Thread by @singingsox

Would love assistance from a “it’s just a cold” person during my voice lessons with distraught teenage students who think their voices might be gone forever bc they have been severely affected by a recent Covid infection (which delayed a musical & caused dysphonia in TWO leads)

Look my students in the eyes, sing with their inflamed voices. Tell them it’s just a cold. Tell them their distress doesn’t matter. Tell them they can expect this to happen repeatedly.

Nothing makes me more upset, actually. These kids DONT ‘HAVE THE TOOLS’ to protect themselves

Ofc they weren’t tested for Covid, but what other voice snatching virus that spreads through casts (the director also was out for a while) is going around in JULY? NONE. I HAVE BEEN TEACHING SINCE 2011, PERFORMING SINCE CHILDHOOD, and NO. THIS. IS. NOT. “NORMAL”.

I have NEVER had so many students affected by hoarseness like this. Never. 1 or 2 kids a semester, MAYBE. Now, every single student has had a turn on the dysphonia ferris wheel.

Go ahead, tell them it’s just a cold. Tell them their voice will be fine. Lie to them for me.

Some bounce back quickly. Some take months.

The catalyst to this thread has been dysphonic since early late June. I’m starting to get worried. They’re not getting consistent cord closure & their speaking voice is breathy/weak. A month of distress. Tell them it’s fine. Go ahead.

^late June. I wrote early July first and forgot to delete it. I think they got sick in June, though.

But yeah. It actually makes me viscerally upset. No vocalist deserves this. And it’s a risk EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. That you sing with other people now. A reality I never thought possible. Just awful.

FYI for anyone medical who follows me — if it persists I will suggest a scope

I don’t think this particular student has anything more serious than persistent inflammation, but any voice teacher worth their salt will absolutely refer to an ENT/otolaryngologist/vocologist when it sounds like something else. I think she might need a scope though 😩

(And ofc it’s so ironic/horrible that getting scoped for diagnosis &treatment with how lax infection control procedures are in MEDICAL SETTINGS could put students at risk of ANOTHER infection. Like hi why am I a voice teacher taking infections more seriously than hospitals????)

Literally just talking about this earlier so I’m gonna post this again bc people (ESPECIALLY LOOKING AT YOU PODCASTERS - STOP RECORDING THRU DYSPHONIA PLZ) should know what their instrument/money maker actually looks like and what the actual damage can be.

@millionthmatt It’s even more worrying when it’s a really good one. Their muscles are strong. They KNOW their voices. They bounce back faster when tissues are healthy. So it makes me MORE concerned.

The whole poster for anyone curious (it is v handy). But also, since we’re here, take a gander at how teeny tiny vocal folds are. v smol. And they need to be very wet & smooth to vibrate v fast to even speak. This is why when they get puffy & irritated, they don’t work v good!

The real life poster is handy because the size of the cis female vocal fold circle is literally the same circumstance as my pinky finger. The pinky nail is also a good approximation of how thin the vfs are too (so I was told by my grad school teacher so plz correct me if wrong)

Check the healthy vocal folds in the bottom left corner for comparison. They’re supposed to be bright, mostly white, and MOIST. Here’s a classic vid shown in probably all vocal pedagogy classes since it was put on YouTube 12 years ago lol

It’s so funny how the trolls never come out for these kind of posts, huh

TLDR please wear a respirator & heavily ventilate when singing in groups. I find it particularly gross that music ed world commissioned studies that proved high risk of aerosol transmission & established rehearsal protocols, & then yeeted them to the wayside in lieu of “normal”

Citation. P much every major music ed org in the USA came together, kinda did it for a while, & then went omg such normallll like everyone else (despite repeated disruptions to music bc of repeated & obvious sickness caused by superspreader rehearsals)

smtd.colostate.edu/reducing-bioae…

I have experienced a choral superspreader of 28 in May 2022. But, I was w/ an adult org still monitoring Covid which is different than the K-12 school/community music scene, who have given up. Just bc we aren’t documenting them doesn’t mean kid ensembles aren’t superspreaders 😩

@CynthiaElise61 She can phonate to high C, but uncomfortably. If it were paresis, this would be unlikely. I’m thinking the vocal folds are too puffy & inflamed to vibrate that fast. Lots of air getting through too. Paresis would sound different. There would be loss or gaps

Omg circumference sorrrrryyyy