NORTH ATLANTIC Your Body, Your Voice

Focusing on strategies for improving vocal performance, Your Body, Your Voice will appeal to those developing their vocal skills as well as health professionals who are seeking to understand the complexity of the voice and its related systems.

In this innovative book, Theodore Dimon, EdD, shows how each part of the vocal organ (breathing, larynx, throat, and so on) works as part of a larger musculoskeletal system that is often interfered with, and how identifying this larger system and understanding in a practical way how it works allows a person to train and improve the voice, whether speaking or singing. Traditional vocal training methods, says Dimon, cannot be effective without restoring the functioning of the musculature that supports the voice.

Enhanced with over 50 detailed full-color illustrations, the book discusses the fallacy of traditional breathing exercises andexplains that the key to efficient breathing lies in the expansive support of the trunk and rib cage. Investigating the elements needed to produce a strong supported tone, Dimon describes the importance of voice "placement," or directing the sound toa part of the body in order to produce a fully rounded, resonant tone. He identifies harmful patterns of speech and singing, and offers helpful methods for reestablishing the natural function of the vocal mechanism. Individual chapters cover elements of the whispered "ah," producing a pure sung tone, vocal registers, the suspensory muscles of the larynx, and more.