Musician’s Notebook

The vocal folds are, of course, not located in the esophagus, so drinking water might hydrate the body, hence distributed to the various organs, but simply drinking won’t lubricate them as well. In order to lubricate the vocal folds, one needs to perform steaming.

Steaming is an easy practice to carry out. Boil a kettle of water, pour some in a bowl and, after placing a towel over your head and covering the outer edges of the bowl to prevent steam dissipation, simply breathe through the mouth for five or ten minutes.

Afterwards, restraint and discipline is required. Shut up. Seriously, for thirty minutes, don’t speak, and definitely do not whisper. You’ll also need to stay inside for that thirty minutes. If it’s cold outside, wait an hour. Breathing cold air will undo all the steaming. And, before singing, warm up properly. If you spend all that time with your face in a bowl of steaming water, you don’t want to jeopardize all the benefits!

Some people recommend adding eucalyptus oil to the bowl. I suggest that if you do this at all, you only add a drop, because the fumes of the stuff can do more harm than good. If you’ve ever had a sniff of the pure oil, you’ll know what I mean. It’s rough stuff.

Do you like to take a nap in the afternoon before a performance? Most vocalists do, but what they often think is that napping resets the vocal muscles. This leads many a vocalist to avoid warming up during the day because they think it’ll be useless if they sleep.

Fortunately for singers, warming up is more about the connection between your mind and your throat - reminding your mind where certain pitches are. Only a very small fraction of it is warming up the muscles themselves. Essentially, warming up is for reminding your mind where the ‘keys’ on your voice are.

This means you can do you full warm up earlier in the day, and then recap with a ten or fifteen minute warm up after your nap. Now you can save a good hour of time before your show!

I’ve met many singers who have trouble maintaining a clear voice. A major problem is that a lot of amateur singers like to study technique and practice scales but only a few really learn to take care of their instrument. If you leave the same set of strings on a guitar for a few years (if you can manage not to snap them in that space of time), the tone is going to be lifeless. Likewise, if you don’t care for your voice, it’s going to sound bad. Really bad.

The most important thing you can do is drink water, and plenty of it. It lubricates the vocal folds and gives that clear sound. It doesn’t take much water to do this, but if you don’t drink enough your body is going to allocate all that water to other areas that need it more (you know, the digestive system and boring stuff like that). If you’re drinking enough, your vocal cords will be happy and your voice will be clear.

How do you know you’re drinking enough? Doctors like to say we need 8 glasses a day, but each body is unique in its water management. One talented vocal teacher once told me that if your pee is clear, you’ve drunk enough water to make sure your voice is clear too.

It’s crude, but it sure works.

Singing, vocals, singing tips, singers, vocalists