Wow, this is the first article I've found that's worthy of cross-posting here on my health care blog and on my theatre blogs!
The New York Eye and Ear Infirmary (quite a well-known facility as these things go) actually has a Center for Voice and Swallowing. I did not know that. The Center has a new Director, and he has released 10 Tips for Singers.
Some of them are absolutely common sense, but nicely augmented with the actual medical reasons for the common sense approach. (Things like drinking a lot of water, not smoking, getting good sleep.)
There's one great piece of advice that most people don't include in such lists: "Develop a speaking voice to go with your singing voice." Yes, it's true. Often people sing perfectly healthily, but speak very lazily and end up straining their voices that way. I've always felt that singing should sound like an extension of your speaking voice. But if you're speaking like Jim Nabors, then perhaps it's that your speaking voice should be an extension of your singing voice!
I actually did disagree on a couple of the tidbits, if you want to read on...
It's not so much that I disagree outright, actually; it's that I think the advice should have been more carefully worded:
Item #1:
Advice given: Warm up your voice regularly. (Followed by examples of various vocal exercises.
My fine tuning: I would say that if you are singing at the end of the day, and you have been speaking normally throughout the day, then your voice is, pretty much, already warmed up. You can over-sing in warm-ups. I wold often do some quick warm-ups to go higher and lower than the general range of my speaking voice...just as a sanity check more than anything else...and leave it at that. Morning is a different matter. But if you're speaking and singing healthily a day's worth of conversation should have made you pretty "warm."
Item #2:
Advice given: Most importantly, listen to your voice. Like any athlete, you will be the first to know when trouble is starting. If you voice hurts, back off.
My fine tuning: I think the use of the word "listen" may not be meant literally, but in the context of singing will be taken literally. And often listening to oneself is the quickest way to start singing unnaturally and unattractively. Rather one should begin to feel your voice...you should be able to feel that you are singing properly (mostly defined by not actually feeling much of anything.) Your physical memory of how your mouth, tongue etc are placed when singing well, your physical memory of the vibrations and where you "feel" the placement of your voice...these physical memories should serve you well, so you can stop listening to yourself. I find that most singers who listen to closely to themselves start placing the voice further and further back in their throat. Why? Because then it's reverberating around in their skull and sounds really full and rich to them. Conversely the more they place the voice forward and project their voice outwards, the funnier it sounds to them. It's hard to get used to, but it makes a big difference.
So, it may seem off-topic for a health care blog, but I couldn't resist the urge to see my blogging worlds collide!
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