Customer Reviews

Stop Committing Voice Suicide

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

In short, he says to focus the voice in the mask (the nose and lip area), breath from the 'midsection' (or, abdomin, as most would call it...) and speak at your optimal pitch level. All the rest is Dr. Morton raging against the vocal establishment machine, and telling us how horrible most all ENT advice is.

Save your money; I wish I had saved mine...

Instead, see any of Patsy Rodenburg's books.

In my opinion this book serves as one large advertisement for Dr. Cooper. It gives him a chance to toot his own horn. I would have found it much more useful had it provided a step by step progression of excercises to help people use their natural voice. Even had he let people know how to pick an appropriate voice clinician would have been nice. One good thing is that it does give hope to people with voice problems.

There are a few good ideas and solutions in this book to help people with voice disorders. Unfortunately the book is very frustrating in that it has very little structure and endless repetition of Dr Cooper's odds with the medical / voice therapist establishment. I had to read the entire book because I wanted to be sure of extracting every practical piece of information it contained regarding my voice problems. Apart from that I would have set it down very early.

Dr Cooper endlessly trumpets on about how he pioneered Direct Voice Rehabilitation against critiscm from the rest of the medical community. He devotes a whole chapter to questioning the ethics of the wider medical establishment in respect of the accepted treatment of voice problems. Why??? I just want to know about how to fix my voice not join Dr Cooper's self-indulgent crusade to justify himself!

Consequently, the book could have been about a third (or even less) of the size and a lot more focused on practical solutions for the reader. I have begun to read his other book, "Change Your Voice, Change Your Life" but it didn't last long as it is the same drivel with a different cover.

If you are serious about your voice, please take a look at Roger Love's work. This guy really KNOWS voices! As for this book by Dr Cooper, I wish I could change the star ratings that I gave this book to 1, but it's too late now. (I must have been feeling generous when I first wrote this!)

Frankly, I had high hope when I bought this book, hoping to change my voice and make it last longer. But the book is very disappointing offering only a couple of tips on finding the natural voice. The rest is just the author boasting his successful experiences in treating numerous patients. If you are looking for a real self-help book, you should look further.

Review from Travel MagazineJune 8, 1996This book is addressed to people suffering from sore throat, throat clearing, weak voice, poor projection, pain when talking, stangled voice, voice strain, hoarse voice, lump in throat, tired voice, deep-throat voice, pain when talking, throat tension, or nasality. Much of the book is about coping with strangled voice, medically known as spasmodic dysphonia. A decade ago, the fashionable treatment for this was surgery on the vocal cords, & now it's injection of one of the cords with a small amount of botulinum toxin, a deadly drug, often referred to as botox. The injection causes partial paralysis of a vocal cord, & brings the voice back, on a temporary basis, for varying periods from a month to 6 months. A recent price for the injection was $500. Dr. Cooper is a maverick who decries both surgery & botox, along with a host of palliative treatments that don't help at all. His ultrasimple solution is to first make sure you're breathing in the diaphragm & not the chest, then press the area between the ribs & just at the bottom of the breastbone while humming, then say a word such as "Right" while humming. A resonance should be felt around the nose & lips, indicating that this is the correct placement of the sound. Dr. Cooper believes most vocal troubles come from placing the sound too low in the chest or too high in the head. He cites "miraculous" immediate success with some patients, including celebrities, & good results over time with many others. If you have a voice problem, this is a book you should read.

This book has only a couple of pages of useful information.It could of been more focused on solutions to voice problems.

Dr.Morton Cooper points out how simple, natural voice techniques of finding and using one's true voice rather than a forced, "authoritative" or other phony voice can help avoid horrendous problems such as losing one's voice, cancer, or other emergency situations. He avoids toxic "therapies" and surgery to "cure" loss of voice and instead goes to the cause of these extreme problems leading to prevention.

I lost my voice and was not able to talk or sing (I'm a barbershopper)for over
three months. I went to a voice therapist and an ear nose and throat dr.
Just a new way of usng my voice and a few breathing trechniques.
My therapist was a student of Dr. Cooper. It really works and my voice
is back better than ever. Soo don't commit voice suicide!!!

I wish this book would have been available many years ago when my voice began to fail. My voice progressively worsened to the point where I was whispering/howling and enduring terrible tension just to communicate. All along the doctors were telling me my health was fine and I was able to continue working in an industrial environment that required speaking loudly to be heard! Well I finally fell apart and ended up at a major medical center where they took one look at my vocal cords and recommended surgery. After surgery I eventually ended up using an electro-larynx to communicate, which added stress as the emotions wanted to be expressed verbally (with my natural voice).Every doctor in the world should be required not only to read this book, but, show some degree of comprehension of the material presented. I understand what this book has to say, as I've been through the progression of severe vocal damage. I also discovered that it is most difficult to find a doctor who understands and can offer help. I highly recommend this book to everyone, including, people without or who don't believe they have a voice problem. Prevention may save some of the misery I've endured.

I was impressed with the book and I am going to require it as required reading for my ComD 681 course on voice disorders. In fact, I have already submitted the order through the University Bookstore. I have learned over a long history of treating voice problems, that a great deal of what Dr. Cooper says is "right-on target" and I believe this book will serve as a valuable resource for self-help and for bringing "reality" to the preparation of future speech-language pathologists. I resonate completely with Dr. Cooper's stated need to "simplify", and I believe that he has done that very well.Professor and Head,Department of Communicative Disorders,Major US University