Yap Sesh #8: As We Go On, We Remember…
Anna: Welcome to Yap Sesh. We're your hosts. I'm Anna Diemer.
Maurice: And I'm Maurice Goodwin.
Anna: And we are coming to you right after graduation time. So if you have just finished a degree program—whether you walked or not, got those big fancy robes and cap—a big congratulations to you from us here at VoiceProEd.
Maurice: Happy graduation.
Maurice: Do you remember? Do you remember your graduations? Did you go?
Anna: I did for my undergrad, which was very emotional because Furman was such a bubble, and I was like, “Oh no, I'm leaving the bubble and going into the real world.” And so that was a big deal for me. But I didn't walk for my master's. I went to the little music department ceremony and skipped the big one at U of H with the gazillion—
Maurice: The big big one.
Anna: People. And mostly I didn't want to buy the robes, so...
Maurice: Heard. Do you remember the—what's that Vitamin C graduation song? “As we go on…”
Anna: Yes! That—actually singing that—that was like my 5th grade graduation song, because I think that’s when that song came out. Does that track for you?
Maurice: That’s… my tool. It’s tool time. I think so. I remember singing it for sure in junior high. Let me look at the “Graduation (Friends Forever)” release date. OK—Vitamin C, 1999.
Anna: OK.
Maurice: Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Perfect. Yeah. So junior high, and then every year after. Hmm. That’s a bop.
Anna: Mhm. Mhm. Bop. Yeah. Did you walk for your graduations?
Maurice: For undergrad and grad, we had graduation. So for undergrad, I went to Shenandoah University and there were only like 6 or 7 people graduating in the music performance major, but the whole university was maybe like 300 or 400 people graduating at that time. So it wasn’t like a huge ordeal. It did rain—like rain rain. So we had a graduation out at an open field in the rain, which was less than ideal. And then in—
Anna: Oh no.
Maurice: Grad school, we had like... the University of Pittsburgh is a bunch of different schools. So like School of Engineering, School of Medicine. And we were in the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences. So we had our own graduate education ceremony in a separate setting. I did not do the big university one.
Anna: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that felt wise on my part. Like, I feel like I maybe missed out on a little bit of the celebrating, but I do not like big crowds. And so I am glad that I passed up that opportunity to sit in the Houston heat in a cap and gown in the stadium.
Maurice: Oh well, I would—I do, however, miss that couple week period after graduation where there’s nothing really going on. And I know some people—like, I had always worked through undergrad and grad school, so it’s not like I was doing nothing. Like, I eventually went back to my part-time job or something. Or life. But I do miss that like, “Ohh, the world is open.” Sometimes too open—you end up binging a Netflix show accidentally in a week.
Anna: Yeah.
Maurice: Seasons.
Anna: I had a gig the week after I graduated undergrad—a world premiere of—
Maurice: Casual.
Anna: A piece with string quartet. So I spent that entire week—that probably saved me from being too sad, because I was learning like slightly atonal string quartet and soprano music. The gig went great. But that’s what I did after my college graduation.
Maurice: Come on, world premiere. Right after I graduated undergrad, I drove to Pittsburgh. It’s a funny audition story. I drove to Pittsburgh like soon soon after graduation and auditioned—it was my first audition for Pittsburgh Opera to just be in the chorus, because I knew I was moving to Pittsburgh for my post-bac. And I auditioned and they had, like, “Pick your two songs” or whatever, and then they had a sight-read something in French. And then we had to... read? Or maybe we had to sight-sing something in Italian and then read something in French. Anyway, my audition did not go well. And they told me that they didn’t think it went well.
Anna: That’s great. I’m so glad that that worked out for you. Did they tell you what didn’t—
Maurice: Go well? They—I just... they were like, “You're not really singing loud enough. Like, you're just not a loud enough singer.” Which I had been told my entire undergrad. And I just tend to be like a softer voice when I sing.
Anna: Guess not anymore. As someone who worked with you—
Maurice: Be louder.
Anna: On classical tenor repertoire for several years, I don’t think we have that problem anymore, if I do say so myself.
Maurice: So thankfully that got resolved. But it got me my AGMA card, because it’s a union house—which was good. Go unions.
Anna: Yeah. Go unions.
Maurice: Go unions. What are you looking forward to this summer as we head into summer?
Anna: Yeah. So right off the bat—in like two days from when this episode will come out—I’m heading to Louisville, Kentucky. Louisville. LOU-uh-vull. Not Louis-ville. I’ve said that on this podcast, and that is a hill I will die on. How to pronounce Louisville. For the NATS intern program. And so I—
Anna: I'm preparing. I'm giving a recital, I'm singing on a couple of showcase classes, I'll get to teach every day and observe teachers and my cohort with our mentor teacher.
Maurice: And for people who aren't familiar with either even NATS or what the NATS Internship Program is, can you do a little—a little—
Anna: Recap? Yeah. So NATS is the National Association of Teachers of Singing. It is one of my professional organizations. It was the first one that I joined when I started up my studio in like 2017. And so every year they host this program. It’s 10 days, usually hosted at universities somewhere, where they bring in these mentor teachers, and it is geared towards early career voice teachers—though I take that with a grain of salt as well. Because I would not necessarily describe myself as early career—I think I barely squeezed in the cutoff here. But there are a lot of my colleagues coming who are just finishing up their DMAs or just starting out teaching at a university. So definitely will be there with other colleagues at my level.
There are, I think, 12 voice interns and four collaborative piano interns, which I am already so thankful for because they will be playing for everything—including my recital, which is on the first day. And I'm like, when are we gonna rehearse? I don't know. Like, yeah, we're just gonna throw it together and it will be great. So it’s going to be very intense.
Maurice: Hey, what?!
Anna: And I'm hoping to get a lot out of it—to learn a lot from my peers, to get to learn a lot from the mentor teachers. The current president of NATS is coming in and doing a class as well. We’ve got some vocal health specialists coming in to do a lecture. And then we will be performing for each other and giving lectures. So folks are doing lecture-recitals—I think I’m one of the only ones doing just like a recital-recital. So I’ll be bringing back my gender-swapped program and chatting a little bit about queering the canon. So… week.
And I also—for my day off—have booked a couple of bourbon distillery tours, because when in Kentucky, right? When in Louisville! Whiskey Row is like 10 minutes away from the university. So I will be singing my heart out and teaching my heart out and—
Maurice: Oh. When in Louisville.
Anna: Sipping a little bit of bourbon. So I’m also currently in the midst of my packing spreadsheet, which has like 86 items on it already because we’re staying in dorms, so I have to bring stuff to cook with and dishes and, you know, plus all of the normal things you take when you travel.
Maurice: Ain’t that wild.
Anna: It is going to be a lot, and I am also excited. Especially—I love making lists. So I’m like, alright, give me the packing list. Let’s get all this stuff in the car. Let’s go. You know, being in like practicing mode—I still have like one German song left to learn. So like... I’m ready. I will have learned it by the time this episode comes out. So don’t worry about me.
Maurice: That’s exciting. And then, you know—not to completely take advantage of your brain—but we’re excited for you to come back and share what you’ve learned with us. A little NATS recap.
Anna: Yeah, we’ll either do a Yap Short or a full-on Yap Sesh, depending on how much I have to yap. Those Yap Shorts are short—like 10 minutes.
Maurice: They are short. They’re short. They’re—
Anna: It’s like—
Maurice: Yeah, they’re short. Well, they’re short. Well, that’s awesome. Congrats. I am looking forward to—drum roll (drum roll and airhorn sounds)
Maurice: I’m transitioning out of my full-time job as a speech pathologist at the hospital that I work at and making my way downtown, walking fast, faces pass— (both singing)
Maurice: The fact that that was noodly, noodly...
Anna: You know, it’s like how when you scat, you imitate the sounds of the instruments.
Maurice: And I just imagine noodles. OK. I am transitioning into private practice—as a speech pathologist and as a voice teacher and as a voice health specialist—which is like, super freaking exciting.
Anna: Congratulations and welcome!
Maurice: Congratulations and I feel welcomed. So I am like super excited to continue doing—I mean, having a private practice and teaching voice is something that I’ve been doing for the last few years and was a big motivation for both Anna and me to really kind of grow VoiceProEd. Like, you know, this was meant for people doing this work. And just felt the pull towards independence and figuring out how I can do this work that I really enjoy in a new way. You know, working in a clinic is something that has for sure made me the clinician that I am today. I feel very well-educated and well-practiced, and I’ve seen a lot. And now... it's just—it’s just like a time of life where I’m excited to explore different skills, different things that I’m good at, and open new parts of myself that you just don’t when you work in a voice center like that.
Anna: What kinds of new things are you most excited about?
Maurice: Well, recently it's been a lot of figuring out how I want to set things up, right? So when you have the option to do things the way that you want to do them—and not just the way things already are—what do you want that to look like? And what are the processes that feel important to you?
And then a big thing is recognizing not everyone thinks like I do, including the clients that are probably going to come and find me. And so also setting up my practice in a way that helps other people access it—even if it doesn't make sense to me or it doesn't feel important to me—it could be important for someone else.
Just exploring all of those different things again in a way that working at a really established hospital or clinic just doesn't allow—because it's already established. So I’m really excited about that.
And more time to create, yes! I mean, if y’all can’t tell, Anna and I cannot keep ourselves from making new things and signing us up for new things and—
Anna: Like a podcast?
Maurice: Like a podcast! And I have about 900 different ideas between VoiceProEd and other things that I want to put out into the world. And having a job that takes up so much of my daytime has just been hard to create at the level I think I can—and well, I know I can.
So I’m excited to create more and put more out into the world and continue to advance my work—and the work of the field—independently.
Anna: Yeah, I—
Maurice: And collectively! Like, no one's really independent—you know, we all still work together.
Anna: Right. Yeah. But now you'll have a different relationship to the kinds of people that are out there, both to your colleagues and to the kinds of clients that you'll have.
Maurice: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Any tips? This—in my early stages—we’re doing this on the pod. What do you think, as someone who's built a studio successfully and has gone through probably different seasons even within that?
Anna: We’re doing this on the pod! Yeah, the seasons will happen. So it's OK to be discouraged when less good seasons happen. But the good seasons also happen.
I think probably the biggest thing—and we’ve talked about this a little bit with VoiceProEd—is to niche down and to get really clear on the kind of clients you want to be seeing. Which I think you probably already are, because I imagine that’s part of what’s drawn you into wanting private practice.
But that’s something—you know, like your elevator pitch, right? I tell folks I work with voices in times of transition.
Maurice: For sure.
Anna: Whether that's people experiencing perimenopause or people who are experiencing a transition due to their gender identity—period. And those two populations are pretty much all of my clients. And that one kind of sentence is it.
And the people—
Maurice: Brings it together for—
Anna: Find you. Yeah. The people that need me are finding me. So if you’re clear about who those people are, they will.
Maurice: Yeah. I’m excited about it. You know, as a clinician—and especially coming into the field as a speech pathologist—you’re like, “Well yeah, I work with people that have voice problems.” But that is so big. And that can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people.
And I found that that statement was probably just too big for me. Because while I can and do work with lots of different voice problems, there are things that I feel better at than other things. And there are things I feel more passionate about than other things.
So being able to niche in, to do the things, and really work within my zone of genius is something that I’m very, very excited for. I really do like working. I like helping people. And so I feel like this is just a natural progression—figuring out more of who I am and how I want to exist in the world.
I've also really said, you know, I don’t think this is the end of my academic clinical career as a licensed speech pathologist with my training. I think that's probably always going to be a part of what I do and how I do what I do. And for right now, it's just going to look a little different.
Anna: I think for me, having my studio—even though I'm not supported by an institution—I still have the freedom and the time to go participate in presenting at conferences. I did that for the first time just last year.
And so being able again to have a different kind of relationship to what our field looks like is pretty cool.
Maurice: Yeah. Cool, cool, cool. Those are our summers. Well, at least our early summer. We may—after our July break—we might come back with different summer news. We'll see.
Anna: Yeah, yeah. Do you have any ideas about what your niche might be yet? Or when you have it—we on the pod will be the first to hear when Goodwin Private Practice is open.
Maurice: I’ll be the first. No, no—I do not mind sharing more of this process. You know, for me, I got into this really enjoying my work with performers and high-level professional singers.
And I would say there's probably two populations that I really enjoy creating space for and feel like I have built some tools. So folks with chronic voice problems—just, sometimes it's not neat and easy, and sometimes the things that we deal with in our bodies and voices last.
And so finding tools and strategies—and a place to really explore that without the expectation that at the end of it, it’s going to be “better,” but that we are just human. And we live in human bodies that do human things. And so I'm really excited to do that.
And then, yeah, helping people through probably times of crisis. Like, “Oh goodness, I have this thing happening in a couple of weeks, and these other things are not working the way they used to.” And then really getting down and dirty and figuring out how to make it all work. I really, really like work like that.
Anna: I’m excited. You heard it here first, y’all. Starting after this summer—
Maurice: After this summer.
Anna: Do you have like a fancy name or are you just going by your name for—
Maurice: Yeah. So the practice is—it’s already established. Again, I'd had a private practice, just haven't, like, gone out with it much. It’s just Goodwin Voice and Speech. And I'll be kind of seeing clients initially virtually, and then hopefully doing some stuff in person as things continue to grow and develop. So—very excited.
Anna: All right. Cheers! Cheers to Goodwin Voice and Speech coming to a Zoom near you.
Maurice: Making my way downtown…(both singing)
Maurice: That's fantastic. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Anna: So—shall we move on to our favorite segment of this podcast?
Maurice: The segment of this podcast.
Anna: The segment.
Maurice: The segment.
Speaker 2: Tool time, tool time, tool time!
Maurice: Tool time, time, time!
Anna: It gets even more unhinged every single episode.
Maurice: Do you have a tool for—? We need a... we need a... what is it? Like a stan group name. You know, like Katy Perry has the KatyCats?
Anna: Oh, I didn’t know that, but that makes sense.
Maurice: And Nicki Minaj has the Barbs. And—
Anna: So would we have the... I don’t know.
Maurice: I listen to this other podcast—Las Culturistas, shout out to anybody who listens to it—and their listeners are called, like, Katie’s Readers or Publicists. Just based on personality types. I feel like we need a... anyway. Anyway, we’ll come up with something. If you have any—
Anna: OK. Yeah, let us know what you want to be called. The Yappers? I mean, like, we’re the yappers, but they can be yappers too. They can be yappers at heart.
Maurice: Ideas for Yap Sesh listeners: the Yappers. Are you kidding? Everyone’s a yapper if they’ve just yapped enough.
Anna: We yap to them, and then they go yap about us. In their studio. To their friends. Yap about us to your friends. You can find our podcast anywhere you listen to your podcasts. Going into like announcer mode there. We’re not in that part of the podcast yet.
OK, tool time. Back to tool time.
Yeah, I’ve got a tool. I have been doing a lot of work with registration. That is such a scary term sometimes to voice clinicians because there are a lot of things out there that use different terminology and call it different things and have done various research or posited different theories.
So for me, it’s just always: what’s happening with the human being in front of me, and what’s the language they use?
So that is the disclaimer for me saying that I have been yodeling with my clients—not actually yodeling. I would love to be able to do that. I think I’ve had too much bel canto training to smooth out my voice. I don’t have as much of a difference—or I’m able to disguise it more.
So just working with—especially in treble voices—what that shift is like from being in more of a mode 1, thick folds, chest voice, into a lighter head voice situation.
So this specific tool is from the Bel Canto Bootcamp—I feel like I’ve talked about this before or shouted them out before. If you Google Bel Canto Bootcamp, you can find them. Rochelle Junk is one of the founders, who is the mentor teacher for the collaborative artists at the NATS internship—so I get to meet her in a couple of days, I’m very excited about that.
Anyway, this exercise is from them and they just call it, like, their yodel exercise. And so it’s—I love this because it is an extended one. You know, if folks need a simpler task than that, we’ll just go back and forth between two pitches.
But especially for my singing clients, who are used to doing—and whose repertoire requires them to do—tasks vocally that are way more complicated, I love throwing an exercise in like this to challenge them and to really help them experience and understand what those differences are in their range.
Maurice: Will you ever do the full octave? Take it all the way down to the... to like the fourth, third, second—you know, half steps?
Anna: Well, I guess you could. So the solfège of this exercise starts on the fifth and just goes down: sol, sol, fa, mi, re, do. So you would have to—
Maurice: Ah OK, OK, OK. I was thinking about it in like a 1-8-1, you know? It's not—
Anna: 6—hang on. I have to—1-3-5-3-1-1-1-7-1-6—nope. See, I’m going back to the regular exercise. I do exercises like that for ear training stuff, but I haven’t—
Maurice: Between fourths, chromatic scale—I know, I know, I know. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Anna: Done the full-scale yodel. This exercise is so ingrained in my brain that I’m like, oh no—I can’t even think of the intervals.
Maurice: That makes sense. To five to five and then down to the one. I appreciate that for sure. Cool.
Anna: Yeah, yeah. I don’t know if they have a source for that, but I think that that is sort of its own little contained melody—which is probably why it’s so ingrained in my head. It’s a neat little yodel package. A yodel package.
Yeah, I have a lot of clients that love this exercise. So thank you, Bel Canto Bootcamp.
Maurice: Yodel back, then. Thanks, Bel Canto Bootcamp.
My tool is going to be simple. I’m going to keep it short, and it’s going to be movement.
So much of the work that we do as speech pathologists—folks come into a clinic, or they come wherever you work, or you’re sitting on a Zoom—and they’re sitting in a chair, and you’re sitting in a chair. And then you make a voice together.
And there are so many situations where I can ask someone to breathe, or ask someone to be aware of a pelvic hold, or I can ask someone to release their shoulders and chest and move there, or I can ask them to get out of their seat if they’re able to—or move into some sort of position or posture that just changes their relationship to their body and gravity.
And a lot of those things can—and sometimes do—just kind of take care of themselves. So rather than being super prescriptive or overly descriptive, we can just kind of change the situation, and it will change the body.
Anna: I love that. I love always the contrast between where our clients are and the tools that we use with them, right? Like if you are listening to this podcast, you may be a voice clinician more like Maurice, a voice clinician more like me, right? You will know what kinds of tools are applicable to your clients, and it's fun to see the spectrum of like, “Hey, here's a really advanced exercise,” because you will have folks that need that.
And also, those folks sometimes just need to move their body too, right?
Maurice: Yeah, change the posture and the position—or just feel our body in space in a different way than we did before. And I can talk to you about why, or we can just kind of do it.
Anna: Yeah. And then you can tell us what you experienced.
Maurice: Yeah. Reflect later. So those are our tools! We're super, super thankful again for all of you who have listened to Yap Sesh. We, over the last few weeks, have had our most—I don’t want to say “successful” because I think it’s all successful—we’ve had the most listeners that we’ve had over the three months that this podcast has existed. That’s really exciting for us.
Anna: But still though! Still though—we’ve had like a fifth or sixth of all of our listens in the past week, at the time of recording this. So thanks for blowing us up, y’all.
Maurice: Isn’t that wild? I know. Yeah, thanks. If you can’t tell, we really deeply enjoy this and enjoy connecting with you. And I think it’s allowed us to connect with more of you in more ways.
You know, when we do courses, they are—they are a labor, capital L labor. And so they just don’t happen as frequently, probably, as you or I would want them to—because it is a lot of work to make happen. But getting to connect with voice clinicians is something that I believe both of us are really passionate about. And so this just allows us to do that in a way that’s really easy and fun, and I think flows with our person.
Anna: Yeah. Connect with us! We love hearing from you. We get folks in our DMs all the time. Someone was like, “Hey, if you start a book club—a VoiceProEd Book Club—I’m so there.”
So, you know, like Maurice said about how we like to start... So like, tell us what you want to see! We are—
Maurice: Yeah, for sure.
Anna: Again, coming into a summer where we are both taking some time to rest—if you listened to our last episode on burnout and boundaries, The Burnout Bees, you will know that rest is important. But that is OK! You do not have to wait, because we have two courses that are already available at the time of the release of this episode.
We have Achieving Competence as an SLP Working with Singers, which is our baseline. What do we think you need when you are starting out in this work? If you have never sung a note in your life or have sung like a few notes—never fear. We are going to let you know everything that you need to kind of start that foundation and point you in the direction where you can learn.
So that course is available—two hours, beginner level, and also available for ASHA CEUs.
We also have the replay of Voice Notes, which was our course last month on documentation. Tell us a little bit about Voice Notes, Maurice.
Maurice: Voice Notes was born from the request of the learners here at VoiceProEd, like: “How do we document what we're doing with our voice clients—both speech and singing voice clients? How do we write appropriate, measurable goals for voice clients? How do I use my documentation to advocate for what my clients need, and how do I communicate with physicians while doing all of that?”
And so that’s something that we directly address. We give the exact language that meets the standards of what we’re attempting to do that’s also meaningful to us as clinicians. We're not necessarily watering anything down—we want it to feel like it's a tool that you can use that helps elevate your practice.
And so Voice Notes gives the language and the perspective that specifically voice clinicians are looking for—which we were very excited about.
Anna: It was a fantastic course, and we are excited to make it available to you for the next year. So you can check that out as well: voiceproed.com/courses.
And—coming soon, coming soon, coming soon...
Maurice: Coming soon. Coming soon. You need to have, like, a movie theater voice. Coming soon… I’m not bassy enough.
Anna: That’s bassier than me!
Maurice: Coming soon…
Anna: Coming soon! The soprano version—Coming soooon!
Coming soon is Exploring Resonance. Everything I do is the soprano version—let’s be honest.
Maurice: We are swinging back around to Exploring Resonance! This time, we are recording and releasing Exploring Resonance as a fully asynchronous course, which means it’s going to be similar to Achieving Competence in that it’s going to be produced at a really high level—which we’re very excited about.
It’s going to have not only the didactic portion, but we’re going to lean in heavily to experience. And so Exploring Resonance was a course that we had offered in the fall where we just talked about resonant voice strategies and how you can continue to—or begin to—explore resonance within yourself.
But then: what are the kind of starting tools for exploring it with your clients?
Doing voice work—sometimes you think about it like, “Oh, I am a voice clinician,” or “I’m not.” But it’s not really like that. It’s: “Am I taking the opportunity to explore voice all the time and with a lot of different types of clients?”
And so learning resonance strategies—and how resonance works—is one way of kind of getting into the work and introducing it into your clinical practice. And so this course is going to be perfect for that.
Anna: I am excited because almost half of the course is the experiencing part. I will be leading exploration sessions for you to explore your own voice.
So if that's something you’re less familiar with—or just, you know, haven’t checked in with your voice in a while—you get the opportunity to do that.
In its asynchronous form, you can pause at any time so that you can continue an exercise if that feels good for you, and you can take all of the exercises and explorations that we’re doing together and use them with your own clients.
So I really enjoy doing courses like this, and I am looking forward to this being available.
We are launching sometime in June—date TBD—but if you are on our email list, you will be the first to find out. So you can sign up for that on our website: voiceproed.com.
And enjoy our asynchronous offerings this summer while we take a little break. We’ll have a couple more podcast episodes for you in June. But until then—we’ll see you on the interwebs.
Maurice: As we go on... we remember… (both singing)
Anna: Byeeee!
