Tips for Maintaining a Healthy Voice

A performing career is sporadic. One month you may have it easy, and the next you’ll be in incredible demand. Rock, pop, or opera, your voice needs special handling. A guitar can be tucked away in a hard shell case after a brutal workout; but you wear your vocal cords everywhere. Protect your career by protecting your gift.

The environments you spend daily time in have a tremendous impact on your vocal health and your ability to perform at peak. Lifestyle excesses (smoke, drink, medications, extensive travel, or lack of rest) can gradually cause vocal deterioration. A simple rule is, the harder you perform, the less foolhardy you can afford to be in your off time.

How to Stay Great Under Pressure

Living in the real world of long sessions, late nights, commuting in a dry urban environment, I often feel less than vocally optimum. I get vocal fatigue, jet lag, dehydration, and a bout of the flu each October. I practice smart and eat right, and take just a small exception to the “no alcohol” rule after a gig. I schedule my month with days off blocked out in advance, just for the health of it. But with my best intentions for vocal rest, this is a plan rarely realized.

In the Record Biz we’re jamming for 9 months, 24/7, and dragging 3 months a year. The first big punch in the gut hits us on Monday of Thanksgiving week, lasting through New Year week. This is because fiscal year budgets have been spent and new album projects are on hold until the suits get back from Holiday. Then, 6 months of madness ensues until August when the entire Globe collapses for power cocktails at the beach.

Do the artists and musicians take advantage and rest? Rarely. We can’t afford to. We write a new batch of original songs, record a new CD, launch a mini tour or sing a seasonal project. And wait for A&R to start answering their phones again.

If you think the big timers have it easier, think again. Major label concert artists may have more control over their performance schedule than a studio singer on call, but their vocal days off are sacrificed to press interviews, 12- hour bus trips and overseas flights.

Simply put, we get fried. Still want to be a pro? OK, let’s get you organized.

If you’re working a 9-5 day job now and singing, make every day count. WARM UP!!

Pro Tips

5. Avoid Recreational Drugs

Unfortunately, many artists find solace in substance abuse, notably pot, coke and junk. Bad news. Those substances are very destructive to the voice, not to mention human life. Don’t start. If you’re using, get straight.

If drugs don’t kill you or drop you in jail, you’ll earn the knife in voice surgery.

For extremists who insist on living fast, get over it or you’re going nowhere.

6. Schedule Days of Complete Vocal Rest

If you’re style is to sing aggressively, understood. But you have to take days off to avoid vocal damage. Successful touring artists book time off as a key component to career longevity. those that don’t might wind up in surgery.

7. Practice Smart

• For 3 days of performing, take 1 day off.
• For 5 days of performing, take 2 days off.
• Take a complete day of monk-like silence every week.
• Learn to meditate, practice Tai Chi or Yoga.
• In rehearsals longer than 1.5 hours, pace your vocals. Click on my segment, Rehearse Smart.

8. Don’t Smoke…Anything!

But if you do, or you are around smokers you must take extra precautions with rest and hydration. Smoke packs a gummy tar into your lungs, causing a loss of vocal power, range, flexibility, breath control, pitch control and it WILL change your tone significantly.

I don’t endorse smoking. But I do have a few hardcore smoking pro-clients who can get away with up to 5 cigarettes a day when they do everything else right, like steaming and warm up exercises. If you’ve got to smoke, don’t hide your butts and pretend your sore throat will go away. Counteract it with my Vocal Recovery Series designed for comebacks from illness, injury, travel, and smoking.

Smokers need a portable steamer at rehearsals, in the studio, and backstage before gig. A home use vaporizer is a must. However, it’s personal choice whether you like warm or cool mist. Some find that warm mist makes them cough when tar in the lungs gets gummy from the steam. If so, try cool mist.

During recording dates, don’t smoke more than 2 a day. When performing, never smoke on stage or during set breaks. Oh, and completely avoid those horrendous clove type imported dark cigarettes!

Cut down and think of a few cigarettes per day as dessert rather than your lifeline. That’s how I think about Oreo Cookies. Can’t live without ’em, Look awful with ’em.

I’ve come to the conclusion that people smoke because they hold their breath from anxiety, and the only release is to suck oxygen through a cigarette. Use my Breathing Exercises or Yoga when you get that craving to inhale. Oxygen is really what you’re after.

Don’t smoke anything at all if you are underage because your lungs can’t handle it. You’ll have a lousy voice and a short career since your lungs did not develop to maturity.