Resonant Voice Therapy (RVT) is an approach designed to produce an effortless yet resonant vocal quality. Speech therapists employ adaptive strategies such as breath control and vocal warm-ups in order to improve both health and resonance of vocal cords.
Speech therapists also teach everyday individuals skills that will benefit them in everyday situations, including singers seeking increased range and power or speakers seeking to captivate audiences with powerful presentations.
Breathing
Resonance speech therapy emphasizes breathing and relaxation techniques essential to developing a full and rich vocal quality. As you speak, vibrations from your vocal folds and throat pass through your vocal tract–consisting of the pharynx (throat), oral cavity and nasal cavity. Their shape, size and composition all combine with factors like tongue position and the closure of velopharyngeal valve to filter sound for people listening in to hear what others hear when you speak: this sound filtering creates your vocal resonance.
Normal articulation involves closing of your soft palate (velum). This prevents air from escaping into your nose and making your voice sound nasal or congested. Unfortunately, children suffering from craniofacial disorders like cleft palate have difficulty with how their mouths, throats and noses move; leading to resonance disorders like hypernasality or hyponasality as well as abnormal speech characteristics like weak consonant sounds or “cul-de-sac” sounds that alter this normal process.
A therapist trained in resonance techniques will use exercises designed to strengthen your child’s expiratory muscles and increase respiratory support, helping him or her breathe deeper and more efficiently, which in turn improves vocal resonance. They may also perform humming exercises designed to explore mask resonance – these involve vibrations in soft tissue in your lower neck, jaw area, and near your temporomandibular joint (TMJ).
These exercises will be completed with your child to teach them to control their breath for increased speech sound strength. They will practice breathing in for three counts and out for two counts while being provided visual feedback by their therapist to show how effectively their air supply is being utilized.
Once your child has mastered these fundamental breathing exercises, their therapist will work with them to incorporate them into articulation training: practicing easy phonations and voiced and voiceless sounds alternately until advancing to phrases and conversations – methods which have proven highly successful at improving vocal resonance in those living with dysphonia.
Relaxation
Resonant voice therapy is a highly effective technique that not only increases technical vocal improvements but also has positive emotional and professional benefits for its user. Furthermore, its ripple effect goes well beyond individual clients; workshops and training programs often offer this therapy too. Therefore it is crucial for speech-language pathologists (SLPs) to provide one-on-one instruction as well as educational material so their patients understand its principles and goals.
As you speak, vibrations occur in your throat, larynx, mouth and nasal cavities causing sound vibrations which are then filtered by your vocal tract – size and shape of pharynx, oral cavity and nasal cavity all play an integral part in speech resonance while tongue position and how much mouth opens also play a part.
If you’re experiencing resonance disorders, your therapist may suggest speech exercises and relaxation routines that can be practiced daily to help enhance the quality of your voice and reduce symptoms associated with your condition. Relaxation techniques range from deep breathing exercises to meditation, yoga and guided imagery sessions which have all been shown to decrease heart rates, blood pressures and oxygen consumption levels in participants.
Resonance disorders result from abnormalities in how air flows through your nasal and oral passages when speaking, often due to structural issues like a cleft palate or neurogenic causes like childhood apraxia of speech. Therapists use thorough assessments to diagnose resonance disorders of various kinds.
Hypernasality, or too much resonance occurring in the nasal cavity during speech, is one of the most frequent types of resonance disorders and results in a nasal-sounding voice as well as abnormalities such as nasal air emission and changes to certain consonant sounds.
If you or someone in your life could benefit from resonance treatment, contact District Speech and Language Therapy immediately! Our highly-skilled team is ready and waiting to assist. Schedule your free introductory call now to start on the path toward healthier vocal chords and improved voice projection!
Exercises
Resonant voice therapy employs a suite of adaptive strategies to maximize vocal function and quality, including breath control, resonance placement, vocal warm-ups with easy onsets and forward focus exercises, breath management strategies and warm up exercises with easy onsets and forward focus exercises. These enable clients to produce rich voices with minimum effort thus decreasing strain on vocal cords.
Resonant speech therapy begins by helping patients recognize where they feel their voice. For some people, this may be difficult to grasp so an SLP might start by asking an open-ended question such as, “where do you feel your voice?”. Some patients can answer immediately while others require time and consideration before responding. A SLP can then offer a guided tour of the voice by showing its different areas where sound vibration occurs during production. Example: when producing consonants like “m,” “n,” and “ng,” certain areas of the face vibrate with sound vibrations; an SLP could then encourage their client to attempt making these sounds while feeling their vibrations in their mouth and throat.
Once a patient becomes more conscious of where their voice vibrates during production, an SLP will instruct them in practicing voicing and articulation at word, phrase and sentence levels. It’s essential for clients to practice both their resonant and non-resonant voices so they can experience the difference between the two voices – one may feel effortless while labored and stressed during non-resonant voice production.
Negative practice should also be integrated into each session, noting when clients retreat back into their throat and focus on vocalization instead of the effortless phonation they aim for. This will increase awareness of bad habits while encouraging the client to use their new healthy voice more frequently.
Resonant voice therapy offers many advantages, from improving professional presence at meetings and captivating audiences, to forging lasting relationships at home. Resonant voice therapy can enhance confidence while making communicating easier while relieving any stress or anxiety about public speaking. If you want more information about improving articulation and resonance or wish to schedule an appointment, reach out to District Speech and Language Therapy now.
Assessment
When patients present with symptoms of hypernasality, an initial assessment must be performed in order to ascertain its cause. Speech therapy can often help alleviate hypernasality when it results from mislearning how to produce certain sounds, especially when this leads to misproduction and resonance disorders.
Speech-language pathologists (SLPs) are skilled in the assessment and treatment of resonance disorders. SLPs use both nasal and vocal tract assessment as well as perceptual judgment when assessing individuals who display signs of resonance disorders (Kummer, 2011c). When assessing individuals with resonance disorders it is vital that SLPs evaluate spontaneous connected speech as this type of speech puts more strain on velopharyngeal valve than single words or utterances and may reveal more articulation errors than when producing individual consonants (Kummer, 2011c).
Treatment options exist to address different kinds of resonance disorders. Velopharyngeal resistance training uses exercise to increase velar muscle strength during speech production (Cahill et al. 2004). Expiratory muscle strength training (EMST), on the other hand, uses exercises to increase capacity of the velum muscles to generate force during speech production (Cahill et al. 2004).
Resonance disorders require treatment that addresses their root causes, often in conjunction with other therapies such as articulation therapy for optimal results. A client with cleft palate can benefit from such approaches to enhance both voice quality and tone perception.
Patients born with cleft palate or other craniofacial abnormalities may also have dysfunctional velum. When this happens, it’s known as idiopathic hypernasality and typically manifests itself through either no auditory feedback or an abnormal shape to the velum (Kotby & Fex 1998). In these instances, a simple treatment method like the nose pinch test can be utilized to identify an insufficient airflow through the nasal passageway. Patients may employ techniques like Lessac-Madsen Resonant Voice Therapy or Accent Method to learn nasal and palatal consonants that have greater oral semi-occlusion, such as fricatives and the nasals /m/, /n/, and /ng/ (Barrichelo-Lindstrom & Behlau 2009; Orbelo & Li 2005; Verdolini Abbott 2000). This helps reduce hypernasal speech patterns.
