Diana’s
Teaching Philosophy

The human voice is a wondrous thing.

Since the beginning of known history, vocal expression has been the most powerful means of communication and connection in the world. It was not only the human voice that brought us language - expanding and deepening our understanding of ourselves and the world around us - but it was the voice that emerged as our first significant musical instrument.

Through solo and group singing we found infinite ways to express and share our feelings and experiences. Furthermore, music can bypass our busy minds and lead us directly to our hearts. Hence it is music and singing that are always at the forefront of spiritual and social practices and events.

For these and many more reasons, there are some cultures in the world that consider the human voice to be the most exalted instrument of all by way of its extraordinary expressiveness, flexibility, complexity and the fact that it emanates from a human body, mind and spirit.

Each one of our voices is as unique as our fingerprints. A mother can recognize the sound of her baby’s cries in a room full of a hundred other babies. There is not another voice on earth that is exactly like ours in its frequencies, timbre and expression.

However, as singular as each of our vocal instruments is, they all share some basic functional similarities. These have been studied fairly extensively throughout the centuries, and to learn to maximize our vocal potentials we must first explore the aspects of our physical voices and how they function. By building technique based on an understanding and awareness of the ways in which the voice produces sound, we discover a direct path to increased strength, balance, flexibility, ease and beauty.

We then take this physical access and move into the creative aspects of singing or speaking such as style, phrasing, emotional intention and connection, improvisation, melodic and tonal variations and song and/or speech-writing. If your goals include performing or presenting, we focus on building a powerful set of skills as a real framework with which to proceed into the presentational/performance space.

Merging what we have learned from both ancient wisdom and modern science combined with what we hear, see and feel right now, my primary goal is to enter into a fascinating discovery of each voice I meet. The information is deep and wide and the process is more interesting and exciting than we can imagine. However, my approach is simple, direct, organized and completely individualized to meet each student’s level of development, experience, musical/speaking style, gifts, and desires - present and future.

Accessing more of our vocal expression is not only a natural human need, but a direct route to connection with our essential selves, our precious communities and the beautiful world around us. And couldn’t we all use more of that?

Diana Grasselli
Singer, Author, Speaker, Facilitator
The Vertical Voice Vocal Training Method