Oh, isn’t it great! You’ve formed a band and you have a regular paying gig now at the local club every week! Life is good, but you’ve noticed that after three nights in a row of singing there is absolutely nothing left. You start out fine with lots of belt and volume, but by the end of Saturday night you are ready for a long vocal break……
If this is happening to you, then you need to read on. Vocal exhaustion and abuse is not unusual when you sing in a loud room, but it’s deadly. It can kill your career as a singer. No band will want a singer who can’t perform for days or weeks in a row. Consider this…
First, are you warming up? Do you have all resonators buzzing with anticipation? Hope so. Secondly, how’s your vocal monitor? Can you hear youself over the drums and guitar when you talk. That’s a good test……can you “speak” and hear your words while the drums and guitars are blaring. If you don’t have a good monitor then that’s the first sign you’re in trouble.
Second, just because everything is loud around you doesn’t mean you should be loud. You have amplication to do that. You may need to make it appear that you are singing loud to our audience (body language, facial expressions), but the bottom line is, if you are over-blowing your vocal cords then you are causing abuse which may lead to hoarseness and loss of the voice. You should be singing a “moderate” volume with good articulation and presence.
Thirdly, are you in the mix? Are you asking what is the mix? Well, the mix is when your chest voice and your head voice work very well together creating a balance that makes it very easy to sing any style of music you want.
Got questions? Drop me a line….