Page 22 - November 2020 Voices
P. 22
FIELD NOTES
Vocal Pitfalls to Avoid While Speaking - Part 1
The Glottal Onset
Laura Handke
Do you know who the singer Adele is? her if I meet her. Her home base is in England
Of course, you do. (Unless you’ve been when she’s not on tour, and mine is in Lake
living on an uncharted south Pacific island with Oswego, Oregon. I’ve never been on tour, so I’m
iguanas, parrots, and not a single electronic not sure how likely our paths are to cross.
device to keep you company for the last 12 All the same, I was first on stage in an operetta
years.) In which case, if you Google, you’ll find in the fifth grade, at the age of 10, so I’ve been
a lovely, 32-year old English singer-songwriter vocalizing and performing virtually my entire
who has won 15 Grammy awards and sold over life. However, I didn’t meet my voice teacher and
120 million albums.) founder of the Transformational Voice® system,
Did you know Adele needed vocal cord Linda Brice, until I was in my 40’s. It was from
surgery not once but twice? Linda I learned about the three kinds of onsets:
In a 2012 interview on 60 Minutes, Adele said glottal, aspirated, and coordinated. A glottal onset
the first incident in 2011 was “’Like someone put is the one you don’t want. Avoiding those could
a curtain over my throat . . . and I could feel it. have helped Adele avoid vocal cord surgery.
It felt like something popped in my throat.’ She Google Adele’s live performance of her
found out she had a polyp on her vocal cord that wonderful song, Someone Like You, from the 2011
had hemorrhaged. She said, ‘I had laser surgery. Brit Awards. The lyrics are “I heard that you
[They] put lasers down your throat, cut off the settled down, that you found a girl, that you’re
polyp, and kind of laser your hemorrhage back married now. I heard that your dreams came
together and fix it.’” true . . . ”
By all media accounts, the surgery was a Before you listen, let me explain the
great success. Until she needed to have another mechanics of a glottal onset.
surgery in 2017. Our voices start with the breath. We inhale
Perhaps the real question is, why did Adele before we speak. (Have you ever noticed you can’t
need surgery in the first place? talk while you’re inhaling?) We always exhale as
Which leads to my next question—do you we’re vocalizing.
know what a “glottal onset” is? Ideally, our vocal folds or cords
Probably not. I wonder if Adele does. I’ll ask (interchangeable terms) are open and relaxed
22 ONE COMMUNITY
