If you’re reading this, you likely love singing. If you’re over 25-30, then you’ve likely noticed that your voice has changed as you’ve got older. If you’re under 25/30, then keep reading as this is relevant for you too.
What many singers start to find as they get older, is that their voice seems to suffer or even get worse as they get older. They find that things seem to hurt or feel unpleasant when they sing, and that these issues start to happen more often and more quickly whenever they start to sing.
Notes may feel way too heavy, way too light, raspy, lacking depth, or strained/strident when trying to sing material they used to take for granted.
Many singers may even feel like they can’t hit notes they used to be able to hit. Even then, if they can, then the tone is often weaker, wavering, or even a bit pitchy/out-of-tune.
What I’ve noticed…
This leads to many singers:
a) running themselves ragged trying to keep up with repertoire that (seems to be) slowly slipping away from them;
b) completely changing the material they’re singing; OR
c) giving up entirely.
It doesn’t have to be this way
There’s something really important I must stress: voices are actually meant to reach their peak in the late 40s/early 50s. And it is not meant to be a rapid downhill slope thereafter. Properly trained singers have incredibly voices in their 50s and beyond, but somehow the modern era makes us think it’s only younger voices that have it all going for them.
Voices reaching their peak in later life is especially true in classical and opera… but why?
Point 1: The voice matures, deepens and fills in as we age
In this other article here, I discuss what happens to the voice in each decade.
The short version is, we go through puberty in our teens and that’s when we gain the beginning of our adult voice. At around 30, the larynx starts to ossify (turn to bone), becoming a much more rigid structure for the vocal folds and other musculature to operate on. This process continues slowly until around 50-60 years of age.
The larynx also progressively drops year by year, and the vocal folds become gradually thicker as we age too.
All of these changes add up to increasing amounts of depth and lower frequency richness being made available to the voice. We’re not losing top-end or higher frequencies, we’re accessing more bottom – it’s a fuller range sound. This is a non-negotiable for the fully-fledged sound you hear in great classical music and opera. This is a DESIREABLE trait for great singing… but…
Point 2: The voice is a moving target
As we age, many of us lock into however our voice feels when younger, and we “learn the ropes” using how that instrument feels. That then seems to become the permanent target, even though we’ve just explained how the voice is always changing. We anticipate and expect the brightness and lightness of a freshly post-pubescent voice… but we’ve already highlighted this is only the beginning stage.
This stage is most akin to that of the caterpillar just being born, it’s not even begun to form a cocoon yet.
The glacial changes that occur as the voice matures are just that: glacial changes. The changes happen so slowly that one must learn to keep pace with them as the changes arrive, while simultaneously being aware that tomorrow it’s going to progress a little further.
The error most people make is thinking that their voice is static. They try to operate their voice like they were 20/30, or some other younger version of themselves… then seem surprised why it doesn’t seem to handle like it used to.
Point 3: Range and tone are a by-product of function, not youth
As I’ve discussed in many articles (like this one here), range is a by-product of good vocal function. To sing low notes the vocal folds (housed inside the larynx) contract and thicken; to sing high notes they stretch and thin. There are a myriad of other factors that go into this.
But youth is not a primary factor. These very, very fine motor control skills are technical in nature. It therefore takes a LOT of time to cultivate these. Hence, even if the extra depth we gained with vocal maturity wasn’t a factor, we need time to help cultivate these technical skills.
Most younger singers you hear hitting high notes will sound exciting because of how bright and strident they sound, but typically lack any depth to their sound. Moreover, they tend to lose this range as their voice matures.
Why?
Because they would have been relying on youthful vigour rather than technical ability to access those notes, hitting their instrument far harder than is necessary to force a higher note, rather than technically accessing those higher notes with ease.
Yet another reason voices don’t hit their stride under 40s/50s is because this skill takes a long time to cultivate, AND to marry that up with the ever-increasing depth and maturity of the growing voice.
Conclusion: What about my voice?
I said earlier that most singers who struggle with their voice as they age find themselves:
a) running themselves ragged trying to keep up with repertoire that (seems to be) slowly slipping away from them;
b) completely changing the material they’re singing; OR
c) giving up entirely.
Firstly, please never assign yourself to the third option. Every voice is not only salvageable, but can be turned into something truly wonderful and unique to you, the individual singer. It’s all solveable.
Now that you understand the background behind why people often feel their voice struggles as they age, you may be able to see why we need to find a halfway house between a) and b). We shouldn’t be running ourselves ragged trying to sing material that outstrips our ability, but we also shouldn’t be radically changing everything we’re wanting to sing. We need to glacially adapt to the changes as they arrive.
Instead, we need to get a handle on where our voice is at presently. We then pick helpful songs, in favourable keys, to help us to keep pace with where the voice is at. We then also use exercises with those songs in order to improve our technical function, and then progress our voice through those songs to reacquire the range we want those songs to live in and to get the best out of our voices.
This takes time, and is not an overnight process, but it’s highly comparable to trying to lift heavier weights at the gym. We start with the highest weight we can comfortably and sustainably lift with correct form, then – very conservatively – progressively raise the weight just a tiny amount at a time, until we are lifting many times our original weight… without ever really noticing how much more we’re actually lifting… or even how we actually got there.
What happens with training?
A common response I get when working with clients, even on difficult songs they used to struggle with, is “Was that the original key? It just seems to feel easier than I ever remember it being“. Remarkable ability only comes when the act itself feels fairly unremarkable to do.
So if you feel like your voice has gone downhill as you’ve got older, please know, you’ve got a slew of benefits to which your younger self never had access. The challenge is meet your voice where it’s at, keep pace with it, and build from there.
If you’d like to explore this for yourself, please do book yourself in and we can start this process of rebuilding your voice together.