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
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).
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.
Wednesday 4th March 2026
1:00 PM - 2:00 PM
Wednesday 11th March 2026
1:00 PM - 2:00 PM
Wednesday 18th March 2026
1:00 PM - 2:00 PM
Wednesday 25th March 2026
1:00 PM - 2:00 PM
Wednesday 1st April 2026
1:00 PM - 2:00 PM
Wednesday 8th April 2026
1:00 PM - 2:00 PM
(London Time)
Learn to Coach RP and SSBE – a Certificate in Accent Coaching
Louisa Morgan
This six-week course is an opportunity to learn about both Received Pronunciation and Standard Southern British English. Rather than a course in learning how to speak RP/SSBE (there are many brilliant available courses for this already), this course is about learning how to coach it.
Thursday 5th March 2026
1:00 PM - 2:30 PM
Thursday 12th March 2026
1:00 PM - 2:30 PM
(London Time)
Acting Emotion: Perspectives from the Masters
Louisa Morgan
Stanislavski said, “our artistic emotions are, at first, as shy as wild animals and they hide in the depths of our souls.” Michael Chekhov said, our bodies should be like a “sensitive membrane, a kind of receiver and conveyor of the subtlest images, feelings, emotions and will impulses.” And Meisner said we should be “living truthfully under imaginary circumstances.” Join Louisa Morgan in this 2-part course as she explores a range of well-known acting practitioners to investigate what they believed (or believe) about emotion and how they approached it in their work. She'll compare their work to see where they align and where they diverge.
Tuesday 17th March 2026
5:00 PM - 7:00 PM
(London Time)
The Use of Vibrato in Belt and Legit Styles of Singing in Professional Female Musical Theatre Performers
Dr. Alyssa Becker
Shaped by the popular music of its time, musical theatre blends storytelling with an ever-evolving range of vocal styles—from classical legit singing to jazz, hip-hop, and powerhouse belting. Despite its importance, much of what we understand about vibrato comes from laboratory-based studies that strip singing of its musical, stylistic, and performance context. Join Dr Alyssa Becker as she connects current research with real-world pedagogy, revealing how elite musical theatre performers strategically use vibrato to shape style and storytelling, and showing how these insights can be applied in the voice studio to train stylistic flexibility and control!