Vocal Care
Prevent problems by knowing yourself, your voice, your limits, and how to take care of yourself. Keeping your voice healthy through thick and thin is an ongoing task.
Learn more below about what you can do to properly care for your voice.
If you were to use your voice only when you feel completely healthy and stress free, than many of you would never be able to make a living performing. That is why it is important to prevent problems by knowing yourself, your voice, your limits, and how to take care of yourself.
Keeping your voice healthy through thick and thin is an ongoing task. With season changes you have vocal issues to think about. But let’s start from the beginning. What are the two most important things for singers to do to take care of themselves? The answer is easy: sleep and water.
All singers/speakers/actors know what happens if you don’t get enough sleep. Forget it! All the muscles that aren’t supposed to work when you sing, jump in to help you compensate for your lack of energy. You will find your voice gets tired sooner and won’t be as flexible. Also you will tend to overdrive the air pressure to correct any sound problems. Slamming extra air into your vocal cords will make them tense which can cause you to sing flat or lose resonance. If you have to use your voice after not getting enough sleep, try to relax and not overdrive. Warm up carefully and fully, which may take longer then usual. Please don’t drink coffee! It will only succeed in depriving you of the next most important thing: water.
You must be hydrated. (Double that if you have asthma.) Your vocal cords are surrounded by a mucous membrane (don’t be disgusted – it’s important). This mucous membrane must stay very wet and fluid for your vocal cords to operate properly. When you feel like you have phlegm in your throat or you have to clear your throat all the time, it’s not because you have mucous; it’s because the mucous is too thick. You need more water in your body to thin the mucous membrane out.
But just plain water is not enough. You need to bind the mucous and flush it out and what does that? Lemon. Fresh lemon. The juice of the lemon will grab the extra mucous and flush it out. My recipe is a quart of water with two lemons. I add blue agave for sweetener (no sugar) which gives you a delicious healthy lemonade.
Remember that you have two tubes going from the back of your throat: one that sends food to your stomach and one that sends air to your lungs. Your vocal cords are in the tube that sends air to your lungs. Therefore, just drinking water doesn’t immediately solve the problem. The water has to go through your digestive system before it hydrates your vocal cords. You should be drinking an enormous amount of lemon water every day to keep your cords in the best possible shape.
There are lots of ways to get dehydrated. Here are some of them: not enough water, smoke (yours or anyone else’s), salt, caffeine (coffee, tea, chocolate, etc.), alcohol, cough drops (sugar and menthol in them can dry you out), recreational drugs, diuretics, over the counter anti-histamines and decongestants, air travel over 35,000 feet and PMS. Lovely, eh? About the last two: part of jet lag is your body’s reaction to high cabin pressure and very dry cabin air causing swelling and dehydration. That’s why you shouldn’t take off your shoes on a long flight (your feet will swell up and you won’t be able to put them back on) and you shouldn’t drink alcohol or eat salty food while flying. When your feet or hands swell, so do your vocal cords, making them harder to move. The same happens with PMS. You swell because you retain water which is your body’s response to not having enough. Water, water, water with lemon, lemon, lemon.
Another big no-no is dairy, which doesn’t exactly dry you out but it does make your mucous thicker. That means milk, cheese, yogurt, ice cream and butter. This is the end of the cheese pizza or the late night quart of Hagen Daz. I’m sure you remember how excited Celine Dionne was when she took a break from her singing career to have a baby and said in an interview “finally, I can have dairy again!”
WHAT TO WATCH FOR
Pain in your larynx can be a sign of a problem. Some experience pain, huskiness, hoarseness and loss of throat range, then you should see a throat specialist or a very good vocal coach experienced in working with voices. Often, general “ear, nose and throat” doctors and inferior vocal coaches do not have the specialized expertise in performing arts medicine to optimally help vocalists.
You should watch for signs of vocal cord swelling characterized by slight hoarseness or a speaking voice that feels higher and huskier than normal and a vocal quality that sounds coarse and less than clean. Frequently, there is a, loss of high range, the upper passaggio feels unstable, and you need more breath support than normal because of inefficient vocal fold vibrations due to swelling. A virus can cause this type of problem, and can overuse of our voice.
USING YOUR VOICE OVER A COLD
If you have what seems to be more than a simple cold, consult a qualified specialist of advice and treatment. Sometime when you suspect a problem beyond a cold you will delay going to a doctor because you don’t want a serious vocal problem to be confirmed. Don’t delay. Go to a laryngologist who works with vocals. A skilled specialist will be more sensitive to your personal feelings about how you use your voice. They can offer advice regarding any upcoming engagements.
There are times when you can sing/speak with a cold and times when you should absolutely rest your voice. When an occasional cold comes on, you can rely on breath support and body awareness to get through rehearsals and concerts and speaking engagement without exacerbating fatigue or doing permanent damage. You can usually sing over a cold if you have nasal congestion but no throat symptoms. You might have a bit of nasality to your tone, but generally, congestion can be sung over.
CHOOSING YOUR MATERIAL
Choose your repertoire carefully and avoid material that is unusually taxing in range or intensity. If you need to change the program or key, do it. It is not an artistic compromise to transpose pop songs into a comfortable range. Many contemporary singers are men with unusually high ranges, such as Stevie Wonder and Sting or women with high belt voices such as Whitney Houston and Celine Dion. Work to extend your range with scale patterns and exercises. But remember that some songs may not be right for your voice, no matter how much you like them. For speakers, long term use as in recording “Books on Tape” can be challenging. Remember do your voice exercises throughout the session when you get short breaks. Voices often don’t fully mature until singers/speakers are in their mid-20’s or even in their 30’s so be patient and don’t force your voice.
PAY ATTENTION TO THE WAY YOU SPEAK
Over the course of a day, most of us speak far more than we sing. We need to be hyper aware of how we use our voices in speech. Beyond being a means of communication, your voice is a vital part of your personality and psyche and you should treat it with care. Register strengthening will help you to achieve this. Speakers/actors/singers are gregarious, outgoing and emotional people. Because your instrument produces both your speaking and singing voice, it follows that your voice can be negatively affected by poor speaking habits. To prevent this, speak only to those who are within an arm’s length or touching distance away. This will help you control the urge to shout and prevent unnecessary strain on your voice.
In American culture, people tend to speak in lower pitched resonant voices, perhaps because they are associated with strength, seriousness and intelligence. This can be detrimental to your voice; dragging down your voice and making your muscles work harder than necessary to produce sound. Speaking too low can adversely affect their tone production. The tendency to speak too low can make you timid about using the rest of your voice/range, you can benefit from observing yourself and your speech habits for patterns that may be wearing to your voice.
THROAT ABUSE IN LIVE VENUES
Performing environments such as theatres, clubs. auditoriums and bars are often dusty, smoky and noisy-all things to be avoided by people using their voices. While this is often out of your control, you can do some things to help prevent vocal burnout; avoid smoky areas, keep quiet on breaks and avoid alcohol and caffeine while performing.
HUMIDIFIER
You may have dehydration issues and the easiest solution to this is to run a humidifier at night while sleeping (these are available at drug stores and bed and bath stores everywhere). This is not a vaporizer which is noisy and puts enough water in the air to drench the sheets. It is a larger floor model which puts small droplets of water in the air quietly. It will save your life. It even helps your immune system fight off colds. There are also small personal steamers available at drug stores that are easily packed. They look like the product used for giving yourself a facial steam, but they only cover your mouth. You put water in them and plug them in and they produce steam in a few minutes. Steam is great for getting the water more directly to your cords (remember the two tubes) because you can inhale it without drowning.
NO SCREAMING
Finally, there’s good old-fashioned vocal abuse. Bad. If you ever shout again, you will be punished. Of course, vocal abuse will make you hoarse, eventually give you a good case of nodes (vocal calluses) and limit your range, flexibility and tone. Think of your vocal cords like a pianist thinks of his/her hands. They are precious. Maybe you should even insure them. (I’m kidding.) But treat them with respect – they are your livelihood. Don’t scream when you’re mad or excited, even when the Yankees lose the Pennant. Don’t shout to be heard over the drummer. Warm up your voice before to remind yourself of the healthy way to make sound. You have a physical instrument and it needs stretching out before you use it just like an athlete. What Do You Mean No Screaming? Okay, so some of you have to scream. I completely understand this and have many students who are in the genres of punk, heavy metal, blues, rock and on and on. There is a way of doing this so you can minimize the damage and I have made it my business to find out how to help you. Contact me directly if you want more information.
COMMON SENSE
Since your body is your instrument, you have to keep it healthy, so diet and exercise play an important part in the daily regimen.