"Okay, good.  So, I think the thing we'll work on today is breathing.  Which probably would have been true no matter what; it's the most important thing to get right when singing.  No matter how good your tone or your diction or your range, everything falls apart if you're not breathing correctly."

He nods. "I can usually breathe all right."

"There's a difference between breathing all right and breathing well."  She rises.  "Stand like you're going to sing."

He gets up. Straightens neatly.

"Okay, so first off, you're going to want your feet either shoulder-width apart, either even or one in front of the other, about this far," she demonstrates, "whichever is more comfortable or feels more natural.  And put your weight on the balls of your feet and keep your knees bent; being all locked up will do you no favors here."

He keeps his feet even, tries to loosen up and shift his weight forward a bit.

"There you go; that's good - your stance isn't as important as your breath but it's hard to breathe correctly if you're standing wrong so it's pretty important.  Keep it loose, but bear in mind that there should be power in it; your muscles should be activated, like - I have no clue if you do sports the same way we do, but - like there's not something happening this instant but it's about to, and you have to be ready to run or jump or dive at any moment."

Like he's in some sort of drill, perhaps, awaiting a signal. He does his best.

"Okay.  Take a deep breath."

He does. He knows how to breathe from the diaphragm.

"Good!  Okay, so now - " and she'd like him to run through a few exercises: breathing in for a given count and then exhaling on an s for a longer one, with a few variations on the duration; switching between normal-breathing and singing-breathing and paying particular attention to some of the contrasts there; breathing sitting down and lying on the floor . . .

She gives copious and detailed feedback, both in adjustments she wants him to make and praise for what she regards him as doing correctly.  She wants him to try different things with his dynamics and to 'activate' his abdominals, which she is happy to elaborate on the meaning of for several minutes, and all other sorts of minutiae.

Does any of his problem manifest itself in the course of that.

Yes. Sometimes his throat just kind of involuntarily seizes up and he can't get anything out of it more than a choked whisper.

- Just breathing, or while he's saying things in between that, or - is there anything notable right before it happens, any sort of pattern -

It seems to happen if he says more than a couple sentences at a stretch, or tries to sing. Correlates a little but not perfectly with some generalized breathing difficulty.

"Have you tried going a few days without speaking?"

"No."

"It seems like it might help.  Your call whether it's worth the inconvenience."

He nods, rather than speaking.

Colley retrieves a few items from the room's cabinet and passes them to Kyeo: a tin of tea and a stack of paper printed with blank staves, both loose leaf.  And a pencil, swiped off the nearest music stand.

"This stuff is basically the opposite of dairy products in the short term so maybe drinking a bunch of it will also help in the long term?  I'm going to look at your voice now so we have something to compare any progress against."

Nod nod.

Does she observe anything notable when examining Kyeo's voice?

What he has is spasmodic dysphonia; whether she can tell that or not is on her end.

Well, she'll take lots of notes on it in case something turns out to make sense later.

"My best recommendation is to rest your voice for a few days and at some point when you feel very relaxed try to hold a note for as long as you can without thinking about it too hard.  If that doesn't work, I - don't really have any other ideas, yet; I'm sorry.  I could teach you an instrument, we could take down songs you know and spread them around here, we could do more breathing exercises . . ."

He perks up very slightly at "an instrument".

"Does anything in here interest you?"  Five string instruments are hung on the walls, in various sizes and frettedness and with or without accompanying bows, along with two horns and a few hand drums.  There are some taller drums on the floor as well as a xylophone-ish thing and another really big string.  "Reeds are in those cases, feel free to look through them," Colley gestures to a set of shelves, "and let me know if there's anything you'd like demonstrated."