WHAT IS IT COSSUMETHOD?
It is an upgraded biomechanical based version of Belcanto and physiological high achievement techniques to improve, train and solve fundamentals of professional voice production requirements.

PRACTICALLY?
It has integrated the contributions and biomechanics of all body segments into the voice production, effectiveness and quality. It is a biomechanical way of getting to a good part of what usually called natural gifted voices. It works on functional body joints for what it is realistically their contribution in voice production.

SO IT IS AN HOLISTIC PRACTICE?
I do not think of it as holistic, it is just how voice is, using specifically some parts/forces of the body. Having a good agent or producer or band, as having a mind practice expert for performance: those are into an holistic vision. Here is just the instrument mechanistically in its basis.

ISN’T THE VOICE A RESPIRATORY/LARYNX COMPLEX FUNCTION?
It is of course, but it is not just this. As also said clearly by Robert T. Sataloff – this year at Voice Foundation 52nd Symposium Philadelphia 2023 – voice is a whole body function.

SO COSSUMETHOD CONTAINS/SHOWS THE WHOLE?
It shows a part of biomechanical that lacked and still lacks into common practices and model. No innovations show all, just a more useful upgraded version.

YOU SAY IT IS A VOICE MODEL (R)EVOLUTION
It is a bit a teasing for my colleagues and voice scientific community. It is true but it means that this is a topic and needs its place in specific terms and for the exact contributions it gives (or take away). The phrase is true, it is a part that has to be added.

WHO CAN PROFIT FROM COSSUMETHOD?
Singers or beginners or voice professionals with limited and not completely developed voices, those with chronic refractory untrainable or chronically dysfunctional. Those being not effective in an artistic and commercial context, those not having the “natural voice”, feeling artistically and creatively a lack into voice expression of these.

WHY YOU SAY IT IS COMPLEMENTARY TOOL, FILLING A LACK OF USUAL TECHNIQUES?
The fast results on high level trained singers show exactly that: it changes the context where it needed to be upgraded or modified. If it was not complementary they should have to start back relearning everything, while they maintain and find improved all the patterns well learnt from teachers and experiences.

WHO DOES NOT PROFIT FROM IT?
I think it is not the best option when in the phase of consolidating: when effective and starting a career or gigs. In this case it can be useful for some, especially if they have to learn how to maintain and recover in tour or between the gigs or how to reduce the aging effect on singing, otherwise just stay the course and grow into stabilising what yet doing, it is enough to process for the time being.

HAS IT BEEN TESTED?
It has been tested in three ways: 1. by years of career and voice production massive improvements, constituting a point of discontinuity from the arrival state of the voice. Many were stuck into limited or clearly dysfunctional voices; the improvements have been maintained in the time; in voice specialists or voice professionals not knowing them previously all judged them being natural gifted voices of excellent quality; 2. a first cossuprogram on 12 week of biweekly sessions with chronic dysfunctional voices (more than one year, some from a decade of certified dysfunction, refractory to high level training and/or excellent medical treatment) with singers and general population, some control group with no dysfunction and weekly amateur or professional voice users. The medical results were of resolution of dysfunctions in 90% of the subjects and improvement major to speech therapy in the remaining 10%. The control group improved quality of emission and efficiency of emission, other parameters remained the same (so no harm or disbalance from the intervention); 3. the rationale underlying it and clearly stated finds the same findings in the most effective trainings and research, as the joint by joint model and Michael Boyle training systems, the Gary Gray concepts and functional hypothesis. It has been convincing enough to be presented as rationale and workshops at The Voice Foundation 52nd Symposium 2023 – Philadelphia US and Pan-European Voice Conference 2022 PEVoC14.

THE MOST COMMON MISUNDERSTANDING ABOUT COSSUMETHOD?
There are two majors in my experience as far. 1. since it is innovative and very effective on some questions -very commonly not answered questions- it is a solve it all. This happens commonly when a new tool is developed, I am all the time putting reality into this. It adds solutions and options and a path of research for some at now not understood mechanisms, it is a bridge to a new upgraded model. It changes the perspective, it is a bridge. And it is important to constantly repeat this.

THE MOST COMMON MISUNDERSTANDING ABOUT COSSUMETHOD?
There are two major misunderstandings 2. the transition phase, when we are actually developing towards the upgraded/physiological voice production. It does not sound as the upgraded one, I am making an effort to make it sound better, still the structure is not yet there. This gives to professionals of the voice the doubts about the work, and this is one of the reasons I put under biological control in the first cossuprogram: if physiological improvements are so clear in the exams doubts subside (datas are always better).

WHY DOES IT SOUNDS NOT GOOD IF IMPROVING?
Because it puts correct biomechanics into an instrument adapted into compensatory or partial movements. Correct biomechanics will show the actual real adaptation of the instrument. Corrected biomechanics will start the building phase of what lacked into tissues development, reversing some eccentric with concentric (or reciprocal) also will target desired tissues adaptations, getting to use proper muscles chain/function instead of the compensatory one will be perceived as a transitional loss of control. I post often different kind of clients into this phase since it is the one I see we need most to become literate about, learn what are the signs we look into the studio.

COSSUPROGRAM?
It is a 12 weeks program for voice improvement and solutions of some unresolved vocal question by usual voice consensus trainings or therapies. It can be a free of charges from my part as the first described above, and as the one I am organising now in the case it is for study/publication purposes. The only charges on the candidates in this case are the medical ones.
It is otherwise an accessible at a fair rate program for voices chronically dysfunctional (the raw expenses of rent, heat and electricity), the medical expenses are always at candidate’s charge.

WHAT HAVE BEEN THE OUTCOMES OF COSSUPROGRAM IN SINGERS?
Exactly the same I experience in my studio daily. It has been a complete transformation in their physiology and career: from chronic voice limitations with vocal issues, career limited to backing vocals or sporadic gigs (and daily other job) to resolved functional issues as stated by a relevant phoniatrist and confirmed again after one year after stopping the sessions. From the career it developed in relevant vocalists, frequent gigs, soloist for the Jazz National Orchestra of Conservatories, national and international competitions won, two albums produced, teacher of Jazz Voice performance in various Conservatories, opening the Italian popstar Elisa concert for Save the Children.

WHAT HAVE BEEN THE OUTCOMES OF COSSUPROGRAM IN GENERAL POPULATION?
The remission of nodules in a scientist often lecturer (at pre hospitalisation nothing in the chords, so surgery canceled), a not speaking and stammerer boy 7 yearsold had reduced the stammering to a 30%, started expressing himself daily with words, could make his theatre recital saying all his phrases with clear voice and no interruptions. After one year the gains in verbal expression are maintained as reduction of the stammering, voice quality still improving (this is usual since tissues take more time in improving when get back to functionality). An organic damage after a thyroidectomy in amateur singer completely solved, it was an hypotonic vocal fold refractory to speech therapy of excellent level, and remained without vibration for 18 months. It could be possible to sing again after few sessions, sing as soloist at the end of the program, stabilised into singing daily and as a soloist, confirmed the stable complete healing one year after the end of the sessions. Emission improved in a school teacher, the only one not completing the exercises during the program as required. As for the singers they are the usual changes I experience in my practice with the rare general population cases that come to me.

IS COSSUMETHOD A NEW TOOL?
I prefer say that it is innovative in the precision of interventions it shows, it is not new in itself but it is a more physiologically based way of looking at voice. The perspective looks new not the tools. It is a rational bridging the dots of styles, techniques, natural gifted voices so to give a better understanding of what they have in common on a physiological level.

TO WHOM COSSUMETHOD IS MOSTLY RECCOMENDED?
For voice with chronic limitations in: extension, dynamics, speed and drive, tone quality, artistic effectiveness. For classical/MT singers in the development of the octave G3-G4 for tenors and A4-A5 and subsequent high notes for mezzos, sopranos, falsettists.

DOES COSSUMETHOD SOLVES WHAT OTHER TECHNIQUES CANNOT?
It is exactly what it does. It does solve some unfavourable characteristics/situations, unfortunately pretty common, for which at now there were no reliable solutions.

WHAT IS IT THE INNOVATION OF COSSUMETHOD?
It is the view on the contribution and role of the segments of the general musculoskeletal system. I call it Big Box, versus Small Box that is the proper vocal system of larynx and lungs and air. You can imagine Small Box being contained into Big Box, they interact even just geometrically to start simple 👉🏻 Big Box- Small Box

HAS SOMEONE BOUGHT INTO THIS VIEW?
I have seen all the six abstracts I submitted as the first time I ever did submit something at two of the World’s Top Conferences on Voice in less than one year. I made one presentation, two workshops and three Posters which were widely read and photographed.

WHY TO PARTICIPATE AT COSSUPROGRAM 2023/24?
It could be a great point of discontinuity for voice production and successive development for the selected candidates. It is free from my part, and the medical the candidates have to provide, if they do not have yet recent ones as they should as pro or future pro, are a great starting point to check their characteristics and objectives of their instrument and skilfulness.

I DO NOT BELIEVE IN ONLINE LESSONS
Yes I can see your point. But as I said to a recent not singer but producer student when he told me -I trust you. , the point is what is objective. To the student I reminded the extension, tone quality, pitch quality we gained in the few lessons, the songs he could sing and that he could train while this was useless before the lessons. So it is not much what you believe but if they are effective, and yes they are. Of course in person are humanly warmer, still since they improve your voice, your singing, it can be warmer getting to those improvements .

WHAT DO OTHER TEACHERS, VOICE SPECIALISTS, SINGERS, MUSICIANS SAY OF YOUR STUDENTS?
They all the time say them being amazing natural gifted voices or amazing creatives, they do not suspect where they come from. Or on the contrary they hear when we are still in transition, they think nay they are nothing special and some time after do not recognise as the same ones and say the above.

IF YOU SHOULD SAY IN FEW WORDS WHAT IS COSSUMETHOD?
A door to the natural gifted voice. It is the knowledge opening to the mechanisms involved in what was a mystery of development.

IS COSSUMETHOD IN CONTRAST WITH GENERAL CONSENSUS PRACTICES?
Not the least, it is complementary to them. It brings a part that was in complete shadow, it adds and not substitutes.

WAS IT CONTROVERSIAL?
It has been for the time needed to start seeing the integrated model we are getting to from different parts of functional body practices.

HAVE YOU A PHD?
This was asked me also in Philadelphia last June at The Voice Foundation. I would really like, indeed it does not exist: I am the first pioneering the need of an integrated figure and voice model from a trainer and voice specialist as I am and the biomechnical and kinesiological field. I am the first bridging it and making the effort to go towards them to make more understandable in mechanistic terms what voice is and what we do and I do on tissues, muscles fibres etc. with some practices.

WHAT IS YOUR DREAM FOR COSSUMETHOD?
To start a mutispecialist team integrated into a Vocal institution, to test and for me to write my view on some old vocal practices and vocalisations.

IS COSSUMETHOD ADDRESSED TO CLASSICAL AND MT VOICES?
It can have a special value in the contemporary pedagogic classical and MT actual world for some of their technical specific requirements not completely met at now, but it was born and have results for all types of styles and voices. It is a “get to a great good voice” tool, and this is advantageous to all.

DOES COSSUMETHOD WORK ON ISSUES?
No, never, it is not my expertise, it is the place of medical practitioners to treat issues. Cossumethod works on functionality, meaning it targets what the body can do functionally in the other segments without getting to the issues, the effect of those being often the solution or remission of dysfunctions or dysfunctional symptoms in a singing career of more intense load than before.

WHY, IF IT IS A LONGER YEARS OF APPLICATION, ARE YOU PRESENTING IT JUST NOW?
For a couple of reasons: 1. It takes time if we do not want to rush, and for all knowledge steps it is crucial to control from many different points and find a rationale; 2. the health issue that stopped my career has been active until 2019, so it required emergency hospitalisations and taxing daily symptoms. I am happily in remission and can travel and work more finally.

DO YOU THINK COSSUMETHOD IS POINTING A NEW VOICE MODEL?
I think it is integrating the old into a more realistic one, being the actual a reductionist one.

DO YOU THINK IT WORKS ON TAKING AWAY THE TAXING OF DYSFUNCTIONS OR BEING A PART OF VOICE PRODUCTION?
I think it is both, depending on the segment we are taking into account. For the hips joint I definitely think it is also a direct part of voice production, but this is just me speculating (with some reasons and evidences as I showed at TVF 52nd Symposium). It has to be tested, both schemes.

THE ALEXANDER TECHNIQUE DOEs NOT GIVE ALL THE ANSWERS YET?
It would be nice it did, I would have just learnt and teached it instead of all the work I had to do to get to cossumethod. It gives some kind of answers, brilliant and amazing; you can think of cossumethod as a step forward on the shoulders on Alexander Technique.

ARE THE COSSUMETHOD EXERCISES INVENTED BY YOU?
A part I had to invent, mostly are postural, dancers, actors, yoga, training exercises readapted for voice purposes.

WHAT ARE YOUR FEELINGS ABOUT COSSUMETHOD?
I feel profoundly excited, often satisfied, mostly plentiness and grateful by the constant improvements happening in my voice studio. You know when a young singer comes with an idea of the voice and possibilities and career and in few lessons see the voice showing as having other possibilities the eyes get wide and enchanted and the horizon of career opens.

HOW DOES WORK A COURSE WITH YOU?
It is mostly a weekly one on one session, of different length if it must be only technical or technical plus repertoire. Can be done in cycles repeated two/three times a year. When beginners or having in schedule to upgrade the level of the career I advise a one year round uninterrupted.

IS IT EXPENSIVE?
Not at all. This has a reality reason: the singers who need cossumethod most are before having a well developed pro career, often not yet pro and without agency or representation. To be effective they must come for a number of lessons. I cannot ask for a lesson what they can pay in a month or two, it would be useless to have them really progress.

DO YOU DO VOCALISATIONS?
Can be strange but lessons look like the same as usual lessons, it is the how I ask within the vocalisations, what positions more or less specifics, how to search for sounds and notes that changes.

DOES COSSUMETHOD CHANGES THE STYLE OF SINGING?
If you intend if an Estill trained or an extreme vocalist singer will not be able to use those anymore I can confirm that no, they do not need to change. My work is usually to put order and sense in some overlooked parts that make the non effectiveness of the technique or emission used. It is a unifying functional work, it is the path towards the clarification of what is in common in all effective and healthy emissions.

WHO ARE THOSE SEEING THE FASTEST IMPROVEMENTS?
Its effects are immediate on trained voices and active singers as on dysfunctional voices.

WHO ARE THOSE SEEING THE SLOWEST IMPROVEMENTS?
The ones never singing, never performing. You cannot act rapidly if nothing of the awarenesses, gestures are there, not even just the adaptations and skills learnt by trying really to get to notes and colours and dynamics. No technique or training can be fast on no use.

WHY DID YOU DEVELOP COSSUMETHOD?
It was the obvious path to give solutions most needed by my students and clients; no technique I studied and searched could give those solutions, I had to try to find some.

WHY CHOOSE COSSUMETHOD IF BEGINNER?
When beginner to train with a method that opens the best outcomes possible in the longest terms can be a smart move. Low level initial training can stuck and plateau in the medium times, then requires changing what was incorrect or overlooked to unstuck. I preach for the highest quality at beginner level, on a medium level when you need to consolidate it can be of less importance.

IS COSSUMETHOD A MODEL/HYPOTHESIS BASED CONCEPT FROM WHICH YOU DEVELOP THE EXERCISES OR IS IT A PRACTICE THAT AN HYPOTHESIS SUPPORTS?
Its birth is as a training practice, results came much before I could explain the rationale as I do now. It is still a training tool and practice, the model is now inspiring my actual development and evolution of exercises; so now they are intertwined.

HOW HAD YOU THE COMPETENCES TO DEVELOP COSSUMETHOD?
I come from professional study of many movement techniques and practices, from my soloist lyric career and master in Conservatory – Classical Voice Soloist Performance, I had experience as a horse trainer in using biomechanics and dressage exercises to balance back dysfunctional horses with different levels of dysfunction, some frankly dangerous. Seeing the thing from a now point of view I was in the functional movement wave moving its first steps everywhere in the world, we developed in parallel a unifying vision mostly confirmed by data and that has opened the actual upgrade in kinesiology and physical therapies.

WHY THE VOICE SERIES ON YOUTUBE?
I did find the necessity of an upgrade of the context in which we think of voice. At now it is viewed and studied as an acoustic/physics phenomenon or a psychological one, the movement side of it is generic and accessory to it in the field and research. I see some psychological factors as just survival biological wires, so it changes the look on solutions searched and implemented. To put biology as the basis is to see how it is multifaceted, and how it implies different survival or function logics to be put together as they manifest and acts into the training or performing. And in this view it is easier to have less bias from aesthetics or of machine model based that I think have slowed the findings on some topics. It is not cossumethod oriented, just biologically. It crosses cossumethod in some episodes, but I am also learning on some subjects while I do the videos. It is a proposition to see also in this way at voice, showing the options and solutions we can have by this and how traditional practices were logic in some steps even if the rationale was not expressed or not correct. It serves to open the discussion on an upgraded awareness, more biological, to stimulate to cross bridge from medical or biology experts not seeing nuances and voice questions for us crucial with us. I am in the same position of many coming to listen to them as a voice competent that is studying.