Exercise, food, drink, and the seasons all play a part in how our voice reacts and performs.
Wouldn’t be great to know if your voice wasn’t at its best before you step out on stage and make a fool of yourself?
Today we focus on what you can do to get your voice and body right… and keep them that way.
If you know how your body and voice react to different pressures, situations, seasons, and food and drink… then you have the ability to combat the negative effects that being less than 100 percent can have on your performance!
Does your voice go through times of blah and times of brilliance? Looking at vocal health and seasonal affects
You may have seen divas who belt out opera from bellies the size of the opera house … rockers chugging beer between sets … or husky-voiced lounge singers chain-smoking cigarettes. If you copy them, you may cut your singing career short.
While there will always be exceptions to every rule, keeping your singing voice healthy means keeping your body healthy.
Keeping your body healthy means maintaining a healthy weight, drinking plenty of water, and avoiding anything that will dry out or disrupt your vocal cords … including alcohol and cigarette smoke.
Exercise
Singing is exercise, and a strong respiratory and cardiovascular system will carry you through its demands.
Some voice teachers recommend a routine of abdominal exercises to strengthen your core muscles, cardio exercises to improve your lung capacity, and yoga to improve your posture and focus your breath.
Food
Before you sing, you should avoid eating. In particular, there are a number of foods you should avoid: citrus fruits, dairy products, chocolate, fatty foods, and anything that is particularly difficult to digest.
These foods cause extra mucous to secrete onto your vocal cords, interfering with the vibration process. As a result, you may find yourself clearing your throat often as a result of too much phlegm in the back of your throat.
Clearing your throat in itself is harmful to the vocal cords—along with coughing and sneezing. Instead of clearing your throat, try to swallow.
Drink
In two short words: drink water. That doesn’t mean water with something added, like juice drinks or tea. That means 100% H2O.
Keeping your body hydrated is the most important thing you can do for your vocal cords. Water enables your body to produce the lubrication that keeps your vocal cords functioning properly. Without it, your vocal cords can swell, redden, and even form nodes as a result of friction.
If you are going to be a professional singer, or if you are going to use your voice beyond a normal amount, you need to think beyond the recommended eight glasses a day. Professional throat doctors recommend that you drink double that amount.
That’s one gallon of water … every single day.
Beverages like soda pop and juice don’t cut it. That’s because they contain additives like caffeine (which acts as a diuretic and actually promotes dehydration), sugar (which may lead to the production of thick mucous in excess amounts), and citric acid (which creates phlegm). Milk is a prime culprit for phlegm production. Alcohol gives you a double whammy: it not only leads to dehydration but also produces a sedative effect.
You may think that if your voice is sore, a hot drink is the perfect solution. Wrong!
Heat causes the blood vessels in your head, neck, and throat area to swell, affecting your vocal cords. On the other hand, anything too cold (e.g., with ice cubes floating in it) will cause blood vessels to constrict, causing tissues to become dry.
The best solution is to drink cool or lukewarm drinks … if you want your voice to be at its best.
Steam
You’d think that saunas and steam baths would be great for your voice, but instead, they cause you to sweat, drying out your body and your vocal cords.
A better option is to sit in front of a cool humidifier, which allows water droplets to come directly in contact with the vocal cords and moisten the tissues.
Medicinal Remedies
We don’t know a single voice teacher who recommends a medicinal spray or throat lozenge to cure problems with the voice. These products will sooth irritated membranes in the throat, but they have no effect on the vocal cords themselves. As a result, they won’t help you sing better… though they may make your throat feel better.
Times of the Year
You may have seen singers walking outside with scarves wrapped around their throats and mouths, even when it wasn’t that cold outside.
Keeping your singing apparatus warm and well protected is a good idea.
When a woman’s natural chemistry changes as a result of menstruation or pregnancy, she may find that her voice isn’t as responsive. This is completely normal.
Which one is most Important?
If you could only choose three lifestyle changes to which to commit as part of your plan for becoming the best singer you could be, I would select the following: stop smoking, drink as much pure water a day as you can, and minimize your consumption of dairy products.
Though these may seem like huge steps, you can start as small as you like.
Perhaps your first step will be to carry a bottle of water with you at all times and drink when you remember.
Coming Up...
So you have worked out how to care for your voice and how to make sure you aren’t doing it any damage!.. ..Well now its time to move on and learn songs like a professional would. Keep a look out for the first lesson in the “Making a song your own” series.
Another Singorama Success Story!
Will Johnson
Hi there, Without doubt, Singorama has assisted immeasurably in respects to voice strength, breath control, and the expansion of my range. I now, quite happily find myself being able to easily deliver songs that I either, once had trouble singing, or wouldn’t have even imagined myself being able to sing, a year ago. And the degree of success, for me, is to have an entertainer friend, who used to say that “I had a nice voice, but not to quit my day job” now wants me to appear with him at some his club dates. And has even considered the thought of he and I performing together as a team [he’s a keyboardist and vocalist] But the fact that I’ve learned volumes about my voice, have been educated as how best to use it, that I can continue to learn how best to improve it, plus the fact that the owner of a local showbiz agency “Bob Egan’s Entertainment” would like me to join his cadre of top-notch performers, is strongly “symptomatic of success” to me, with so much more success to come, thanks to your program.
You want your voice to be at its best all of the time if possible! So to achieve this, there may be times when you have to make changes or sacrifices, depending on how attached you are to certain drinks and foods.
But trust us its all worth it. check out the testimonials from people whao have purchased Singorama 2.0 and have had amazing success with all of the advice and direction tailored to the needs of singers.