Thinking Outside the Voice Box: Adolescent Female Voice Change
Wednesday 15th January 2025, 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM (London Time)
The purpose of this course is to bring attention to the adolescent [assigned at birth] female changing voice and to encourage new and holistic ways of thinking about female voices.
While considering physical changes during adolescence, we will unpack basic vocal anatomy and physiology, and then discuss what happens to the vocal mechanism during voice change for females vs. [assigned at birth] males. Physiological considerations will also include the implication of hormones on the adolescent female voice during puberty, especially as adolescence is when females [typically] begin a menstrual cycle. While time will prevent us from going too far beyond discussion of adolescent females, we will briefly contemplate the larger implication of hormones on voices of people who experience a menstrual cycle at different stages of life and what that means for those of us teaching female voices across the life cycle. We will consider historical misconceptions about the female changing voice and briefly examination voice classification systems and other foundational ideas in choral music education. Importantly, we will explore more recent research on adolescent female voices that provides new food for thought about working with our singers and talk about practical approaches that support female adolescent singers in multifaceted ways.
Dr Bridget Sweet
Bridget Sweet is Professor of Music Education at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Illinois. She wrote the books Growing Musicians: Teaching Music in Middle School and Beyond (2016) and Thinking Outside the Voice Box: Adolescent Voice Change in Music Education (2019); she co-edited the book Motherhood in the Music Education Academy (2025).
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.
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.
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.
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.