Experiencing the production of a voice performing live in a concert hall or in the theatre is a very special experience that a digital platform cannot replicate. “Sound has an architectural property. It reverberates off your body and through your body within a space. Your bones respond directly to the harmonics which are alive resonating in the performance space.” Experienced singers and actors know how to work with the space in which they are performing. Each individual space has its own acoustic property. If a choir sings in a church, the resonance will be quite different to that found in a theatre or a concert hall. When an actor is working in repertory based in one theatre, vocally the actor comes to know the acoustic in which they are working and this helps to settle their technique. “When I went to hear a performance of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio at St. Thomas' Church in Leipzig, the church for which Bach originally wrote the piece, I realized that the choir were creating quite specific vocal effects by making use of the different acoustics available in different parts of the church. You would never be able to hear such specific acoustic vocal effects when listening to the same piece of music in another building or on a recording. In my experience, when playing CDs on a professional hi-fi system using powerful loudspeakers, you get such a tremendous spectrum of harmonics, it gives you the impression that the singer is almost standing there in front of you, because the reproduction of sound is perceived as being almost life-like.” But, unfortunately, these days people are generally playing their music on devices which only offer an MP3 level of sound re-production. More often than not they are using small headphone devices. “The spectrum of sound experienced when playing music in an MP3 format is in my opinion equivalent to listening to a scratch. In comparison, when playing music in CD quality through a professional hi-fi system, you experience the broadest possible spectrum of harmonics. Sound is life-like.”

For individual speech and voice coaching, standard digital platforms already offer an operable set-up. “I do a lot of teaching online and I have no problem with it; in fact, for the voice it works quite well because I have a close-up one to one connection with my client. They are literally in front of me. For instance, I can directly see how they engage in facial expression and jaw movement. I can sense how their body and breath are functioning. I find online voice coaching is most effective as their speech and voice is right in my ear.” On the other hand, the actor needs to develop a sensory awareness that they can learn how to maintain the projection of their speech and voice into a space. Some clients work exclusively online with John. They are too far away to meet face to face being based in New York, Doha, Vienna or Bordeaux. Coaching online is particularly useful when a client is temporarily working abroad. “If a client is based in London, they would always prefer to come to me in person. That is really the greater learning situation. When I do work with a client online, I would prefer to have once met the client in person before we start the digital world connection.” 

There is, however, an issue that John experiences which restricts the success of coaching speech and voice on one of the standard digital platforms. “I am not happy with the play-back quality of sound when sustaining tone, say when simply voicing the vowel /AH/ for 15-20 seconds. I always find that the voice cuts out half way through. I can never hear the end of the phrase. In developing an actor’s technique, they need to practice maintaining tone in order to learn to sustain breath and voice release when speaking. When an actor is vocalising in this manner – when sound is pure sound - the play-back I hear always cuts out. This is most frustrating.” At the boundary between speech and sound or music, conventional systems drop out because they are not designed for joint artistic work with sound and for playing music together online. And it was precisely for purposes like these that the Digital Stage was developed to allow for joint artistic work online in excellent audio quality. John has already been using the system when reading texts by Roua Horanieh live in front of an audience on site and online on the third day of the gLOKALE festival. “Now I would be interested in trying Digital Stage in my teaching, just to see if it is a more user-friendly platform.” We will certainly learn from John’s expertise.