Voice Repair: Speaking and Singing – How One Affects the Other

Some singers who come to me for non-surgical voice repair are not necessarily the professional singers. Which means, that a lot of them have a daytime job or even their own businesses. Some of the professions require speaking on the phone all day, running meetings, doing presentations, and what not. After an 8-hour workday, the part-time singers would rush to their band rehearsal or even to an outright performance. Perhaps being vocally very talented but not, per se, knowing about the proper application of their voice, they put the enormous pressure on their vocal anatomy.

So let’s examine that:

They use their speaking voice excessively during the working day and then even more intensely during the night through the late hours. While they’re speaking at work, they primarily are doing it from the sitting position with a slouched back, thus drowning their voice onto the bottom of their throats and below. They establish the low voice speaking habit. 

Then they go to their “singing job” with already very tired vocal cords and very low (“drowned in its position") voice, which now sits deeply in their necks, chests, and shoulders. When now they try to sing they push the voice even harder trying to reach the higher notes and stay with the melody pattern.

It does work for a short while, but then their anatomy starts, so to speak, to close on them. Their neck becomes tighter and tighter, their shoulders are always at a higher-then-needed position and they end up breathing heavily through their chest and nose. Soon it becomes apparent that the more they push the less they accomplish; and on the contrary, the result is actually very diminished. Now, no doubt, they will be very well on their way to what's called, muscle tension dysphonia. Their voice becoming breathy, low in pitch, raspy and simply hoarse.

From this moment on, they hardly can perform their daytime work duties, let alone fulfill their singing obligations at night. Sounds like nothing short of a nightmare, but unfortunately, it is a fact.

Finally, after all of the denial and hope that their condition is just a temporary glitch, it does become apparent that significant voice repair action is needed. It also becomes evident that there is no change without change, and something’s got to give. Now, not only speaking and singing voice has to be fixed, but a new application and manner of speaking and singing would be required. If that change will not take place, the voice/vocal problem will inevitably recur again. 

So, love your voice and take good care of it.

Remember that the vocal cords are not made from steel!

You are just human!

You deserve to be as vocal as you can be!