Thinking Outside The Voice Box: Adolescent Voice Change In Music Education
Thursday 5th May 2022, 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM (London Time)
The goal of this workshop is to encourage new and holistic ways of thinking about the [assigned at birth] female and [assigned at birth] male adolescent changing voice.
We will step away from typical considerations of voice change and explore the experience within the bigger picture of adolescence.
Conversation will include topics of physical development during adolescence, including the body, brain, and auditory system; vocal anatomy and physiology in general, as well as during male and female voice change; the impact of hormones on the adolescent voice, especially for female singers; ideas of resolve and perseverance that are essential to adolescent navigation of voice change; and the influence of a voice change simulacrum that influences societal thinking about the voice change phenomenon.
A brief examination of voice classification systems and other foundational ideas in choral music education, as well as emerging considerations of adolescent voice change beyond classification systems, provide new food for thought about working with the adolescent changing voice.
Dr Bridget Sweet-Manternach
Bridget Sweet-Manternach 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).
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.
Monday 19th October 2026
2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Tuesday 20th October 2026
2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
(London Time)
Introduction to Vocal Acoustics for Spoken and Sung Voice
Gökçe Kutsal
This course is designed to break down the fundamentals of acoustics for both spoken and sung voice in a beginner-friendly, accessible way — so you can easily understand and apply these concepts to your teaching or research.
Tuesday 20th October 2026
5:00 PM - 7:00 PM
(London Time)
Practical Magic*: The Art & Science of Balancing Voices with SOVTs and VFEs
Melanie Tapson
Through live demonstrations, group practice, and peer coaching, you’ll learn how to teach SOVTs and VFEs with clarity and precision, integrate their principles to support vocal health, recovery, and stylistic flexibility and troubleshoot challenges and adapt exercises for individualized results.
Tuesday 27th October 2026
5:00 PM - 7:00 PM
(London Time)
Pop Pedagogy - an Overview
Kim Chandler
Some successful pop stars are celebrating career lengths of over sixty years, having been around since the 1950s when pop music emerged and diversified from jazz, so pop singing has been in existence sufficiently long now that, for teaching purposes, we can observe and analyse what type of approach serves it best.