How even ONE moment of excess force can derail your voice

by Mark JW Graham – Vocal Coach in Nottingham, UK
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Whether you are singing professionally or just for fun, you may relate to this situation.

You’re singing along, maybe a few songs deep, and you find yourself squeezing a little too hard for a note. You make the note, it doesn’t sound bad, but it doesn’t feel great.

But then the next line doesn’t feel right either. Nor the line after that. In fact, your voice suddenly feels like it’s no longer the voice it was before you squeezed for that line.

It still functions, but it’s not quite right. It feels a bit leaden, a bit heavy… but simultaneously feels a bit weak and light at the same time. It’s 80-90% of the voice you went in with, but SOMETHING has changed and it isn’t quite right.

If you’re just singing for fun at home, that may be a casual nod to wrap up your session. But if you’re singing at a gig, that can signal a downward spiral for your act.

What is this and why does it occur?

Put bluntly, this is the equivalent of incurring a muscular strain at the gym. In some cases, it’s not even a full on strain – more like a micro-strain. Such afflictions are not enough to call it a full on injury, but certainly sufficient to derail the rest of your workout.

Case in point – I was at the gym one day this week. A quarter of the way through my workout, after I’d got SOME work done, I got a little spasm in my back. It led to a moderate knot between my shoulder blades. It’s not the worst spasm I’ve ever had, but that basically ended the workout there. I moved into some light or unweighted exercises to get some movement into my body, but I could NOT continue performing at the same level I had been.

It really can happen in a moment

This is genuinely a huge derailment that can plague singers. Even (and especially) seasoned performers. They are mid-flow, and in service of giving the audience the performance they want, they reach a little too much, push a little too hard in the moment. This leads to a micro-strain, where the vocal folds have contracted slightly too hard, the vocal tract was not quite the right shape, etc.

We all make mistakes, but the timing and severity of such strains/micro-strains can sometimes put a voice in a hole that it cannot recover from on the timescale of minutes to hours.

While I am far more aware of the capacity to strain my voice when singing, I’ve noticed this strain/micro-strain myself even during my normal speaking day as a parent. When our daughter has misbehaved or I’ve raised my voice to shout, that can derail my voice for the rest of the day.

My voice is also at its most “strain prone” earlier in the day. So if I’ve had to raise my voice within an hour or so of getting up, I can kiss good vocal function goodbye for the rest of that day. It’s not rescuable through exercise. Your body and voice just need time to heal.

The solution

Tommy Cooper, the great British comedian, said it best with this joke.

“Doctor doctor, it hurts when I do this”

“Well, don’t do it then!”

Remember: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Being aware of one’s propensity to push too hard is half the battle. The rest involves both vocal training so that your body knows WHAT to do (rather than constantly engaging in what NOT to do), and slowly installing oneself into that function when singing live. That takes time, especially if you are used to giving it your all when performing.

This may mean altering the keys of songs, or changing the portions of the songs that trip you up and cause those micro-strains. Going through songs with a fine-toothed comb, to be granular about where your voice was fine in a set, and where it went into a hole. From there, we can strategise on what to modify, by how much, and in what way, so as to reduce or eliminate your propensity to cause such micro-strains.

If this is something you feel you struggle with, you can get in touch to start fixing this in your voice via the button below. I’d love to help you resolve those issues and get you feeling confident in your singing again.

Mark JW Graham - Mark is a high-end vocal coach and singing teacher based in Nottingham, UK.

Certified in Speech Level Singing ®, and with over 20 years of musical experience, he is known as the "go-to vocal coach" for singers wanting dramatic improvements in their singing voice in a short space of time.

Trusted by singers worldwide, Mark’s expertise as a coach, singer and musician helps clients transform their voices and raise their musicianship to new levels.

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SLS Certified Vocal Coach · 20+ Years Experience · Trusted Worldwide