It’s been a brutal winter for colds, chest infections, flu, and many other illnesses. Sessions since the New Year have often involved putting singers’ voices back together after illness. I thought I’d walk you through what I typically do. Then we’ll conclude with how our process of voice training engenders a ‘bulletproof’ voice.

My first client of the year had been suffering from an awful chest infection. They had been ill for 3-4 weeks, and coughing up mucus throughout that period. In our session, they’d said they’d tried the usual warm-up of lip bubbles the week before, but anything more demanding than that was just a train-wreck.

So what did we do?

Warm-ups
We took it slow, starting with our usual warm-up, but kept it light and breezy. We didn’t try to access their whole range all in one pass, but instead started with a short pass. Then we took a rest.

After that we did another pass. Going a little deeper, and a little higher than before, then another short rest.

Then one more pass unlocked the whole range, before another rest. I enquired as to how it felt at each step, to ensure that (despite it sounding fine), everything felt OK to continue. It’s a slow warming up process when we want to solve how to sing when sick. Continue reading “How to sing when sick or at half-capacity”

Well, it’s that time of year again. Illnesses of all shapes and sizes are going round. I’m on my second consecutive weekend by being wiped out by something or other.

I only recently sent out this regular article on how to bounce back after illness. I don’t like re-sending articles so I thought we’d go over the different illnesses that you can catch that affect your voice, how to distinguish them, and some suggestions for attending to them.

CAVEAT/NOTE: I am not a medical doctor, and I’m also trying to cover a lot in a very short space. As such, I’m going to talk in broad generalities to get the message across. We’ll group more similar things together, and discuss the range of symptoms you’ll generally get. Almost all of these will benefit from paracetamol to take down infection/inflammation.

1. Colds / Sinusitis

We’ve all had colds, so I don’t need to linger on this. Runny nose, snot/mucus either out the nostrils, or down the back of your throat (post-nasal drip). Some facial pain, swollen eyes, etc. If it lasts a while or gets bad, it can become sinusitis, i.e. an infection of the sinuses. This can sometimes requires antibiotics to aid recovery. Continue reading “How different illnesses affect the voice”

I wrote this article a little while ago on how sleep benefits your voice and your brain.

I thought it also worth discussing how poor sleep impacts your voice negatively, so you can recognise the signs. I’ve copied the relevant bits from my other article, so we can make reference to the consequences that occur when we don’t sleep well.

1. Mucus

When we use our voice every day, it suffers wear and tear. A bit like if you work in a job that keeps you on your feet all day every day, your legs acclimatise, but they are tired by the end of the day.

The vocal folds are remarkably small, so the tiniest tear or swelling can yield a tremendous difference in vocal quality and (most importantly) how your voice feels to you. If you want to reach high notes with no strain or difficulty, even a little bit of swelling or vocal fatigue that hasn’t recovered from the day before can just shut down any chance of that.

The chief protection mechanism our body deploys against wear and tear, is mucus. The vocal folds are meant to have a thin layer of mucus on them to protect them during normal wear and tear, but if we don’t get the necessary recovery, the body deploys MORE mucus.

This is why after even one night’s poor sleep, you may notice your voice is gunkier than normal the next day. Continue reading “How Poor Sleep Impacts Your Voice”

Like many people across the UK today, I woke up a little groggy at my usual wake up time. Why? Because the clocks had changed. This meant that my usual wake up time of around 6am was actually the equivalent of an hour earlier than normal – so 5am.

And boy, did my voice FEEL like a 5am morning voice.

What is morning voice? What causes it?

The short version is fairly understandable. No one expects to be able to wake up and be able to ask their body to be on top form IMMEDIATELY, right? No one can do a personal best in running or the gym upon waking. Our voices are no different.

We grasp that our body needs a little time to wake up from sleep. This is partly biological, and partly neurological. Our body has to do certain things to get us to sleep, do body “house-keeping” while we sleep, and then it needs to pack all that away as we wake up.

There’s a myriad of factors that can come into play, including some more serious health issues, but let’s cover the four most common things that most of us can recognise in our voices: Continue reading “Morning Voice”