Rayvox SOVT Certification Programme

In the first week we'll be exploring the scientific underpinnings of straw phonation and SOVT in general. We'll cover how it works and why it works.

We'll explore:

• A brief overview of the respiratory system.
• What Phonation Threshold Pressure is and why it's important to know about.
• Bernoulli's Principle (and others) and how it plays a role in SOVT.
• The Science of Straws - including evidence based data from the literature about the workings of Straw Phonation.

There will be some practical experiments that you can do at home to help you with your understanding, including the Bottle O' Lungs, Bernoulli's Balloons, and a custom 3D printed experiment designed by Oren (which we'll send you in advance).

For the second week, students will each submit a 10-15 minute lesson excerpt working with a student on any straw phonation task. As a group we'll watch the session and...

• Analyse the student and the task (looking at student level, technique, needs)
• Identify the chosen SOVT and explore its efficacy for the student.
• Identify strengths and challenges, and suggest next steps for experimentation.
• Discuss and explore the overall session and problem-solve where needed.

This first Lab session assumes only basic pre-knowledge of SOVT. It's useful to understand where you're at and how you apply SOVT pre-training, so we know where to focus attention to help with your learning.

In this session we'll cover in detail what the different straw configurations are and how to select a configuration that works for you/your student, on a task-to-task and person-to-person basis.

We'll explore:

• Why one-size does not fit all.
• The effects of diameter and length and what that means for the user.
• The data! Including charts on common straw sizes / resistance configurations and their general effects.
• Water vs. No Water (athletic vs. therapeutic) and when to apply each technique.
• Discovering your baseline PTP and how to select an appropriate straw to balance.
• Honing on a configuration (a protocol designed to pair a resistance profile to a task).

You will also get access to a calculator that Oren has built to help you identify what resistance level your straw offers, as well as what that might mean in terms of function and application for singers.

Week 4 will continue building on Week 3, and we'll start exploring how to implement straw phonation effectively within your teaching practice (or own training).

We'll cover:

• How to discover your students baseline Phonation Threshold Pressure and what that means
• How to design effective warmups, cool downs, and exercises utilising straw phonation
• Example tasks that you can do with students as a starting point to build your own
• The types of language and probing to use to help you get the information you need out of your students more easily to better help them.
• Plus troubleshooting tips for leaky air, puffy cheeks, breath management, unbalanced configurations, edge cases, and similar.

For our final session, we'll look at another group Lab. The idea of this session is to check to see how you've been implementing your learnings over the previous weeks, as well as to compare against where you started in your first Lesson Analysis session. We'll still discuss and explore, and we'll look at how and why things work, and hopefully see a greater and more effective response within your students as a result of your new teaching!

Assessment:

There will be a short online assessment at the end of Week 5, just to check your understanding and make sure you're all set.

You will get access to a dedicated Rayvox Community, exclusively for Accreditation Programme cohorts. It's a space for continued discussion, exploration, sharing of ideas, and asking for help. I'll be sharing resources and new tools to help you on your journey, and there will be dedicated workshops from time to time to keep you up to date with the latest science, techniques, and best practices.