Five ways to improve and protect your voice

1. Exer­cise your cords daily

As a vocal instruc­tor, it’s a com­mon mis­con­cep­tion that tak­ing voice lessons will auto­mat­i­cally improve vocal abil­ity. One may hear Simon on Amer­i­can Idol or per­haps a teacher at school rec­om­mend­ing vocal lessons. There is def­i­nitely valid­ity in this, how­ever you have to put forth the effort! Merely singing along to your favorite songs won’t do it.

I get the ques­tion all the time. “How can I improve my voice?”  My answer is always this: EXERCISE! If you want to become a stronger vocal­ist, increase your range and have more con­trol, you have to exer­cise your voice daily. Your vocal cords are a mus­cle. Like any other mus­cle in your body, you will not gain strength and sta­mina if you do not work them out.

The vocal cords are a unique instru­ment.  Unlike a gui­tar or piano where you merely have to strum or strike a key to get sound, YOU have to cre­ate that sound your­self by work­ing and manip­u­lat­ing your vocal folds. If you don’t exer­cise your vocal cords prop­erly, then you will ulti­mately have trou­ble cre­at­ing that sound. I rec­om­mend work­ing out your voice at least 20 min­utes daily (at min­i­mum). Just work it into you sched­ule and it will start to become habit.  As time goes by, you may want to increase your time; maybe 40 min­utes to an hour.

2. Keep your cords lubricated

Your vocal cords live for water. They need to be wet to func­tion prop­erly. Lack of lubri­ca­tion will lead to irri­ta­tion. You need to get in the habit of drink­ing water not just at your gigs, but through­out the entire day.

I was read­ing some­where that 75% of Amer­i­cans are dehy­drated. It can have a mul­ti­tude of effects on the body, includ­ing fatigue, lack of con­cen­tra­tion, and over­all lower cir­cu­la­tion of blood. Believe it or not, if you are hav­ing prob­lems with your vocals, some of it (or much of it) could be attrib­uted to dehydration.

So how do know if you are dehy­drated?  An obvi­ous is if you are con­tin­u­ally thirsty through­out the day and/or you mouth is dry. Another indi­ca­tor is your pee. Some­one who stays hydrated has clear urine. Con­versely – yel­low urine indi­cates that you need more water!

Remem­ber, alco­hol and caf­feine are diuret­ics. They aid dehy­dra­tion.  If you find your­self drink­ing those two bev­er­ages the most, you prob­a­bly have a dehy­dra­tion problem.

3. Stop straining

Vocal strain comes from overex­tend­ing the vocal cords by forc­ing your chest voice to go higher than it should.  This places tremen­dous stress on your vocal folds and can cre­ate prob­lems such as vocal nodules.

Breath­ing and vocal strain go hand in hand. If you have too much or too lit­tle air pres­sure, you cre­ate strain.  Improper breath­ing tech­nique causes the mus­cles out­side of the lar­ynx to tighten.

If you want to expand your range, your cords need to shorten as you go up.  This is where your vocal cords zip up, or what is tech­ni­cally called voice adduc­tion.  The prob­lem with untrained singers, is that when they rely on those out­side mus­cles of the lar­ynx; the ten­sion becomes so extreme that the vocal cords break apart.  At this point, the falsetto voice takes over.  How­ever, where dam­age occurs, is when vocal­ists push the lar­ynx up and ignore the bridge or break.  Now, they are shout­ing rather than singing.

So the ques­tion is, how do all those vocal­ists who sound like they are just shred­ding their voice, sur­vive? The answer is by singing cor­rectly.  You actu­ally can manip­u­late voice to get that gravel and also, have a “scream­ing” vocal IF you uti­lize proper tech­nique. It’s all in the way you sing.

4. Don’t down­play sleep

Musi­cians are noto­ri­ous for their noc­tur­nal lifestyle.  Even so, you have to get the right amount of sleep. This is the only way your voice can become prop­erly replen­ished.  Not get­ting enough sleep will make your vocal chords sus­cep­ti­ble to dam­age, because they are weak.  If you find that your voice is fried from a few shows – choose sleep over partying.

5. Stay away from “bad singing” foods/drinks

There are a few foods to watch out for, espe­cially before per­form­ing. Not say­ing to stop eat­ing them all together, but it’s good to stay away from these before performances:

–Spicy Food. Irri­tates voice and can cre­ate the need to clear the throat. Clear­ing the throat is NOT good and will put immense stress on your vocal cords.

–Dairy Prod­ucts. Cre­ates a layer of flem or mucous on the cords. Again, cre­ates a need to clear the throat, and also inhibits vocal control.

–Cold Drinks. If you are per­form­ing, it’s best to drink room tem­per­a­ture water. Cold water tight­ens your cords.

–Alco­hol. Restricts vocal con­trol. Also causes dehydration.

–Caf­feine. Causes dehydration.

BONUS: Don’t use sore throat spray

I often see singers using OTC sore throat sprays. This is not good, as most of these have a numb­ing agents like Phe­nol or Ben­zo­caine that give the illu­sion that you can sing with ease when in fact, you are prob­a­bly strain­ing your vocal chords. It’s the equiv­a­lent of a foot­ball player inject­ing Toradol to kill the pain and then go back out on the field. It can cause major damage.

If you want some­thing that can really help, as a vocal­ist, I use and rec­om­mend Vocal-Eze. Exten­sive tour­ing and per­form­ing can take a toll on your voice no mat­ter how much you take care of it.  This stuff has lit­er­ally helped me out on many nights! It is used widely by many major record­ing artists includ­ing Tim McGraw, Rob Thomas, Joss Stone and many more.

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