THE VOCATHLETIC SYSTEM™ FOR VOICE, SINGING & SPEECH


A universal holistic training method combining tradition, science, and athletic principles designed to find, express, and optimize the natural voice



Origin. Characteristics. Demonstration Videos.



I began this page on July 4, 2019, to share my vocal method. I hesitate to call it my own, because I feel I didn’t so much discover it as it discovered me — as you’ll read below. Still, it needed a name, so I called it The Vocathletic System™.

This page will continue to grow organically with written materials and video demonstrations (see the bottom of the page). My hope is that it informs, instructs, and inspires students of singing. I am grateful to everyone who has contributed to the development of this method — above all, to my mother, dramatic coloratura soprano Aysel Tunalı.



What Is the Vocathletic System™?


The Vocathletic System™ is the culmination of my three-decade-long transformational journey. This journey went far beyond repairing misaligned vocal cords, freeing a squeezed and non-functioning larynx, or transitioning from an artificial tenor to a true baritone.


It is a holistic training system built on tradition, science, and my ongoing discoveries as a singer, voice teacher, and athlete. The system helps students:

  • Realize vocalism
  • Express the natural voice with ease
  • Develop it organically


By applying athletic principles of mind-body control, nutrition, and growth to vocal training, students learn efficiency — sending brain signals only to the muscles that truly need to be engaged for vocalization.


The Vocathletic System™ explains the whats, hows, and whys of vocal technique in a way that is clear, immediately applicable, and produces unequivocal results.


Key qualities: natural, simple, direct, effective.



The Origin

I studied at three well-known conservatories in two countries over fourteen years, during which I endured a dramatic vocal ordeal.

  • I entered my first school in 1990 as a baritone, but after one year I was reassigned to tenor repertoire.
  • For years, the only way I could sustain high notes was by squeezing and lifting my larynx. I didn’t know I wasn’t a tenor and trusted what I was told. By the time I graduated in 2004, my throat was a knot and my voice was nearly gone.
  • It was like forcing a violin repertoire onto a cello or double bass — years of misuse of both the vocal organ and the body.


My voice teachers did their best to help, but it was very difficult to detect what was really happening with my voice.



A Turning Point

After graduation, I took a year off from singing. I stopped listening to others and turned inward, choosing to listen only to my own voice. This began an extraordinary process of correction, healing, and transformation.


A breakthrough came when I discovered the book Vocal Wisdom, which contains the maxims of Giovanni Battista Lamperti. His words resonated deeply with me, confirming my inner voice and clarifying many things I had struggled to understand. As I learned to breathe correctly and released years of tension, my throat began to open, and my larynx started to settle.

By 2005, a true baritone voice had emerged — soon followed by an unexpected bass-baritone quality.



From Ordeal to Method

The tenor ordeal finally ended. Looking back, it felt like emptying an ocean with a teaspoon — a 14-year struggle on top of the 14 years I had already spent at conservatories.

  • Self-guidance, intuition, and meditation
  • Study of great singers and artists across disciplines
  • Yoga, functional bodyweight athletic training, martial arts, and voice-building
  • Athletic plant-based nutrition, and more


I restarted my career in 2005, first singing baritone, then bass-baritone, and even bass roles in operas in Boston and New York.



Comparison

The difference between my pre-2004 tenor sound and my later bass-baritone sound is dramatic. You can hear this transformation in the two performance videos below.

TENOR

BASS-BARITONE

Technical Inventions and Characteristics of the Vocathletic System™


The following are core technical concepts that define the Vocathletic System™ — principles, mechanisms, and exercises rooted in physiological awareness, energetic efficiency, and signal discipline:


  • Vertical engagement of the lowest abdominal muscles to create pneumatic energy through the syringe-like use of the body.


  • Riding on the pneumatic energy without releasing the breath through the larynx.


  • Active inhalation vs. passive inhalation.


  • Signal-less, “Blank Canvas” Vocal Posture:
    The white screen from which the movie of singing is projected.
    As you play the movie, be always aware of the unaffected vocal screen behind.
    Send signals efficiently for vowels, consonants, facial expressions, etc., in the awareness of — and through — the         signal-less state.


  • Training the thyroid and cricoid cartilages while maintaining the neutral (left alone) larynx and full contact of the vocal cords.


  • Constant awareness of the vowel-less space in which all vowels are formed.


  • Closed-mouth training with a still, statue-like, blank exterior.


  • Closed mouth – lips apart alternating training:
    Sing in your closed-mouth position with lips parted by gravity.


  • Specific exercises using 4 consonant points, 7 vowels, 8 consonant sounds.


  • Frontal sinus (Third Eye) vocal focus.


  • Drum-like use of the head as resonator.


  • Precise hand and finger movements combined with factual visualizations to activate specific parts of the body during vocalization.


  • Efficiency training: sending signals only to the parts of the body actively involved in vocalization.


  • “Vocathletic” training.



Longstanding and Widespread Technical Dogmas Debunked by the Vocathletic System™


The following techniques and ideas — long held as foundational or necessary in many vocal traditions — are challenged or entirely rejected within the Vocathletic System™, based on direct experiential research, functional inefficiency, or physiological misalignment:


  • Trying to use the mouth as the main resonance chamber


  • Opening the mouth big, especially for the top notes


  • Lifting the soft palate


  • Pulling the larynx down


  • Dropping the jaw


  • Yawning


  • Releasing the air to vocalize


  • Moving the air


  • Singing on the breath (vs. on the pneumatic energy)


  • Using different vocal focuses for different registers


  • Vowel modification, especially narrowing them while ascending toward high notes


  • Placing the voice “here” or “there”


  • Not having a specific vocal focus


  • Trying to breathe only through the nose between phrases


  • Smiling


  • Lifting the facial muscles


  • Trying to create different spaces for different notes


  • Approaching the voice in a compartmentalized way (registers)


  • Using all abdominal muscles to sing


  • Trying to keep the rib cage expanded as much as possible while singing


  • Keeping the abdominal muscles pulled out while singing


  • Flexing the muscles around the nose


  • Flexing the glutei for high notes


  • Putting one foot forward


  • Leaning forward or backward


  • Giving more importance to high notes for technical progress


  • Having twang


The Vocathletic System™ is a trademark of Bülent Güneralp. All rights reserved.


No part of this page may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of Bülent Güneralp. The information presented here is true and complete to the best of my knowledge. This page is intended only as an informative guide for those wishing to know more about vocal issues. In no way is it intended to replace, countermand, or conflict with the advice given to you by your own teacher. The ultimate decision concerning vocal care should be made between you and your own teacher.