Article by: Carley Varley
VQS Advice Blog | Cover Image by Elizeu Dias
Learn how to keep your voice happy and healthy!
These center around how to keep your voice healthy and how to train your voice. As a singer, I am always thinking of my voice, how I can strengthen it, how I can improve it and how I can really take care of it.
- Table of Contents
1. What are the Secrets to Sounding Great? - 2. How Do You Achieve Healthy Vocals?
- 3. What Relaxing Does to Your Voice
- 4. What Ideas Can You Use to Train Your Vocals?
- 5. Honey, Lemon and Ginger are Your Friends!
1. What are the Secrets to Sounding Great?
Warmups are vital for singers! 🤩🤩🤩
If you don’t warm up, you can really damage your voice and you won’t sound as good when you are performing. You stretch before your race, you stretch before you work out and singing is no different.
Your voice needs working out, it needs to be taken care of properly.
Warming up by singing notes up and down scales, lip trills and humming octaves really helps. There are hundreds of videos on YouTube displaying vocal warm ups.
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2. How Do You Achieve Healthy Vocals?
Steam Your Way to the Top!
I have recently discovered vocal steamers and wow, they are just amazing!
Vocal steamers are so affordable, you can find them online or in stores, they help when you have a cold or difficulty breathing too.
If you are on a budget:
- Fill a bowl with boiling water
- put a towel over your head and the bowl
- and breathe in the steam.
You can also achieve this slightly but taking a shower and breathing in the steam. This warms up your vocal cords and moistens them ready for singing.
The best thing to do is:
- steam your vocals
- wait for 20-30 minutes
- then warm up your voice by doing exercises.
This has kept my voice incredibly fit and healthy. It is a very simple method, and it really does work. It helps your voice by warming it up and treating those vocal cords.
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3. What Relaxing Does to Your Voice
If you ever feel like you’ve over done it on a few performances, Make sure you REST.
Vocal rest is well known in the music industry, professionals have to do it or else they’ll have no voice. Listening to your body is important and if singing becomes painful or difficult, either see your doctor or go on vocal rest for a few days to a week and see how you feel after rest.
I once did six gigs over a weekend and…
so I rested and didn’t speak or sing for five days. This really helped and it meant that I sounded right as rain by the time I was due to sing again. Try not to overdo it and make sure that you rest! This is one of the most important tips I can give.
4. What Ideas Can You Use to Train Your Vocals?
Practice so you WILL get better, your voice will be more agile,
and it will be able to reach higher or lower notes.
Simply practicing means you can expand your range, do more complex runs and improve your breathing technique too.
You can find many videos can be found on Youtube and Tiktok, there are many incredible vocal coaches on Tiktok so check them out. Practicing for an hour a day or even less than that can improve your singing, it is a lot of work but it is worth it to see yourself improve.
5. Honey, Lemon and Ginger are Your Friends!
Finally, this is a tip for if your throat is feeling sore, irritated or you are unwell. I do advice that you don’t sing with a sore throat, but if you are ill, having honey and lemon in hot water is amazing for your vocal cords.
Ginger in warm water or ginger beer is
incredible and really helps your voice.
I once lost my voice before a festival, I thought I’d have to cancel, I drank a can of ginger beer and my voice was sounding absolutely fine, a bit croaky but okay! These warm drinks also help if you aren’t singing, make sure you drink them and they’ll help your voice feel better.
Summary:
- 1. What are the Secrets to Sounding Great?
- 2. How Do You Achieve Healthy Vocals?
- 3. What Relaxing Does to Your Voice
- 4. What Ideas Can You Use to Train Your Vocals?
- 5. Honey, Lemon and Ginger are Your Friends!
Thank you so much for reading! I hope these tips help your vocals and comment below if you found any of them useful!
Article by: Carley Varley
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