Here's Why

Karaoke Therapy

I accidentally ingested neurotoxins from tropical fish in December 2002, on a locally delivered pizza. Amongst the bizarre Ciguatera symptoms was "Mild Aphasia", including changes to my voice. I sounded terrible. I wasn't able to convey emotions in the tonality of my voice, and I often slurred my words or went quiet. The professional speech therapists took two looks down my throat and told me they couldn't see me using my voice wrongly. So I've had to do the Mad Scientist thing and experiment on myself, after reading up on neurology and immunology and toxicology. I figured that if singing activated a different part of the brain for people who stutter and helps them speak clearly, it may also help with my voice changes. A different neural pathway sounded like exactly what I need. Singing is all about conveying emotions in the changing tonality of your voice. So I downloaded EvilLyrics and winamp, and sing along at home. I have a bad memory for lyrics, but with EvilLyrics downloading them and displaying them in front of me for every song; I could sing. Nobody had to hear me. Mysteriously, my voice was remarkably richer the next day. Thus Karaoke therapy was born. I suspect the fact that I'm trying to match the singer's timing, pronunciation and inflection are part of what makes a difference. In primary school, I used to be part of a school choir. We sang at the Sydney Opera House. I think singing with another voice, gives feedback for me to make corrections to my singing. It seems to give me the best results if I sing for up to an hour, as part of my preparing for sleep rituals. Too little time has less effect. If I miss it for too many days, then my voice reverts to poor, high montonal, and faint. I'm experimenting further to see if I can refine it and get better results. Certainly listening to my mp3 radio pieces, the changes are clear. I have no medical qualifications, I'm just giving myself technical support for a black box problem that the experts have given up on. This seems to work for me, I hope if you have suffered the same symptoms, that it works for you. If nothing else, Karaoke is fun!

About the author: Ian Woolf lives in Sydney, has a degree in Applied Science, worked as a solar astronomer, software engineer, systems programmer, webmaster, research assistant, Cisco CCNA tutor, Physics laboratory demonstrator, Computational Theory lecturer, and subject coordinator; while changing his career to freelance writing and broadcasting. Listen to Ian on the Diffusion radio science show on radio 2SER 107.3FM Monday at 6:30pm in Sydney or streaming audio on www.2ser.com, or listen to the Diffusion podcasts. You should follow me on twitter, here

Posted by iwoolf at December 17, 2005 3:06 PM | TrackBack