The CoMMUNITY SINGer

Welcome back. This is episode nine, Vocal Health.

What do we mean by vocal health? This is something I get asked about a lot because people would like to ensure that they will have a consistent voice no matter when they're singing.

This is difficult to do because the voice is part of the body. So anything that affects us and the body will affect the voice. However, it's quite hard to lose your voice just from singing or speaking, and it usually comes down to some other physical condition like a virus, etc. Also when we're talking about vocal health, we're talking about making sure that we don't have any discomfort or pain when we're singing or speaking.

Nobody wants to be singing and have any kind of pain afterwards. And if you do have anything that makes you feel like you have a sore throat, or hoarseness after you've been singing, then something is not quite right, and you need to have a look at what you're doing. The best way to address would be to go and speak to a professional singing teacher or coach. I often get asked whether it's a good idea to sing if you a sore throat, a cough, or a cold. Obviously, if you're not feeling well, you may not feel like singing, but it might be unavoidable.

You may have a concert or a show coming up. And you need to use your voice. The reality is you're probably okay to sing on most things. If you have a sore throat, it's usually from some kind of a virus, and it's likely that you'll be okay to sing because the vocal folds are found lower down than the actual throat.

You'll probably find that singing won't make it any worse. If it does make it worse, then you probably shouldn't be singing. Generally, singing with a head cold, you're going to be okay. If something is really hurting the throat, then you're probably best not to sing and it will probably be quite uncomfortable to sing anyway. So I would avoid singing if you've got a lot of discomfort in the throat. I would also always avoid taking any kind of numbing for the throat, especially if you're going to be singing, because this will mean that you won't know what's going on, and you could do yourself further damage. Having a cough is one of the most challenging issues for anybody singing.

So make sure you're having lots of fluids lots of lemon, honey, and ginger to try and keep the voice lubricated as much as possible. Unfortunately, a cough can lead to you losing your voice. But, as long as you have a few days of vocal rest and really just go back carefully, you'll soon be back to your normal voice very soon. People often ask me whether they should stop having any dairy products before they sing.

Well, as I always say, I wouldn't be going and having a milkshake before I was about to do a performance because that can make your voice feel incredibly gunky. But in general terms, it's fine. You can eat the normal diet that you eat when you're a singer. Just be careful of the things that you know might affect your voice.

There are some other things that come up often for people who are singing, things like reflux, which can be aggravated by dairy products and spicy foods. So, if you have an issue like this, you might want to be a bit more careful to make sure that if you've got some singing coming up, you're really careful with your diet beforehand. There are some things to avoid when you're singing. Smoking and drinking alcohol very drying for the voice.

So you want to keep as hydrated as you possibly can at all times. There are some more common voice issues as well, things such as reflux or having a breathy voice. These can come up quite regularly and may require some kind of medical assistance.

One of the best things you can do if you are feeling slightly under the weather or really tired and you've got performances coming up is to steam your voice.

And that's the same as if you had a common cold or cough. You can put your head over a bowl with a towel and just inhale the hot steam.

We also have things called Nebulizers, which is cool steam, and you could use one of those if you prefer. Those you can use at any time during the day, whereas the hot steam, you should only use when you're not singing for about thirty minutes to an hour. To give yourself time for your vocal folds to get back to normal. Steaming is the great thing to do for the optimum health of your vocal folds and you can do that morning and night in order to get yourself back to where you need to be before you sing. But, generally, most things with the voice can be helped by good technique, good foundation of understanding of the voice, and a good teacher or coach.

So once you've done a whole session seeing whether it be on your own, doing a performance, being parts for choir. One of the most important things that you can do to really help yourself is cool the voice down. Everybody will know that it's important to warm up the voice before we sing; what is often overlooked is calling down the voice again afterwards.

This is because as we sing, we lift the larynx higher and higher, and things are being used with a lot of energy and power. So therefore, it's important to reset the voice down to a speaking place so that it's fully comfortable and not being tired out during everyday speaking.

So to demonstrate how you cool down the voice, it's a similar way to how you warm up, but just in the reverse. So if you remember when we were warming up, we always use the siren right at the beginning to go up and down the voice.

What we're gonna do when we cool down is we're gonna go the opposite way. So you're gonna start at the top part of your voice and you're gonna bring it down.

Still using that siren noise, that ‘ng' noise.

And as I come down into the bottom of my voice, I really want to concentrate on allowing the freedom and the relaxation at the bottom part of the voice.

So let's do that again. Really trying to be relaxed and go as low as you can.

Once you start to feel that, you may actually feel the larynx is trying to go down and that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to allow the larynx to sit back down in a natural speaking place position.

Another way you can do this is you can actually physically touch the larynx. You can put your fingers on your throat. You might be able to find two little notches, two little gaps. In this whole section here, you put your fingers quite tightly in and open your mouth.

Have a little feel around.

When you fill those two little notches, they're quite high up underneath the jaw. You can actually press your fingers in pull down and go again with a bit of a yawn. Hopefully then, you'll feel that the voice starts to drop into a slightly lower position and you start speaking, you may find that you've changed from speaking up there to speaking back down where you would normally speak.

The final thing you can do to reset the voice cool down is to do what we call a creak. This is a great sound, really fun to do. So you're trying to make the sound of a creaking door; the more relaxed you are, the better it's going to be. And if you can try and get those individual creeks even better, You'll find if your larynx is really high and you've been doing lots of singing, you might try and go to creek and nothing will come out.

You may get that kind of sound. We want to try and bring the larynx down to allow you to find that creek. So, you can always just keep doing this relaxation yawn to pull down the larynx so you can find that lovely relaxed creek and then you know that your voice is back to where it should be in natural speaking position. Learning to sing is an incredibly empowering and powerful thing to do. It's tempting sometimes to over sing when perhaps it's time to take a break. It's important to be mindful of your vocal health to make the most of your singing practice.

Hopefully, you’ve found all of that information helpful, If you do have any more queries about vocal health or any issues at all, you can always speak to somebody in the medical profession, or you're seeing teacher or coach, and get some more information to help you.

See you next time.

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