Short Courses & Events / Archive

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.

🏷️ 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 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).

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

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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.

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Certificated Public Speaking Coach qualification - with John Henny

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5:00 PM - 6:00 PM
(London Time)

Transitioning From Soprano To Mezzo-Soprano - Pedagogical Approaches!

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(London Time)

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Join Dr Autumn Griffin as she explores the foundational tenets of jazz pedagogy as both a conceptual and practical framework for teaching, in this two-hour workshop. Drawing from her research in “Towards a Jazz Pedagogy: Learning with and from Jazz Greats and Great Educators,” she’ll investigate how jazz (its historical and cultural legacy, structure, improvisation, and relationality) can be mobilized to inform dynamic, liberatory educational practice!