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, and then 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 took a rest. Then 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.
Dopey/imposed sounds
We then proceeded to some dopey sounds. These impose the larynx to relax the supporting tissue, but also reduce the likelihood of eany excess swelling in the vocal folds causing the voice to squeeze for any notes. We followed the same protocol of short passes and rests, leading to longer passes and rests. They had a smile on their voice as they did this, and they explained that this was the best their voice had felt in nearly a month.
Pharyngeal sounds
After this, we tried a pharyngeal sound. This raises the larynx, so does the opposite of dopey sounds. However it also tends to thin out the vocal folds, which (if done correctly) stops squeezing for high notes as well. This just so happened to have been the very exercise they’d tried to do the week before where the wheels had fully come off the wagon. Yet this time, they sailed through without a single hiccup. Maybe a little gunky hear and there, but it didn’t get in the way.
Having confirmed useable function in their voice, we then worked out way through a small selection of other tailored exercises to tap into whatever they had that day. By the end of the session, we were singing their normal songs in their normal keys, with only a little bit of gunk on occasion as it started to shift.
Night and day difference
This client said it was a night and day difference between their voice pre-session and post-session. Now they’ve been a client long enough not to be completely taken aback by such a stark contrast, but they were understandably pleased that their voice was functioning so well despite illness.
While this is most easily explored through one-on-one sessions, the principle for anyone’s practice is not to force their voice to start when it’s not forthcoming. It’s far more like coaxing a scared animal out of it’s den. You have to start slow and allow it to come to you. Do multiple passes of verrrry easy accessible sounds, and whatever your voice gives you, be grateful for it.
Truth be told, while this may seem like a miracle – to take a gunky, broken, mess of a voice and put it back together inside a single session – this only works with voices that have had a base level of facility to them. For less trained/less capable voices, there will be good or even great improvement, but the stark difference in this singer’s voice was down to the vocal facility.
Vocal headroom
Headroom is this idea that your maximum ability on a healthy day is SO far in excess of what you need to do on an average day, that even when your ability is impaired, it just doesn’t matter. In amateur singers, they are so often running their voice to the edge for every song, that if they get even a slight cold they cannot perform.
In professional singers, even when their vocal ability is cut in half (e.g. illness, poor sleep, etc), tapping into that remaining half-capacity is still more than enough.
This is a two-fold problem to solve:
1) keep improving your maximum vocal ability; and
2) make sure your songs never run right to the edge of what you can handle.
I’ve talked about vocal headroom in more detail in this article right here. This is the real secret to being able to sing your favourite songs no matter what, even when under the weather.
If improving your vocal capacity and ability to sing even when sick is something you’d like to discover in your own voice, you can book in for a session with me right here.