Short Courses & Events / Archive

How to Hack Your Next Audition: The Limbic Response

Tuesday 17th June 2025, 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM (London Time)

We all know the feeling: staring down an audition panel, we lock up, our knees and hands shake, our breath stops, and we’re in emotional free fall.

This is your limbic system going into hyperdrive. In the audition setting, when the limbic system or paleomammalian cortex kicks into action in the face of a perceived conflict, we experience the body’s answer to stressors from people and social interactions.

Meant to optimize our chance of survival, this primeval reaction activates our freeze, flight and fight response and might make us feel like we should do anything but sing opera.

While it is a natural and understandable response meant to ensure our success, at the heart of the problem is a paradox that there is no physical danger, but rather a threat of judgment or failure that all performers can relate to.

This course will walk you through steps to work with your limbic response and choose the most appropriate course of action to nail your next audition while honouring your internal mental and emotional landscape.

As performers, it is crucial that we understand the basic functioning of our vocal instruments and limbic brain, how their interaction impacts our daily experience and what messages we send to the outside world. This is essential for our understanding of ourselves as performers and auditionees, and helpful for audition panellists as well – ultimately, finding a balance between our vocalism and limbic messaging will provide us with advantages in auditions, lessons, performances, and our daily social lives.

🏷️ Price £30 (UK VAT inclusive)
🎥 Recording automatically sent to all who book (even if you cannot attend live)
▶️ Rewatch as many times as you like
📜 Certificate of attendance available

Dr Katherine Skovira

Katherine Skovira, D.M.A. (she/her) is a nationally recognized contemporary music performer and researcher. Of her work, The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote, “The diabolical enthusiasm of Katherine Skovira… left me nearly begging for mercy...the artistic equivalent of NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft.”

 

CPD Course Logo

Attend this course for as little as £22 as part of the Voice Professional Training CPD Award Scheme.

Learn More

Sorry, this is an archived short course...

We have plenty of upcoming short courses coming soon. See details of some of them below or look at the full list of short courses.

Level One Certificate in Accents and Phonetics
Monday 12th January 2026
12:00 PM - 1:30 PM
Tuesday 13th January 2026
12:00 PM - 1:30 PM
Wednesday 14th January 2026
12:00 PM - 1:30 PM
Thursday 15th January 2026
12:00 PM - 1:30 PM
Tuesday 20th January 2026
12:00 PM - 1:30 PM
Wednesday 21st January 2026
12:00 PM - 1:30 PM
(London Time)

Level One Certificate in Accents and Phonetics

Louisa Morgan

Are you a voice, acting, or singing coach looking to expand your expertise and add accents and phonetics to your teaching repertoire? This 6-session course covers essential topics such as articulatory, acoustic, and auditory phonetics, the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), and ethical approaches to accent and dialect coaching. By the end of this course, you'll be equipped with the knowledge and practical skills to start to bring phonetics and accent coaching into your coaching and provide more comprehensive support to your clients.

Emerging and Developing Voice: Singing and Speech
Monday 12th January 2026
2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
(London Time)

Emerging and Developing Voice: Singing and Speech

Karen Brunssen

How does the singing voice influence the speaking voice? How does the speaking voice influence the singing voice? When is there a disparate relationship between the two? Can they help each other? Can one harm the other? How can we use them positively in the voice studio. During this short course we will consider the voice as we sing and as we speak. The acquisition of language is a very interesting journey from birth through old age. We will broach the topics of “lexical” which refers to learning words, and “semantic” which is how we use words in the context of language.

Perfectionism: A Theoretical & Clinical Overview
Monday 12th January 2026
5:00 PM - 7:00 PM
(London Time)

Perfectionism: A Theoretical & Clinical Overview

Dr David Juncos

What exactly is meant when we label ourselves or someone we know a perfectionist? It is a good to be this way? Or are you setting yourself up for failure? Can a performance psychologist or a other performance-related practitioner help you if you’re a perfectionist? In this short course, you will learn how perfectionism is defined according to popular models in clinical psychology, and whether it is maladaptive or adaptive. You will also learn how perfectionism impacts on music performance anxiety, in addition to other areas of importance for performing musicians, like work-related stress and burnout, and procrastination with one’s practice.