University of Alberta drama professor, David Ley, puts vibrator on student’s throats to improve singing
A professor and voice coach at one of Canada’s major universities is using sex toys on his students, more specifically, he is massaging their throats with the small vibrator to improve their singing abilities, according to a Metro News report Thursday.
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He tells the Canadian news source, “I know it’s a bit different … I know there’s a giggle factor, but it works,” says David Ley, a drama professor at the University of Alberta. “It relaxes tension in the larynx … it improves range and projection.”
In What’s Next, a publication of the University of Alberta, Prof. Ley explains, “The revolutionary voice technique I am developing at the University of Alberta uses a small hand-held vibrator applied to specific points on the head and neck to reduce tension associated with vocal stress. The vibrator stimulates vocal-fold vibration and has the ability to enhance resonance — sound becomes easier to produce and is louder and more powerful.”
He makes it clear he’s not a physician or therapist.
“My first advice for a person (with voice or throat issues) would be to go to a doctor,” he says. “What I’mtrying to do is to help the person hit that high note or harness their emotional energy.”
And the technique is not just for singers. Ley says, they [singers] aren’t the only people whose voices are an integral part of their life and work. Many others also find themselves speaking to large crowds, or for prolonged periods of time, and having strong, resilient voices can make all the difference in their day-to-day lives.
Speech pathologists massage the larynx to loosen up tension, but some people hate the feeling of fingers on their throat so Ley began to search for a new method that would help performers increase their vocal power, reports the Huffington Post.
That search led him to a sex shop where he found some hand-held vibrators that had a frequency around 100 and 120 hertz, the range of the human voice. He tried some sample sex toys on a student and got good results. And despite the creep factor, staff at the school say he’s a trusted, intelligent teacher.
“Right now, we are still in the early stages of research”, Ley said. “But through a cross-disciplinary partnership between the drama and speech pathology departments at the University of Alberta we are starting to explore ways that this easy-to-apply technique could help to improve the quality of life for people who suffer from vocal fatigue, because of overuse, misuse, age or illness.”
