly using the vocal foldsnot only to find aid, but they
have other little jobs that theydo as well. So yes,

yes. So so we vibrate so much. And if we go
past the limit, the vocal foldsare going to there are going to
be these little cushions thatkind of pop up, you know, on the
vibrating edge of the fold toprotect us. But when that little
cushion pops up, something'sgoing to change about the voice.

(36:52):
And we have to know what the inour body or our voices are gonna
give us a warning signal thatthat spelling is present. Now,
if you're not a singer, youmight not know. Yeah,

so what are the warnings? And I didn't
ask what the warning signs areof muscle tension dysphonia
either. So how can we tell thatwe have something sinister going
on? Or potentially sinister?

There are some really key common signals,
warning signals, I like to callthem for singers especially and
I, you know, I ever I do workwith non singers, but just for
the purpose of our conversation,I'm Yes. Going to use that. So
And remember, the outer edge ofthe vocal fold is the mucosa. So
we are referring to mucosalswelling in this Yes, yes. So

(37:41):
the number one thing is loss ofa high soft thing. Ah, that's
interesting.

Because even in I mean, how many
students come to me and theysay, I can't sing high, softly.
The only way I can sing high isif I sing loudly.

Yeah. So you know, we don't know. We never
know unless we look right. Sobut it's, it's one thing for
someone to say I've never beenable to do those notes that way.
But it's another thing forsomeone to say, I can't sing
about G five today. Like I'velost everything above that, what
what's going on? Okay, so, butloss of high soft thing, because

(38:23):
even the smallest of vocal foldsswelling might not interfere
until soft head voice or softfalsetto. And you have to get
quiet to notice that. So theloss of high soft singing day to
day variability. Uh

huh. So the voice behaving itself one
way on one day, and the nextday, the voice behaves
differently. So the voice isinconsistent from day to day.
And you exactly and you don'tknow how it's going to behave.
It's just random, right?

But there's almost always a pattern in
there. And that's one of the funthings is helping people find
those patterns. So the otherreally common things are onset
delays. Mm hmm. air escape inthe tone, yes. And increased
effort. Right. Okay. So thoseare probably the top five
warning signals that come out.
Another thing that kind ofstands out just for like our

(39:22):
listening audience, so colds andviruses and upper respiratory
type things, even allergies, andreflux and all these things that
that can really cause havoc, andthey're, they do cause they
cause what we refer to as moreglobal swelling in the
environment. So the whole areais going to be inflamed and

(39:43):
you're

right, right, but not just the folds,
right, vocal

folds swelling is vocal. So if someone happens
to have a little baselineswelling, that other swelling on
top Half of it is going toreally just make that voice very
impaired. Okay,

so it's going to wreak havoc.

Right? Right.
So now vocal folds swelling?
Well, I get very excited aboutthis topic, people get stressed
out about it, because it's ascary thing sometimes. But the
reality is when we are a busybulk, when we are a busy
vocalist, we have very highexpectations of our voices on a
daily basis. Absolutely, yes.
And we'll listen to the warningsignals a lot of times and and

(40:29):
we say, well, I got to teachthat lesson. And I've got to
sing that rehearsal. And, and sowhen you go when you ignore the
signal, even if it's thesmallest little signal, but then
that signal, keep showing up,then you're moving towards
something a little more chronic.

(40:50):
So regular monitoring, knowinghow to monitor mucosal swelling
is important. Now, one of thethings that's confusing is the
difference between, okay, Ididn't say vocal fatigue, and I
should have said vocal fatigue,because that should be in the
list of common complaints. Yes,vocal fatigue could mean so many

(41:12):
different things. How do we knowwhat it means? And so I talk a
lot with my singers about thedifference between is what I'm
experiencing mucosal wellingissue from overuse for board
isn't really a muscular thing.
Wow. Okay. How do we know thedifference?

Well, that's something you can
diagnose, obviously, well,

we have to assess it out. You know, we talk
about Okay, tell me exactly, youknow, we talk about the exact
thing. So, what I have learned.
Now, this is all anecdotal, youknow, there's no paper out
there. But this is based onclose to 18 years of clinical
experience here. And what I havelearned is that it takes a
characteristic of vocal swellingis that it usually takes a

(41:59):
little while for that to show upin the voice, right? Like,
you're not going to noticeswelling, like immediately, it's
going to be like a few hourslater, or sometimes the next
morning, is when filing showsup.

So one thing you mentioned to me when
we were chatting some weeks ago,was that with vocal folds
swelling, usually people whenthey wake up in the morning,
that it takes their voices sometime to warm up. Was that
correct? Well,

it depends. It depends. If you don't have any
swelling, you should be, youknow, ready to go pretty
quickly. What I may what I'm youmay be referring to is that,
okay, so if you want to try tofind out, am I swollen today?
How do I know you can just testyour Hi soft voice

there's a little break in there. That's

so so but I know in my voice, you know, and
you you go into falsetto, oryour very high head voice, you
get really soft. Like you justwant to be able to be
Yeah, that's how you do aspelling test. So if I were

(43:24):
still one, this is what I'mgonna sound like. Ah, you know,
there are times

I do sound like that. We all do.
Yeah, a bit, especially after areally long teaching day. You
know, some days, I may teach for12 hours without a break. I
mean, the next morning, I may bea bit tired, or if I've been out
and being in a noisy restaurant,yes. And having to have big

(43:56):
conversations with a group ofpeople. That is another time
that happens in the morning.
That's probably my worst isbeing out in a noisy
environment.

Yes, but see, we all do that. And then we the
next day, we might we'll bewarming up and we like, like,
those notes are sometimes kindof weird up there. You know,
they're not working as well asthey usually do. And but we just
bump up you know, whatever. It'sfine. I'm probably just a little
tired. But yeah, are you reallytired? Or are you swollen? Yes.

(44:26):
And so now the muscular so justto kind of finish that thought.
So, swelling usually takes alittle while to show up, but it
also takes a little longer to goaway. All right. So so when we
want you to recover overnight,that's what we want. No more
than one to two days, muscularissues. So if you start to feel
fatigued and or even getting alittle hoarse, muscular, almost

(44:52):
shows up immediately like that Itap in like right away,

right. I had something that was going on
with my voice Many, many yearsago was the only time I had some
sort of disorder going on. And Iwas touring in a rock band. And,
you know, I've had a big careeralready, my voice at all always
behaved itself never had anyvocal issues. And with this rock

(45:17):
band, I blamed the lifestyle,because there were a lot of
things going on a lot of heavylifting, lugging gear, very late
nights, not sleeping properly,lifestyle, eating bad food, the
position of the monitors onstage where I couldn't hear
myself and trying to sing loudlyto be able to get some sort of

(45:40):
feed, like oral feedback, andalso the demands from management
that we'd have media on the daysoff, and all those sorts of
things. And it started off thatvery slowly. That one day, you
know, my voice started to becomea little shady. And to the point
where I after not even finishingone song, my voice just cut out.

(46:06):
Yeah. And that's when I knew Iwas in deep trouble. But I knew
there was something going onearlier, and I was doing my best
to try and keep going. Becausein the industry, it's all about
the show must go on. But howmany people come to you, when
it's too late? Like, they don'tlisten to the warning signs.

(46:30):
They know something is up, butbecause if we don't work, we
don't get paid. We keep pushingthrough. Do you see that a lot?
Yeah,

absolutely.
And, you know, I don't ever feellike it's too late. I really
don't. I don't I've had too manysuccessful experiences with
singers, bringing them throughthe injury experience and
journey and recovery, whetherthat involves a surgery or not.
Sometimes it does, sometimessurgery is exactly what that

(47:00):
person needs to get them back tooriginal equipment or as close
as we can get them to originalequipment. Yeah, and if you've
got a great surgeon, there arerarely issues with that. And so,
and I love that I love helpingsingers recover from surgery.
It's a really fun process. But alot of people a lot of the
people that that I see withofficial vocal folds injury now

(47:24):
not just not the technicalaspects or functional aspects of
muscle tension dysphonia, I talkabout those a little separately.
You know, I don't call muscletension dysphonia and injury
thrive. And, and but most ofthem have like pushed, you know,
push the voice past that limit.

(47:46):
So many times not reallyunderstanding what was really
happening in there.

Yes.
What are the worst injuries onecan have as a singer? What would
be your worst nightmare?

Oh, gosh,

would you say what? What would you not
want to have?

I wouldn't want to have an injury that was under
the surface of the vocal hold.
So usually vocal folds cyst, orunder the surface thrives. And
so but I'm going to take thatone step further. If so, if you
if you continue to work on aninjury, that's very obvious, and
if it were a cyst under thesurface, it can burst. And there

(48:28):
and long term damage can cause alittle something that we refer
to as a sulcus. So that meansthere's like a little divot in
the mucosa. There's like anactual little furrow. Yes.

Wow.
Okay.

And it turned, you know, it's scar like, it's
got scar tissue, and it can bedealt with surgically. But it's
a really, really difficult thingto get improvement in. And most
other apt, but I have, I'vehelped one of my favourite post
op cases, or preoperative andpost operative in my memory, was

(49:12):
a young singer, a collegestudent who had two cysts, one
on each side. Wow. And so whenwe're dealing with something
like that, because you can'toperate on both sides at once,
you have to do them separately.
So you have to do the firstsurgery, and then it's like
months of recovery. And then wedo the second one, and then it's
another stretch of recovery, andit took a good year to get that

(49:33):
singer back on stage. But it wassuch a rewarding, joyful thing
when it was all over.

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(50:29):
you're a member of the voicecommunity, a health care
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(50:54):
about this extraordinaryopportunity. Whatever you do,
don't miss out on reaching ourglobal audience. Because your
voice deserves to be heardeverywhere. So would that be the
worst case that you've seen?

I don't know. I don't really read them like
worse than well, has

someone come to you and you've just
gone? Well, this singer has someserious problems going on?
Houston, we have a problem. Theproblem?

I think, I think the most the worst
situations like that are whenthe vocal hold tissues are just
so beat up from a lifetime of ofasking more than they should
have. And it's in part, it ispossible to continue to sing
pretty well. I mean, there aresome pretty high profile singers

(51:54):
with vocal cord injury thatprobably have very little
vibrating, viable tissue left.
And they're, they're singing,they're still making money and
doing a good job. So do

you listen to those singers and go,
Oh my gosh, I just can't listento that. Knowing that they aged.

I don't really I'm very versatile in my
listening. I'm appreciative andenjoy a lot of different singing
styles. I grew up listening topretty intense, a heavy metal
and rock rock. And I don't reactthat way. I mean, I I'm
appreciative of even thosereally aggressive sounds that

(52:35):
that we can make vocally becauseI always say, you know, our
voices were designed to do thisstuff for us. Yes. Yeah. I mean,
really, they were made to, butit for me, it's when people just
continue to push past withoutthat awareness. And that makes
me think of how hard it is forsingers to go for help to ask

(52:56):
for help. You know, I It's amystery to me. Yes, it's such a
mystery. It's why why would younot go get answers? That is all
about the

shaming.
There is still shame aroundhaving injuries and disorders. I
mean, look at poor Adele, whenshe had her last lot of vocal
injuries. I was totallyembarrassed to be a voice
teacher. I was ashamed as avoice teacher to read some of
the commentary on social mediaforums, from our professional

(53:31):
voice teaching community. Imean, I can see why they don't
go and have help ask for help.
If it was shameful, it wasshameful what I was reading. And
people seem to have all theanswers and they don't know.

And yes, we features we do we we lot. We
feel very knowledgeable.

And very opinionated, and very few.
Unless you've walked the walkand you talk the talk. You don't
know what's going on in aperson's life. Now, for example,
I had vocal injuries as are adisorder, whatever it was at the
time, but that lifestyle was nothelping. And you don't know now

(54:19):
Adele had done something like100 shows. It was her last show.
She'd been on a flight everysecond day. Come on people. You
know it is

it is brutal.
It is a brutal, brutal lifestyleand what I want and I always
chime in when I feel when I getmy feathers, you know a little
ruffled. i Why am I here I come.
Yes. And I say my my pushback isokay people this is not she
didn't do anything wrong. No.
You know, she's seen it. Do youknow how many shows she's

(54:53):
singing every week? Yes. Thevoice was not it was designed to
do Amazing things. But remember,I said it isn't infinite.

Yes. And also to what I mean, it was a
lot of the classical voicecommunity that was chiming in on
all of those forums. And theyonly have to sing a few songs.
And then they go home. I mean,when I was singing
professionally, there was a timewhen I was a single parent, and

(55:26):
I had to put food on the tablefor my daughter. And I was
taking every job possible. Andthere was a stage that I was
working 11 gigs a week, theminimum, the minimum I was doing
was a three hour call. And then,so I was working from seven to

(55:48):
10, and then going to anightclub that was seven nights
a week doing that, and then fournights a week, I would go into a
nightclub and sing from 1030till three. Now, that's not
getting up, and just standingthere, sorry, classical singers,
but we have to move. We have tohave banter with the crowd, we

(56:13):
have to speak to people inbetween, we ask voices don't get
a break from the time we arriveto the time we finish. So I
really different

and, and, you know, the the thing that I, I
dream, I dream of a world of avoice world where we all
understood those nuances ofswelling. And and I dream of a
world in academia and in privatestudios and in theatre in the

(56:45):
theatrical world. And in thecommercial singing world, where
everyone gets education in that.

What is it?

How do I know if I've done too much? And what
does that really mean when Ifeel like that? Yes, yes. If
everybody knew that, and knewhow to test for it, we could we
could cut some of these thingsoff at the past, you know, and,
and I, and that's how I workwith my patients. I don't let
them I say, No, we're going tomonitor this. And we're going to

(57:16):
test it every single day. Andyou're going to write down what
that is. And you know what, itempowers them to make really
good choices.

That's fantastic. Okay, I'm going to
ask a very controversialquestion here. And Laurie, I
would really appreciate anhonest answer. So we're not
going to we're not going tofast. That's what I Australian
term, we're not going to referfor a particular community that

(57:51):
exists within our great wasteteaching community. So when it
comes to injuries and disorders,are CCM singers, more likely? Or
do you see a higher incidence ofproblems within that group of
singers than classical voicesingers?

That is a great question. And not one that I
think about a whole lot. Oh,

that's good. So you don't have biases?
You

know, I really don't think I do yeh.

From the classical world, I'm very proud
of you know,

I don't I see all genres equally, and my
practice and styles andenvironments, and the only thing
I would say is that, then thisis from the muscle tension
dysphonia side of things,because when I mentioned that
issue with a gap between thevocal folds, yes, and usually

(58:49):
the gap is towards the back ofthe so if you're looking at
vocal folds on a screen, andthen there's going to be more of
a gap in the back here. I dotend to see that shape of the
gap in Belters that take chestvoice a little too high. That's
the only thing I can think of,but that's not necessarily like

(59:10):
an injury type thing. It's moreof a technical thing that okay,
that gets imbalanced and so wejust have to teach them how to
rebalance that. But But no, asfar as injuries concerned, I
mean, everybody walks throughthe door, they're coming from
all different. I mean, I've i isee impersonators. You know that

(59:31):
from from Elvis impersonators tothe upper echelon elite,
classical soprano at, you know,the Opera House. I mean, and
everything in between. Yes.

So what you were talking about, sorry
about that. Beltre. That's,that's obviously a training
issue. They haven't been trainedcorrectly, to belt that high.
And I love that you've said thatpeople come to from all walks of
life. If they sing across avariety of genres, no one is

(01:00:05):
more problematic than others.
And because to me, this would bemy assumption. And it's not
based on anything other than thesheer workload that these
singers have to, you know, theirworkload, not only in terms of
singing, but they have to speakas well, is musical theatre
singers, I worry about them,because of all the different

(01:00:26):
styles that they have to be ableto sing across. It's basically
nonstop for a lot of them fortwo hours on stage, everything
else the positions that theyhave to sing in, I would assume
that they would, could possiblyend up in trouble, more so than
singers that other singers from,

Lori Sonnenberg (01:00:47):
from my perspective, part of the problem
with that a big part of theproblem is they get confusing
messages in terms of vocalhealth, like the the value of
their vocal health and thepriority of, you know, their
vocal health in the rehearsalsituations and the way
programmes are put togethercourse curriculum, the training,

(01:01:09):
the way it's all built, becausewe don't, we want you to be
careful, and we don't want youto injure yourself. And we
support you, and we care aboutthat. But we're gonna run the
show twice today. Yes. Okay, sowhere's the logic in that? I

(01:01:29):
mean, there's no way there's noway, especially young singers,
there's no way that they canhandle that kind of load. And
see that's confusing to them,because then they feel like this
is being presented as I'msupposed to be able to

Dr Marisa Lee Naismith (01:01:46):
do this.
Yes. And to thank them when theycan they feel shameful? Exactly.
And do they have a support teamin the US for musical theatre
singers? So just say if you'rein a production of hairspray,
that production show hasdifferent therapists that like
physiotherapist they have?

(01:02:09):
That's

a great question. I think we're there's
definitely more of thathappening. Like on Broadway,
that's probably one of the few,you know, locations where more
of that is happening. But atthen regional theatres, local
theatre, I mean, even I don'tknow, with touring companies?
That's a great question. It'd bea good question. For someone
who's familiar with that? Yes.
But at the regional level, locallevel in the school, you know,

(01:02:31):
people get hired to be vocaldirectors. And they half the
time, a lot of times the vocaldirector isn't very familiar
with injury and how to protectthe students from that. And so
then they're putting forth theseexpectations. And then they all
wonder why when you get to techweek and or two days before the
show, nobody has a voice. Hmm,

yes. A lot of the time, people in those
leadership roles because I knowthis, my daughter works on
cruise ships. And I know thatthe writing sample, the vocal
captain is not necessarilysomeone who has the most
training, it's someone whosings, according to the
production team, who is the bestsinger, who might be the most

(01:03:18):
experienced or may have had thegreatest career leading up to
that contract, but has noknowledge of how the voice
works.

Right? Well, and see another another thing
that's kind of tricky aboutvocal folds swelling and injury
is that it responds really,really well to warm up. So if
you you can cover that up prettyquickly with your warm up, and
the voice responds to that andit gives in and so that's why we

(01:03:49):
want to teach singers to monitorbefore they warm up so that they
have some sense of what thatnaked voice, right like,

Yes, so what is your favourite warm up
or what would your preferredwarm up regime be? What would
involve?

I like to start with something that gets the
airflow moving. So either liptrills, tongue trills,
raspberries usually when of oror straw foundation in water,

or you prefer in water? Yes,

yes. Well to start out with usually. So lots
of gliding, just lots and lotsand lots of lot of up and down
to begin with. I usually wantpeople starting with airflow of
some kind moving it then I justlike sustaining tones on
something that feels really goodvibe. voiced consonants are

(01:04:47):
really valuable like movies andam my favourite warmup for
muscle tension dysphonia is theL consonant really. Oh,

Unknown (01:05:00):
Oh, oh, okay.

Yeah, yeah, I've worked with L a lot and
therapy.

So what does that do? Why do you like
the L so much? Well, the tongue

is I mean, we, you notice the tongue is a, it's
a muscular hydrostat. So it's,you change the shape in one
place, and it just distorts andanother. So, so when we make
that L position with the tongue,it's sort of in this, you know,
it's in this sort of, diagonalposition hole. But the root of

(01:05:33):
the tongue goes to such aposition back there, that it
aids in vocal fold. adductionand enclosure, usually, and it's
really great for mixed voice.
Okay, like, Yeah, and so I lovel, my favourite of all time, if
you said to me, Laurie,forevermore with all of your

(01:05:54):
students, patient injury,healthy singer, injured singer,
or whatever you want to call it,if you could only pick one
exercise to carry forwardforever and ever and ever. And
if it was you could use Yes, itwould be the word. No, K, N O L
L.

Que no, no.

See? No. Really thought. Let me demonstrate. No.
Oh, no. Oh, it's just thisperfect little combination of
the n the all and notnecessarily saying the L but

(01:06:37):
sort of thinking thing else. So

one question on that. When you say
the so is it a dip song thatyou're using? So is it just no
or is it No, like an O E? Is itan or Oh? Oh,

more? It's more Oh, okay. Teach it. It's more
Oh, okay.

Okay, so it's still that Italian vowel
like more, you sitting on theopen open part of the first
vowel and you stop it there?
Yes.

Now, Hey, have fun with it. It works really
well across genres. And I mean,I just have so much success with
it. It sort of comes from a verybeloved exercise routine therapy
exercise routine that wascreated in the 90s by someone
named Joe Stemple. He was aspeech pathologist. He just
retired in recent years, but nowas sort of came from one of the

(01:07:35):
exercises in this regimen thathe called vocal function
exercises. And he didn't reallysay it was normal, but when you
watched and listened to himdemonstrate it, that's what you
heard. And so that's kind ofwhere it came from. And so I've
been working with that sound inmy choirs and solo stuff. I have

(01:07:56):
a lot of success with it. Now,the challenge is that for the
CCM singers, it's not the bestvocal shade. I'm sorry, it's not
the best vocal tract shaping ayes. For what they need. And so
I use, I use it moretherapeutically with them. And
then when we need to cross overinto more training aspects, we

(01:08:16):
have to abandon that usually andfind something

a little bit okay because it's lowering
the vocal tract. Yeah, it's

just too is too long. And yeah,

okay, so what is your favourite call down
because singers generally forgetto call down or they don't
realise the importance of acooldown what would you suggest
my favourite

cooldown there will there to either trough
donation o or lip trills itreally lip trills. And I, I like
downward like descending lines.
I teach my singers to do a lotof downward movement with the
voice for cooldown.

Okay, because one of the most popular
call downs here in Australia isjust doing like some vocal fry.

I like vocal fry. i Yes, I love it. I teach a
have a whole barrage of therapyexercises and singing exercises
that come out of what I callcreaky voice. Yes. Noises Yeah.
And yeah, and no, I love vocalfry. I don't, I only recommend

(01:09:30):
it for cooldown or relaxationpurposes. When I have my muscle
tension dysphonia singers, thatmeans something to sort of pull
them out of that kind of intenseplace. But I that's interesting.
That's very interesting to me.
Yes. I like

to bring everything back to neutral and
back into specially for highBelters where your larynx has
been floating from that neutral,high position. It just happened
brings everything more into aneutral position again.

I love that and I'll I'll buy that

I pay a bill I taught Laurie something
I'm so proud. Now we're down tothe last final questions, you've
been amazing. And I'm just goingto ask you, this is for my
students, because I've had anumber of students who have
recently had COVID. And they'vecome in with some vocal issues,

(01:10:27):
they're saying their voices arenot behaving, that is actually
the words that they're using.
Okay, they're having some littlefunky pitch issues going on. So
every now and again, the voicecuts in and out. But they can't
rely on their voices to do whatthe voice was doing prior to
COVID. So there's a little bitof lack of control over the

(01:10:49):
voice for want of a better word,because we don't like to use the
word control. But the voice isnot responding perhaps the way
that it used to prior to COVID.
Is this something that you'veseen with any of your patients?
Yes, sometimes

a lot of? It's interesting. I have a lot of
people that don't disclose thatthey've had COVID. Not not on
purpose, they just forget tomention Oh, and by the way, I
had COVID, six months ago, youknow, and, and I have to kind of
dig into it. But yes, I thinkthat I, I would call I like what
you're saying like lack ofcontrol? I am, I am seeing some

(01:11:29):
of that I think of it as sortof, I also think of stability.

Yes, as

like a grounding in the voice like a
grounded stable instrument. AndI think a lot of it is like
coordination related. And soidentifying, so what I've been
doing is just kind of like mynormal process identifying,
okay, what I always say, withwith singers, we're going to

(01:11:58):
come down to the smallestdenominator, we're going to find
the smallest number of things tothink about when we make this
down to get better. And, and sofinding a sound that really
coordinate the breath with vocalbone closure and adduction. And
then the resonance, they have togo together. Yes.

And and I think the key this, this would
be my theory would be thatbecause COVID really does impact
on breathing, the lungs, thebreath, that a lot of those
issues may be coming from airpressure.

I agree with you, I absolutely agree with
you. That

was the thing that I noticed when I had
COVID Was that it felt likesomeone was sitting on my chest
and my breath was labouring. AndI'm thinking that the singers
there maybe because they aresingers, they would notice it,
whereas probably the averageperson wouldn't so much.

Yeah, I I've had a lot of I do a lot of
manual therapy and hands on orwith, especially with muscle
tension, but with breath work aswell. And a lot of my singers
recovering from COVID, we've hadsome success doing some like
hands on work where the identifylike areas in the chest or the

(01:13:16):
ribcage or the abdominal area,where they might be able to
identify holding of tension. Soeven sometimes just pulling, you
know, putting the hands on thechest and kind of pulling away,
you know, to sort of open thoseYes. Is that Yeah, yes. And
that's that's kind of I've hadsome success with that. As

(01:13:39):
simple as it is. It's amazinghow they start to feel some
control over the breath withthat, and then the voice is
going to come out smoother andmore coordinated. Yes.

Well, thank you for answering that on
behalf of all my students. Okay,so final question. And then by
the way, we're going to shareall your links with our
listeners. So if people want tolearn more about you, we will
have all those in the shownotes. And if they want to visit
your website or make friendswith you on social, we will

(01:14:13):
share all that info with them. Ilove

it. I'm new on Instagram of late. Oh,

yes.
Well, I'm not a fan of socialmedia, to be honest. And I
shouldn't be saying this becausethere's a lot of promotion that
goes on around. There's apodcast on social but I have
someone that takes care of thatform. It is as

I say it is a labour of what I love. So yes,

so what can we piece of advice for our
singing voice community? Whatcan we as teachers do better to
take care of our students interms of vocal health?

Talk about it with them? I think we need to be
having a lot more conversationsin all of the spaces that we
exist with our singers in thestudio and classes in the
theatre in Backstage at theconcerts. I mean, we need to be
talking about asking, how's yourvoice doing? Do you ever notice

(01:15:19):
changes in your voice, you knowthat that's that monitoring
piece, but, but if we talk aboutit with them openly share our
own experiences of limitationsor problems that we've had, it
opens the door for them to theyrecognise, I think this is a
person that I can talk to aboutthis. And I don't have to be

(01:15:43):
fearful of bringing this up inconversation.

That's great advice. And that really
goes along with what I try andadvocate through the show. And
that is holding safe spaces forour students to be heard. It's
not about us, we need to leaveour biases at the door, but
listen to what our students aretelling us.

That's right.
That's right, and not wipe itaway with a word like, well,
your voice is just tired today.

No, no, that doesn't have it. No,

no, it really doesn't. And, and also not swipe
it away with Well, if you justdo this differently, I bet it'll
come out. Okay. Yes,

that's where we must learn to have
conversations with our studentsand find out what's really going
on.

Don't wait exactly right. Because they I
can tell you from my side ofthings, being the professional
that supporting them in thatrecovery journey, that they
need, and want that sodesperately, they're so afraid
to tell you what's going on.

They are unless you build that trust
within the studio, and we have aresponsibility as voice teachers
to take care of our students,and to make sure that they're
vocally safe. And we do the onlyway that we can do that is to
allow them to communicate withus what they actually need, and
to listen to them. Yeah, well,Laurie, it's been amazing. I've

(01:17:19):
loved listening to everythingthat you've had to share with
us. You've been really generouswith your time with. It's been a
long interview, but I justwanted to keep knowing more. And
the listeners are going to learnso much from you. Thank you for
your time. And good luck, andI'm sure we're going to catch up
sometime soon. I must come backto Chicago. It was oh, I hope

you will I love I would love to host you here
well, all the time.

I know we will. Okay, thank you so
much. Take care.

Thank you, Marisa. Bye bye.

Thank you so much for listening to
this episode of a voice andbeyond. I hope you enjoyed it as
now is an important time for youto invest in your own self care,
personal growth and education.
Use every day as an opportunityto learn and to grow, so you can
show up feeling empowered andready to live your best life. If

(01:18:22):
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please be sure to copy and pastethe link and share it with them.
Or share it on social media anduse the hashtag a voice and
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(01:18:45):
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(01:19:08):
company next time on the nextepisode of a voice and beyond.

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