Healthy Speech Can Improve Your Singing
How you speak can directly affect how you sing. By taking good care of your voice when speaking,
you are improving your vocal health. Try making your speaking habits more healthy by: When you’re at parties, clubs, or sporting events and want to be heard, speak at full volume without screaming. If you tend to speak loudly all the time, turn down the volume. Noticing the articulation as you speak to prevent tension – not speaking with tension, such as jaw tension or tongue tension. When talking on the telephone, apply your knowledge of breathing. Don’t talk so long that your voice hurts from lack of breath support.
Maintain a Healthy Weight
Though it might not be an issue for you, being too lean can cause problems regarding stamina when singing and trying to sustain higher pitches. To improve your stamina, make sure you’re giving your body the nourishment it needs. There are singers that don’t eat until late in the day, but the body needs nourishment to get started. Try to find a routine that enables you to get food in your body early in the day, so you aren’t snacking well into the night when your body finally feels hungry.
Keeping yourself hydrated
Your body is 50% to 65% water. The lungs need water to keep tissues moving easily. Muscle tissue is made up of 75% water. Therefore, keeping your body properly hydrated helps your singing voice.
Many people find water to be boring to drink. However, other liquids can help you balance your hydration levels as long as you remember that sugar content in drinks won’t you’re your waistline and caffeine in beverages can dry you out. Because caffeine is diuretic, which means that it makes your body get rid of water, you can’t rely on that morning cup of coffee to keep your voice in good working order.
Get Plenty of Shut-Eye
When you don’t get enough sleep, your throat tissue has no time to heal. Your voice feels sluggish when you are sleep deprived. You want to recoup and regenerate during the night. Try sleeping a little more for several nights and see the difference it makes in your singing.
Making sure you’re well nourished
You should always eat a balanced diet. Following guidelines of basic nutrition means getting a balanced amount of whole grains, fruits and vegetables, meats and dairy products. You should also ensure that your getting the right amounts of fats, protein, and carbohydrates. You may find that singing requires more energy, which means adding more protein to your diet to enhance your body’s ability to sustain you through long rehearsals.
Prevention of Sore Throat or Infection
It can make a big difference if you keep just a few simple remedies hand for the times you feel a tickle coming on. One staple that many singers swear by is a bottle of saline nasal spray which is nothing more than water and salt. You can wash out any germs that may be lingering, waiting to make an attack on your immune system by spraying the solution up your nose.
Or try gargling with warm salt water. Adding a few teaspoons of salt to a half cup of warm water and then gargling helps wash away any germs that can lodge in the back of your mouth. Simply mix about a half cup of warm water with a few teaspoons of salt and gargle, washing away germs that are lodged in the back of your mouth. If you have frequent infections around your tonsils, you may find that saltwater is one of your best friends. When you swish the saltwater around in your mouth, you can stop any painful canker sores in their tracks.
I hope you found this vocal health information helpful. To learn to sing like a star and discover more about maintaining the best posssible vocal health, I recommend checking out the Bristow Voice Method from Per Bristow.
