Is Marijuana Good For My Voice?

[Royce]

Is Marijuana Good For My Voice?

Question: Hello, we have a little bit of a problem here because our lead singer seems to think that smoking pot does not in any way affect his singing voice!!! Can you please let me know if this is true? ....Will you please help me out with this and set this straight for me?

What's your answer?

Thoughts and comments on this and other vocal tips, visit
Brett Manning’s Singing Success program. In partnership with Music Forte
http://www.singingsuccess.com/cmd.php?af=811384

[Royce]

This is a stupid question.

I know a number of musicians who feel that smoking a joint before they perform helps their performance.


The original question was proposed by Brett Manning of the Singing Success program.

[hasya108]

I'll put my 2cents in about pot: it's a fact that lots of recordings were
made/released for the last one hundred years featuring musicians playing
and singing while stoned on pot. Some of your favourite tracks were cut
w/players who were smoked-juiced-injected-snorted-on practically ANY
available drug since recording began. Any musician who has been around
knows that within our community chasing inspiration leads to experimenting
with anything that can push us beyond the norm. No one wants the norm,
music is a way to expand pleasure and this creates a constant need for
fresh new invention. Pot has always been the staple drug for rockers, it's
everywhere since the 60's, not physically addictive, it augments every other
chem high, and yes there is something to be learned from the glaring truth
that there are indeed different states/takes of "reality". For many musicians
those "other conscientiousness" places are where the creativity soars.
If music is YOUR aeroplane, then you know you have to feed your inspiration somehow. For myself, I smoked my last pot in '71 and found
a drug-free path that works but I know that every real musician has to
find their own rocket fuel..within is best, 'cause the drugs do not make
anything that isn't already there, but battering without is sometimes the
necessary evil required by our thick heads as a temporary learning
experience. Did I digress a bit? I think the point was how smoking any
thing degrades your vocal cords, which is true if you are a vocalist
who uses their voice for pitch/inflection/nuance as an instrument, but
we would all be the poorer without that other class of vocalist: the
"personality" deliverer whose smoker/drinker tones can whack us just
as evocatively:Dylan, Waits, Joni Mitchel, Bob Seger, Willie Nelson,
Leonard Cohen...
Anyway everyone knows smokin 'bacca kills ya, lotsa artists are self-destructive.

[bahome1]

[bleep] no, pot isn't good for your voice. Sing like a man or woman and you don't need drugs! My opinion and I'm sticking to it! I buy the music you see.
Smiles, Barbara from Missouri

[Royce]

I posted this topic 25 hours ago and it's already had 60 people read it!

Royce Hamm
2330 S12th St
Saint Louis

[BluesBro]

Haven't been around the site for a while but enjoyed reading the comments. It seems that many of the people who were into the drug scene who are still alive are now members of the AA or other organizations and celebrate being sober.

The tangent of musicians experimenting with drugs to add to their music creation is that they always sound better to themselves than to their audience unless their audience were on the same plane.

It does amaze me how some people were able to smoke, snort and whatever else they did and continue to perform. My voice deepens and requires lubrication when I play in bars where the smoke drifts in from outside!

There was a time, but last week I walked past a number of coffee shops in Amsterdam and the thick clouds of smoke and people who zonked in their little worlds were a million miles from anywhere I wanted to be.

[Spibach]

Pot might be good for coming up with either good or bad ideas but smoking anything is bad for the vocal chords. I know because I've pretty much ruined my own.

[MMW113]

Marijuana is not good for any singing voice, it heats and dehydrates your throat because you are breathing in hot dry air, with particles in it. It doesn't enhance your creativity either - it just gives you a pleasant delusion that you are being more creative. Yes, it's relaxing, but how laid back do you want to be performing?

The greats in all genre were great IN SPITE of their use of pot and other drugs not because of it......