So you've done your Surprised, Silent, Smiley breath.  
What happens next?
Hold your breath as though you're going to sing an "ng," (sing)  The back of your tongue pops up to say hello to your soft palate! Hold the ng as long as you dare and then, yes, "sing" a little siren!
Together with the Surprised, Silent, Smiley breath you've made an 'east-west' pull which gives you Retraction as demonstrated in my Voice Preparation Kit ebook  - exercise one. See my store if you are interested in learning further.
Sing along with me in my siren video to see how it's done. Stay tuned for the next step.

“Some individuals, through what flowed from them, have left a mark on their age lasting through generations and working for good.” Goethe.
Ah yes! This great gal was such an individual.

At the weekend I did my first choral workshop since silly old Covid. The place was packed with singers, mostly like me, “of an age,” trying to crank up their voices after the rust, the long Covid, or simply wear and tear that comes to our bodies (and voices therefore) over the years.
There had been a last minute venue switch and we ended up in the Flockhart Hall at MLC.

As those voices, collectively raised in song, raised the bar of clarity, tone and range, I felt a growing awareness of gratitude to Jo. Imagine the intake of breath when I shared with them the fact that all this tweaking which was going on, came from the research that great lady did against all the odds and that I encountered her in that very room way back in 1997!

It was such a special moment. The meeting of Jo herself, who was pretty elderly and very scary by that time, and the treasure of collective realisation right there, right then on that sunny Saturday afternoon.
Everything took off for me when I embraced and studied the findings of Jo’s vast research and gained confidence in what I was doing as a singer and teacher. So, yes, this morning I’m feeling so very grateful to that dogged pioneer and incredible human being, dear Jo Estill.
And thanks to Dianne Vale; MD - Joseph Hie and The Star Chorale for coming out to play with me and well yes, with Jo too.
​Love to all and have a wonderful week. Kxx

Those who know me well, also know that I'm a tragic rhymer! A sucker for a bit of doggerel and pithy verse...
And so it is that every now and then you'll see a poem pop up here. Be warned, I have 19 volumes. 🤣

​Last week as I started down this new road of "getting out" more, I bumped into some old anxiety issues about being across too many platforms and things falling through the cracks.                                    Secretly, carrier pigeon was better for our health! 
Hope this makes you smile as much as it did me to write it. Kxx

Scrolling and Grazing,
Lolling and lazing,
The meat of the matter mere pie in the sky,
All hither and thither,
Hey diddle-dither,
The corn nowhere near an elephant’s eye.

Screen time is mean time,
Scream time, between time,
But life is what happens when we are elsewhere,               Perfect image from Maxim IIyahov
Where real folk wander,                                                            https://unsplash.com/@glvrdru
The heart grows fonder,
With them we can smile and sing without care.

​KS February 2023

Well, yes that was a cliffhanger, but here I am as promised with a little video of the good ol’ SSS breath!
It’s how I start every singing activity including my own. And the beauty of it is that you can actually practice it anywhere, anytime; down the street, in the supermarket, in the office. So instead of allowing your voice to slump at those times, you can get those bits of anatomy wiggling away and ready to go. 
​I have suggested that it can lift your mood too, maybe?

It’s true! I became a singing teacher quite by accident.
Gone are the days of this kind of story…….

It was the 1980's, as you can see by the photo and my miserably messy 20s had me traipsing around teaching music in scruffy high schools in London’s down-at-heel western suburbs. A flit across the world in 1983 found me lucky to get a gig at Perth Modern School where things looked up a bit in the work sense, but I continued to be mostly miserable…😥

But the sun came out in my life when I drove into Melbourne one sunny January morning in 1985 to take up Opera and Music Theatre studies at the VCA. 

I didn’t want to get embroiled in a school because I wished to focus solely on honing my performance craft. I’d had a very ordinary crack at it as a student at Trinity College of Music in London, so doing well was important to me.  (Um…learnt a lot about how NOT to teach singing there!🙄)

So, silly me, I was thinking that with a few years of teaching experience under my belt, I’d apply for footloose and fancy-free CRT work to keep me afloat. 🤣 You can imagine the shock when I was turned down flat by the then Teacher Registration Board? 😱 Not qualified apparently. 🥴
So I cobbled together sundry bits of part time work, retail, pulling pints and waiting at tables; you know the drill.

The only people I knew in Melbs were off on the VSO’s Pirates tour, so I pretty much knew no one in town, but a friend of a friend suggested that I give Peter Ross at Wesley a bell.
I steeled myself for the cold call…..

Bless him, for he gave me the time of day, even though I could hear it was all happening in the background; and he asked me questions about my teaching experience etc
Ascertaining that I was a singer, he asked me if I had taught singing.
Taken aback I said, “no, not really……” and then floundered about saying that I had used what knowledge I had to run choirs and work on school shows, but in all honesty I had never taught singing per se, my voice tailing off sadly… 
“Well” he said, “come and see me on Friday and we’ll have a chat.”

In I strolled to Wesley and up the stairs to the mayhem of the Music Department; trumpets tooting and violins scraping, there were excited kids everywhere, coming out of lunchtime rehearsals. Before I could locate his office Peter came into the melee and spotting me asked, “Kate?”
I nodded and as I shook his hand he said warmly, “so pleased to meet you; here’s your roll and your teaching room is round the corner and your first student is due in five minutes!”
And that, my friends, is how I came to be a singing teacher!
A profession that has brought me joy upon joy ever since that momentous day when dear Peter had such faith in me; a complete stranger, virtually off the street.

That lovely man died a couple of years ago. RIP dearest Peter. Remembered with love, esteem and affection by me and by many. But anyone who has ever heard me say, “take a Surprised, Silent, Smiley breath,” has him to thank.

Watch this space for more about the SSS breath later!