Stammering: vocal hindrance or vocal liberator?
Tuesday 11th June 2024, 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM (London Time)
What connects Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Ben’s Brother and The Who? The answer is they’ve all produced songs containing stammered lyrics. Integrating stammering, a communication difference often viewed as something to be fixed through therapy, within musical art may, superficially at least, appear to be an unusual decision but what if we could see beauty in stammering and represent it in art, poetry, song, flags and even font? Come to this workshop to find out how this has been done.
The recent brain research highlighting stammering as a form of neurodivergence is shifting therapy approaches with increasing emphasis on the value of stammered voices. They encourage us to reflect on what matters in conversation and how stammering can add dimension and freedom to vocal performances.
This session will present what stammering is (and isn’t), link the approach-avoidance conflict with performance anxiety and consider what it means to be fluent. The potential physical and emotional struggle contained within the stammering experience is acknowledged alongside opportunities to view stammering through alternative, more supportive lenses, with opportunity to consider what you might do in your practice as a stammering ally.
By the end of this workshop, you’ll understand why King George VI practised speeches with a gramophone playing in the background, where metronomes have been used in therapy and know why speaking with marbles in your mouth is never a good idea!
Carolyn Andrews
Carolyn Andrews is an independent speech and language therapist and senior teaching fellow at the University of Strathclyde. With 25 years’ clinical experience she specialises in adult voice problems and adult stammering, and enjoys walking alongside her clients and students to build their knowledge, practice and voice use.
Attend this course for as little as £22 as part of the Voice Professional Training CPD Award Scheme.
Learn MoreSorry, 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.
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This five-part certificate course is designed to help participants learn the theory and practice of trauma-informed approaches. The concepts and activities included are tailored to meet the needs of voice specialists who want to acquire more specific tools to navigate the space with their students and colleagues.
Tuesday 6th May 2025
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Despite strong interest, only a handful of peer-reviewed studies have examined the relationship between mindfulness and voice. Emerging research indicates that mindfulness can help voice users learn to respond to stress more effectively and may help them manage performance anxiety. In this course, we will examine several types of peer-reviewed literature: a) mindfulness studies that indirectly relate to voice work. b) We will review research that examines mindfulness as it relates to voice-adjacent fields (e.g., music performance anxiety and stammering/stuttering). c) We will look at the few published studies that have directly investigated the relationship between mindfulness and voice and d) we will examine directions for future qualitative and quantitative research.
Tuesday 6th May 2025
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Acceptance and Commitment Therapy or Coaching (ACT) is an empirically-supported psychotherapy & coaching intervention for a variety of common issues facing student and professional musicians from across the world. Some of these include performance anxiety, perfectionism & self-criticism, procrastination, and work-related stress & burnout.