losing voice

[willis]

This one is to all of the singers...what is the best way to sing without losing your voice? I know this sounds funny, but it's serious. I'm in both praise team and choir and i have lost my voice more than once. it comes back usually the next day but also with these sinus problems and colds that i have been having, i'll either lose my voice or it won't be as strong as before. in fact, it seems to me that my voice has changed from high soprano to alto (i do alto for praise team and then soprano in the choir). i just want to know if any one has any suggestions for maybe breath control, increasing the quality in my voice, ect.... thanks.

[danhanmapa]

I am on our Praise team also. We have three services so that is about 1 1/2 hours of singing each Sunday morning. There are several things we do to try to avoid problems. The first thing is to DRINK LOTS OF WATER!!! To sing well, you need to be well watered. Not just the day of a performance or set, but as a lifestyle. Your body needs water. My doc says that to be healthy you should divide your weight by 2 and that is how many ounces of water you should be drinking a day. Depending on how much you weigh, that can be a lot of water, but it is what your body needs. Another thing we do (gross but true) is to swallow a teaspoon of olive oil before singing. This keeps your throat lubricated and helps you keep from getting choked up. Something else to remember is to stay away from cold drinks while you are singing. Cold drinks will tighten up your vocal chords and make it harder for you to sing those high notes. If you need something to drink while you are singing, make it warm. We drink warm water, coffee, or tea - without sugar. Sugar only coats your throat and causes more phlem. Food in general before you sing is not a great idea. If you must add something to your water or tea - try lemon juice or honey. Lemon helps and honey does not hurt.

The above tips & tricks work for us, hope something in there helps you.

[danhanmapa]

One more thing - stay away from Milk products before you sing. They cause a lot more phlem in some people.

Have you ever taken any voice lessons? If not, it may be something you should consider. If you are too timid to take lessons from someone who will openly critique you, and they will, there are video lessons at your local Christian bookstore. Voice lessons are well worth the money if you are interested in excellence - and I believe you are or you would not have posted in the first place.

Some of your problem could be that you are just working too hard, singing from your throat instead of from your gut. An easy breathing technique I use with someone who has never had any vocal coching is this:

Have someone stand in front of you and press into your stomach with their fist. If you have a singing partner, this is a good exercise to do together. Start singing, making sure to keep those stomach muscles tight. You will immediately feel and hear a difference in the quality of your voice. When you breathe, your partners hand should be pushed out. Your stomach should expand - via the diaphram. Your shoulders should NOT raise. If you have never had any vocal coaching this will seem very strange. It definitly takes some getting used to.

It is easy to get lazy with our breathing. You can tell immediately when you do though, your vocal quality suffers dramatically.

Hope this was helpful!

[Mentor]

Dan, you give some excellent advice. A few things I'd like to add are:
Firstly, Willis you don't mention if you are a smoker or not, but just in case you are, you ought to know that singing and smoking don't mix well together. Ever. Another point to consider is how well do you know your own vocal range? If you are frequently being pushed to sing outside your range -- either too high or too low -- you could be forcing your voice. This is something you should never, never, ever do. It can result in long-term and permanent damage to your vocal chords. Clearly, this would be a bad thing. I absolutely agree with Dan about finding a good teacher, even if it's only for six months or so. At least get the basics right and make sure you aren't entrenching faulty technique that could ultimately cause harm and put an end to any singing aspirations you may have. You may have to try several different teachers until you find one you can have confidence in and trust -- and who you can relate to on a personal level as well. But I assure you it will be well worth the effort. Good luck.

[willis]

man.. look what you get. I wasn't expecting so much helpful information. Many thanks! I'm going to take all of that advice and really apply it. I'm looking forward to the change.

[Rose]

dan, mentor,

this is some great info...you both sound more than qualified to submit an article or two to the growing member back office where the slick education module and articles will be. heck, if you just order us what you've written here that's a great article about warming up the voice, etc.

please submit to editors@musicforte.com and we can compensate you in several ways that you'll surely enjoy. talk soon,

[Mentor]

Thanks MrRose for your generous comments. And congratulations to you and your whole team for putting up this superbly conceived and well thought out Web site. Well done! The Web site itself is excellent as far as the technical and functional aspects are concerned, and it has a great "look and feel" as well. I'm sure it will catch on like wildfire with musos of all ages and types around the world and perform a genuine, valuable service. I'd love to submit articles to Music Forte. I'll do so very soon.

[danhanmapa]

I too am very impressed with the website thus far. I am just a lay person who has had some vocal coaching, but I would love to contribute to the site. I will get in touch.

[CSproductions]

There's a world of difference between breathing to sing versus breathing to live. We speak in short bursts, but we sing (obviously) for much longer sustained periods of time. Our vocal chords are merely strings which must vibrate in order to make sound, not unlike the strings on a violin, guitar, piano, etc. To make the strings on a violin vibrate, we draw a bow across them. We pluck them on a guitar and strike them with a "hammer" on a piano. For vocal chords, we force air across them. Where does this air come from? The lungs, of course. But just like a balloon, our lungs can't move air on their own. They are not muscles, neither are they directly surrounded by muscles. Our diaphragm, which divides the thoracic cavity (chest) from the abdominal cavity (stomach), fills our lungs and empties them by moving up and down. When we breathe in, we push our diaphragm down, which produces a vacuum in our chest, drawing air in through the nose and mouth. When we exhale, we push up on our diaphragm, causing positive pressure in our chest, forcing air out of the lungs. If we wish to sing, we must exercise very careful and deliberate control over our diaphragm in order to have just the right amount of air flowing across our "strings" (vocal chords). If we sing correctly, even for a brief period, our stomach should muscles should feel like we just had a workout. Singing is very physical work! And it's 90% about breathing correctly. The diaphragm is one of the few muscles that reverts to the autonomic nervous system when we aren't exercising direct control over it. That means simply that it's gonna work without our being conscious of it. That's breating to live. But any time we wish, we can take direct control and make it do what we want it to. We just have to learn how. And learn how we must if we wish to avoid damaging our vocal chords. We hear of pop and rock stars frequently who are told by their doctor that if they don't take a break they will permanently lose their voice. It's because they aren't breathing correctly, and these strings of flesh will only take so much abuse.

One thing that will certainly help is exercise - both of the diaphragm and the vocal chords. You wouldn't think of getting into a weight lifting competition without training first, and you know that the training is going to be milder in the beginning than it is in the advanced stages. The same is true of the diaphragm and vocal chords. You'll learn the exercise and conditioning techniques in voice lessons.

Incidentally, you'll find a lot of resources on my web site at www.CSproductions.info/MusicTracks.htm.

[iambuttoniam]

i spent three years in chorus while i was in high school, i also spent two years singing in church, and about a year and a half of voice lessons from one of my chorus teachers. there is A LOT more to singing than just opening your mouth and letting the words come out. the advice given by cs, dan, and mentor is all very good advice. something else that may help is warm-ups. many people who sing don't really warm up beforehand. some may think that they are warming up, but aren't really doing it right. my senior year of high school, i was the director's assistant, which meant that i had to lead the vocal warm ups every morning before we began singing. some of the things we did were breathing exercises where we would fill up our diaphrams and let the air out very slowly making the diaphram jump... kinda letting the air out with a bunch of short "tsst"s if that makes sense... it helps to strengthen the diaphram. and the vocal exercises we did were scales. like "la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la"- only each "la" was a different pitch... i'd play it on the piano and help you out, if i could- but i don't really know how to explain it to you... but maybe these other people who can better explain it can help out- i'm sure they know what i mean? hope i could help at least a little...

[bradley]

I've heard of something else called, "The vocalists secret", or, "The Singers Secret", or something like that. It's supposed to be available at the drugstore, and I've been told to ask the pharmacist there and they can point it out.

Apparently, it's some kind of glycerin spray. I've never tried it.

I'm not an advocate of lemons either. They're full of acetic acid, and although they do wonders to cut the phlegm, I just think that there's a negative there too - it's an acid. I could be wrong, and I have done it in the past (chewing up half a lemon -mmmm yummy), but again, I just think there's something wrong with that.

Drugs.... sore topic for many. I've heard some people recommend a bong hit at least ten minutes prior to going on. Dunno, but it seems like it woudl be more for the anxiety than anything else LOL!

Another drug, and I've used this one, is sudafed - take it an hour before you go on if you have congestion problems (This is NOT a recommendation, merely a last resort if an hour of warmup excercises can't cut through and loosen you up). it's only good for 4hrs though, and then after that you're pretty much stuffed up again. In fact it used to be the only drug that Navy doctor's would allow their divers to use before a dive.

If you have a cold, the best thing to do is to cancel that particular show of course

Well, here's some of the things that I've done in the past and/or continue to do.

First, warmup - all the way through your range(s), and also easing back up/down and through your head voice and falsetto. A few minutes really isn't enough to really get you into performance status. 45 minutes is NOT too short a time to warm up.

Now, warming up means different kinds of excercises. It's almost impossibile to describe these, and it's good if you've got a tank of gas because many of the sounds you make while warming up aren't friendly to the ears. Sure, there are the scales as mentioned above - great for finding those spots that you need to slide up and down and over again to smooth out. You must also know the areas of your voice that you shouldn't go - many of them are perhaps, right in the middle of your range. A good vocal coach will give you a battery of warm up excercises and work with you on performing them correctly.

I've been on hundreds of stages, and most bars and many clubs provide free beer/alchohol for the band. That's kewl and all, but being the singer I have a little rule for myself - No alchohol of any kind at least 24hrs prior to performances. And even immediately after it's prolly not a good idea.

So the scenario goes like this....

They ask the guitarist what he wants - pitcher of beer

They ask the drummer what he wants - pitcher of beer

Yeah it's the same for everybody else but me....

I ask for a pitcher of *warm* water.

They ALWAYS bring me ice cold water with crushed ice in it. You can't get mad, they're just trying to accommodate, so the moral of the story is to bring a couple of big, room-temparature bottles of water with you

Finally, there is something that many people completely overlook. Record. When you record your vocals over a song you have complete control of the sound levels and your mix in the headphones. You'll be surprised at how much easier what you want to do seems. Then, once you know how that feels you playback and work the song using those techniques. When performing live and you get some bonehead soundman or a crappy monitor mix you work on "Feel" and "Memory" - all you really need to hear is your tonality and you won't have to force yourself, which is potentially damaging and could cause nodules - and that's permanent damage that might involve surgery.

If I think of anything else I'll go ahead and post.

Kindest regards,

Bradley



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[Minousdad]

I used to have a good singing voice and had a lot of promise, as I had even been asked by various musicians to sing in their bands and got standing ovations at local open mikes (spelling?) and such places... but unfortunately, I had to have a throat operation (to treat sleep apnea) a couple of years ago and had my tonsils, uvula and a chunk of my palet taken out, and my singing voice hasn't been the same ever since. Does anyone have any advice on basically re-training myself to get my voice back--without the extra parts?

I'm told there are more "tongue" exercises to compensate, but does anyone have any details about that? I just miss having "my" voice... It would also be nice to be able to sing the songs that I write, as I'm also a published poet and have written a few songs from my poems.

Rich Sanders[/quote]

[peekaboo]

I've been having trouble with diaphragmatic breathing. What exactly do you do. Is it sticking out your stomach as you breath in? Thanks for the help...

[bradley]

[peekaboo]

I tried that and I don't really get how to do that, does anyone have any other examples? Thanks for your help though!