Unfortunately, not every practitioner of an art is competent, and some of them can come up with weird 'improvements'. The idea of 'removing vibrato' is perhaps slightly misunderstood - one of the old fashioned styles of singing used to involve heaps of vibrato, so much that it became unnatural. CONTROLLING the amount of vibrato so that one can have more or less is not a silly idea.

Many 'Folk Singers' who haven't had much voice training have 'taught themselves' to sing by 'just doing it'. They may get a good sound, but just like because smoking or drinking heavily for 40 years hasn't killed you yet, doesn't mean that it is a healthy practice!

My throat used to bob up and down when I sang - I didn't have much singing training - my family decided that we couldn't afford two lots of music lesson charges, and my teacher was annoyed when I got second place in the Eisteddfod when she said that I was her worst student... so I more or less 'taught myself', but often felt vocal strain, especially after I was electrocuted there. After taking notice of Seth Riggs book, and having spent some time relearning hoe to use my voice, I don't get anywhere near as much vocal strain now - I used to think that was normal... and as I said, my vocal range and power has improved since I first read the book.

"my natural antipathy at being told to control my larynx"

but you have it back to front - you ARE controlling your larynx now - you move it around all the time under 'learned conscious' control - which has now become a 'learned unconscious habit'. It's like any physical skill where someone insists on twisting joints to the limit of their movement in one direction 'cause that is comfortable for me' - instead of keeping the joints in a more 'neutral' position. Sooner or later you WILL have problems with your joints. I have seen such threads here ...

It's not unlike piano accordion players who use the simple 'obvious easy 2 finger' bass method, and then have to relearn things the way of the more useful 'proper' method - it takes time, you seem to go backwards, and you don't seem to sound as good at first, but with time, you just want to kick yourself for having wasted so much of your life doing things the hard way. Just ask - you'll find a few of us here...

But as I said, if you REALLY insist on doing it your way, then I don't really care, but I probably won't be able to give you much sympathy down the track...

Robin