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Photos too small? Click on photos, screenshots and diagrams in articles to open a Larger View gallery. | Love Your VoiceArticle Preview :: Tips and techniques for safe singingPublished in PM January 2010 Technique : Vocal Techniques Your vocal folds are the most valuable instrument you’ll ever own, and they can’t be repaired, replaced or upgraded. So it’s about time they got the respect they deserve when you’re not on stage. PM gives you the rules for keeping your voice in shape.
Every singer knows that sinking feeling: you have a gig/rehearsal/recording and you’ve woken up with a soar throat. It’s hoarse, sore, croaky or all three and it feels ‘blown’ from singing too hard the night before. You’ve lost the top end of your range and can’t get any power, no matter what. There are also some insane noises that have magically arrived at the bottom of your range and you sound like Barry White on a bad day, but none of these notes figure in anything that you actually have to sing and you have absolutely no idea what to do about it. These problems can occur for any number of reasons but they usually boil down to some fairly predictable factors: you’ve got a cold, you drank or smoked too much last night, you’ve been yelling too much, or you’re stressed and you exist on a diet of junk food and coffee. As a singer, you only have the one instrument to work with, so what can you do when it’s not playing the game? No singer gets away with never having a throat problem, we’re all human and we all succumb to colds, infections, tiredness and allergies from time to time. However, there are ways of reducing the number of problems that you get, and the severity of the symptoms. Prevention is far better than having to trouble-shoot on the day of a gig, so here are a few strategies that can help you to build a more robust vocal instrument. Stretching
Most people know that they’re supposed to warm up, but don’t really know how to do it and tend to resort to just working through their set list or singing random scales without any real purpose. But before you even start to sing, vocalists should get into the habit of stretching. Singing is something that is done with the whole body, not just the vocal folds, and doing a few simple stretches before singing can increase vocal longevity, as well as having an immediate impact on the success of your vocal warm-up. So try going through a basic stretch routine involving the whole body — arms, legs, torso, as well as the neck and head. Any physical warm-up from a standard workout DVD would be in the right ballpark and would certainly be better than not stretching at all. You’ll notice after you stretch that your vocal warm-ups are more productive and your voice is more immediately responsive. Get your whole body involved in your singing and your voice will thank you for it. Vocalising ...
Published in PM January 2010  | In this article:
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