Do you ever experience almost losing your voice or losing it altogether after a gig or a series of gigs? You are experiencing vocal fatigue. This video is all about how to enable healing as quickly as possible – Vocal Recovery. I hope this video helps!
Transcript:
Hello everyone I’m Mitch Seekins the Vocal Coach.
I’m way past due for a new singer survival tip video, but I’ve been working on some really crazy exciting stuff that I’ll be sharing with you in upcoming videos and social media posts. But I thought it was time to get another tip out to you. This singer survival tip video is all about vocal fatigue and vocal recovery
Its 2022 – for those of you watching this in the future – and I am very happy to have so many of my students finally back out on the road touring the world again. I have students in bands right now touring Europe, Australia, and North America… and the audiences are flocking back in great numbers to the shows! It’s all awesome!
As we head deeper into the late fall and winter one of the most serious issues singers are going to need to deal with is vocal fatigue and vocal recovery. As travel increases, and for those of us in North America and Europe, it gets colder and dryer….the vocal recovery after a show gets much more difficult.
Have you ever experienced this – you’re doing a show, it’s a great audience, so you’re giving it your all. After the show your voice is pretty tired (fatigue). That night you get whatever kind of sleep you can, (on the road that can be not very much) and in the morning the voice is pretty ragged. But you work a little bit during the day and gently wake up the voice and stretch it out, and you’re basically ready to go for the next show that night. Once again another great audience, great show and the voice is even more tired this time and showing more signs of vocal fatigue. Some of your range might be a little bit gone or unstable. Once again you try to get a good night’s sleep, and in the morning the voice is almost shot. There’s not a lot happening. You try your best to open things up, But the voice is definitely not great and you’ve still got another show to do that night. The voice is really ragged and this show is very difficult to get through and you feel very disappointed at your performance. But at least you have a day off before the next show and you are hoping 2 recover your voice with the extra rest. What ends up happening though is that even though you recover some of your voice you’re not back to square one even with the extra day of rest and therefore have to go into the next three or four day gig run, starting with vocal fatigue. It snowballs from there
This is what I’m talking about… the issue of vocal fatigue and recovery. It can be not only vocally damaging but also psychologically damaging as well. if you know what I’m talking about, this is when being a singer really becomes not very much fun at all! I help vocalists deal with this on a regular basis. Even though it’s hard, and there is no guarantee, there are things that you can do to drastically improve this situation.
Before I get to some of the solutions it’s a good time for me to ask that If you can relate to what I’m saying, give this a thumbs up and hit that subscribe button and maybe forward this onto someone you know who might need it. If you have a question or two, don’t be shy and leave it in the comments section… I’ll try to answer them as best I can!
OK!
- Drink a lot more water than what you think you need! It really is imperative and if you haven’t seen my video on water, go to my website (link will be below), click on the singer survival tips button on the main page … and have a look. It explains how important it is. And by the way, even though you may not want to, stay away from alcohol when you’re in this situation…. it might make you feel better, but it really doesn’t help!
- Sleep. somehow figure out to get as much as you possibly can. Rest is key.
- Eat as healthy as you possibly can. The body needs energy to enable the healing process to be as efficient as possible. I used to take something called greens plus, or all greens on the road with me, mix it up with orange juice and water and it gave me a great start on a healthy diet as on the road eating healthy can be very difficult!
- This is a big one… get a humidifier! I’m not talking about one of the facial steamers, while those have their place they won’t help that much in this situation. I did a whole video on the benefits of a humidifier and like above, go to my website and click on the singer survival tip button and watch the humidifier episode. I can’t stress this enough… this one is really important!
- Structured warmups – there is a certain way 2 get the voice to respond as well as it can in this situation. This is too difficult to explain here but if you are interested, I suggest you reach out to me, book some sessions and we can go through the specifics.
So, there is some information on how to deal with this awful situation and hopefully save you some pain. once again, don’t be afraid to use the comment section
I’m Mitch Seekins the vocal coach – thanks for watching