Have you ever met up with a friend in a busy cafe, and then afterwards found your voice to feel weakened? What about feeling as though you didn’t have your usual control of your vocal agility after having a cup of coffee? What many vocalists forget to realise is that the activities we engage in in everyday life can dramatically affect our vocal performance. You have most likely heard little antidotes such as “don’t eat chocolate before singing” and “don’t smoke”, but there is so much more to consider for your voice to achieve its maximum potential on a daily basis. This is what we call vocal hygiene. The term “vocal hygiene” describes the habits that affect the performance and longevity of our voice. This can include influences from external activities to food/drink consumption. Good vocal hygiene forms the very basis of successful vocal ability, and it is something that every performer needs to be mindful of.
But why exactly is vocal hygiene important? Vocal hygiene is a powerful step towards protecting and preserving the tone, stamina and flexibility of your voice. And a crucial point that I should make it that while mindfulness towards vocal hygiene is essential for performers, it is a practice that everyone should engage in. Unfortunately, professions including teaching and public speaking are also careers that are susceptible to poor vocal quality and vocal pathology. Learning how to take care of your voice, an individual instrument that you use every single day, is not an important lesson that you are taught outside of music class. Luckily, there are some easy methods that can be implemented in your everyday routine that can dramatically change the quality of your voice.
What exactly contributes to good or bad vocal hygiene? There are a few aspects in everyday life that can have positive and negative influences on your vocal hygiene. These categories include hydration, rest, breathing, vocal production and overuse, food/drink consumption, physical health and environmental factors. Let’s dissect these categories further:
Hydration
It is recommended that (just for living, to be honest) you should drink 6-8 glasses of water a day. This is of course dependent on your body weight and activities, but keeping sufficiently hydrated is considered the most important vocal hygiene regimen. Hydration is responsible for protecting and keeping your vocal folds lubricated. The best part is that there are so many ways to hydrate. Some of my favourite ways to keep hydrated is eat melons, humidify (we’ll talk more about steaming soon) and carry around my trusty Corkcicle 750ml water bottle. Just before vocalisation, it’s important to drink room temperature water to prevent shocking your vocal mechanism (and potentially undoing any warming up you had previously performed). Another important tip that I always tell my students is to drink 2 glasses of water just before bed. Yes, I understand that getting up to pee during the night is the most annoying thing ever, but did you know that it actually takes several hours for your vocal folds to hydrate after that initial sip of water? By drinking water just before bed, you can guarantee that you will wake up a little more refreshed than usual.
Rest
Yes, I know, this is starting to sound like an article called “steps to the healthiest you” or something, but I believe that how your body feels greatly affects your voice. As someone who has to be overly disciplined to get the correct amount of sleep, I know that the usual advice of 8 hours of sleep can be hard to achieve. But your voice is reliant on your body being rested and refreshed, and this time gives your voice the chance to reset. My tip for you is to establish a bedtime and morning routine, where you can take some time to unwind, do a cool-down vocal routine and snuggle in for sweet dreams and adequate vocal rest.
Breathing
Having proper breath etiquette helps us not only practice proper air support, but it also gives us the opportunity to practice good vocal hygiene. By practicing the deep breathing we experience through singing in daily conversation, we can guarantee support in our vocalisation (this also helps with memorising how we are supposed to breathe in singing). Something else to help with breathing: a widely known fact about me among my friends is that I am ALWAYS COLD. And something that helps my breathing hygiene when I am in a cold environment (which for me feels like all the time) is to breathe through my nose! I find that this helps with warming up my breath before it reaches my vocal mechanism, therefore keeps my voice warm.
Vocal Production and Overuse
Everyday, it is easy to get excited or passionate and overextend our voice. It is easy to overuse or voice without realising, which is why we need to constantly check in with how our voice is feeling. Some of my biggest tips include the following:
- Speak in your perfect pitch. For me, I tend to naturally manipulate my pitch to be lower (which is ironic for a soprano) and I speak with a low, monotone expression. After truly examining my voice and after research, I found that my optimal speaking level needed to be a bit higher. This immediately took stress off of my voice and took away the usual fatigue I felt at the end of a speaking heavy day.
- Avoid loud use of your voice. This includes yelling, screaming or just generally using your voice in a much louder volume than usual. Doing this for longer than needed can cause swelling of the folds and change the way your voice sounds, including gravel and raspiness.
- And also avoid the complete opposite: whispering. You know that lubrication we talked about in “hydration”? Through whispering, you can actually dry out this lubricant, causing potential tension within the vocal mechanism and supporting systems.
- To avoid overuse from either singing or speaking, it is important to give yourself small vocal breaks. I would recommend at least 5 minutes of vocal rest is needed for every hour of excessive vocalisation.
- Another element of overuse is through the acts of coughing and throat clearing as these can not only cause fatigue, stress and pathologies to your voice/throat, but they can also become habitual and then the cycle will never end!
Food and Drink Consumption
There is plenty of food that promotes good vocal hygiene, but unfortunately plenty more that contribute to poor vocal health.
For positive vocal health, fruity hard lollies (candies) and gelatinous lollies can be used to moisturise the vocal folds. Crackers and apples are fantastic for stimulating saliva glands. Warm brothers are also fabulous as an alternative for water when it comes to hydration.
Now, what about the foods and drinks that promote not-so-good vocal hygiene. Well, the first perpetrators to look at are alcohol and caffeine. These two drink categories are notorious for drying out the fold tissue lining. They also contribute to reflux due to their acidity (reflux can also relate to how late you eat something. Another tip: if you eat late, always try to sleep upright to reduce any gastric reflux from affecting your vocal mechanism). Dairy is another culprit that can produce excessive phlegm, leading to the limiting use to excessive air pressure when performing. Some foods to avoid? Spicy, greasy and salty meals due to their drying properties.
And for all things that are good, stay away from lollies with menthol!
Physical Health
I am not the only one that believes that vocal health is dependant on physical health. This not only applies to multidisciplinary performers, like in music theatre, but also to vocalists in general. Our body greatly affects our ability to sing, and our physical stamina can affect our vocal stamina. Staying fit and treating our body in a positive, healthy manner can be a fantastic foundation for positive vocal hygiene. Voice teacher Andrew Byrne is big on the athletic vocalist. To check out more of this work, visit andrewmbyrne.com.
As always, there is a limitation with this, and our limitation here lies in weightlifting. While strength training has so many benefits for physical health, we do find a complication for vocalists. When we weightlift, it can be common to tense our upper body and put additional stress on the vocal mechanism and supporting areas! When training, it is always handy to work to with fitness specialist who may be able to help you come up with alternatives that tuition your body and physical goals.
Environment Factors and Activities
How we live our life and what we engage in is important when calculating the status of our vocal hygiene. If our careers revolve around vocalising, we need to take essential breaks for our voices to reset, and we need to vocalise in a way that isn’t fatiguing and damaging. If we work in loud places, such as busy cafes or restaurants or workplaces that play loud music, we will often engage in what is called noise inflation. This is where we will vocalise louder than usual, above the volume of the environment around us. Based on what we talked about in “vocal production and overuse”, we know that overuse of the voice can lead to vocal pathologies.
Another important factor that I would like to mention is a particular activity that is a big no-no: smoking. We are told of the effects of smoking constantly, so I won’t repeat what lots of people are saying. However, smoking anything (including vaping) can also be a pivotal reason for respiratory problems as well as directly disturbing the vocal folds. This also includes second hand smoking, or being in a smoky environment.
How You Can Improve Your Vocal Hygiene
I feel that the best way to get your start towards optimal vocal hygiene is by logging your current habits and analysing any correlations between your habits and your vocal stamina and ability. Looking your current vocal habits is fantastic for:
- Making you aware of vocal habits that may be affecting your vocal hygiene
- Providing to your teacher or ENT/laryngeal specialist to conclude causes for any potential issues
- Record progress and provide skills in self and vocal awareness
To help you get started, we have made a template for you to use to record your daily vocal habits. It is my recommendation that you print or use multiple copies of this chart over a few weeks/month to really get an understanding of your habits. From using this chart with some of my students, I have found that it has been a fantastic source of documentation as they have developed their own unique vocal routine for maximum vocal hygiene and experience.
