Kate'sVoice

Not too long ago, someone called me asking for help with his voice.  He wanted to sound like Rod Stewart.  Without batting an eye, I said, “You don’t need a lesson.  Just yell a lot, smoke a couple packs a day and don’t get any sleep.”  He thanked me and hung up.  How about that?  I actually like Rod Stewart, but I wouldn’t want to sound like him, and I don’t usually coach people to ruin their voices.  However, I believe that a person has the right to sound the way they want to sound.  So, with that in mind, here is a list of ten things you can do to ruin your voice, or make it sound like someone who has ruined their voice, however you see it. (By the way, if you DON’T want to ruin your voice, take this as a list of things NOT to do!)

1. Smoke. Smoking does terrible things to your voice and your body.  It’s certain that it will make your voice less flexible, dry and crackly, lower than it used to be, and may even cause laryngeal cancer, in which case your voice will be eliminated.  Perfect!
2. Scream. My kids used to assure me that there were secrets that their favorite “Screamo” artists used to keep their voices completely healthy in spite of screaming every night on stage.  If you know any of these secrets, please let me know, because screaming is still high on my list of guaranteed voice wreckers.
3. Avoid drinking water. Since water is the lubrication for your vocal folds, without it you will need to clear your throat all the time, which will irritate the cords and make them more likely to become red and puffy, which may eventually lead to nodules or other permanent damage.
4. Pitch your voice as low as you can get it and force the sound out.  To help you with this, there are several websites that promote a sexy low voice, so you can even get some help from someone who is not a vocal practitioner
5. Get help with your voice from someone who is not a vocal practitioner.
6. And if you use one of those on-line solutions, ignore the notice that says you may hurt yourself doing this!
7. Push that sound out until it hurts. Don’t take breaks when your voice starts to feel tired. Instead, push it to the limit and then more.  As we say in the voice world, “no pain, no strain.”
8. Eat a big meal just before going to sleep. Acid reflux is one of the best ways to destroy an otherwise healthy voice, and if you do this night after night,  you may even develop esophageal cancer.
9. Attend parties and try to speak over all the noise.  You cannot produce a sound you cannot hear, so you are sure to strain your voice trying to speak loud enough to hear yourself.
10. The next time you get laryngitis, go to the doctor and get some steroids.  Then continue to speak as though there were nothing wrong.  In fact go out and sing karaoke, and impress all your friends with your low sexy sound.  A few days of this, and you may ruin your voice for a good several months, or even permanently!!

If you have more suggestions, I’d love to hear them.  What’s going on with your voice?

You are just about to make your point, bringing your dynamic and well-prepared speech to its exciting climax, when you open your mouth to speak and hear a horrible croak instead of your usual voice.  Frustrated, you clear your throat, and try again, but you sound like you are speaking underwater this time!  Again you clear your throat, loudly and aggressively.  Now, your voice is more clear, but you can still feel the crud rolling around in there, and sure enough, a few words later, there it is again.  Croak!  Someone from the audience rushes up with a glass of water. You guzzle it down in relief,  but you know the moment has passed.  The audience is now feeling a bit sorry for you…not what you had intended at all!

Well, it happens.  In other articles, we have talked about how to keep your voice healthy, how to deal with laryngitis and acid reflux, but there are minor issues that come up that cause problems that are NOT long-lasting.  Here are 3 things you can do , on the spot, to get rid of a frog in the throat, and also to deal with a couple of other vocal horrors: the “tickle,” and “the tremor.”

1. If your voice croaks like a frog:  Immediately, stop, lift up your hand to tell your audience “just a minute”, turn away from the mic, and create a little compression in your throat (like the beginning of clearing your throat, but without all the noise.) It’s a little graveley sound you want to create, and you can do this very quietly two or three times.  If it doesn’t clear up, stop, let the audience know you need a minute, and drink several large sips of water.  Wait another few seconds, use that little compression sound to clear your cords, and speak.  If you still get some croaking, drink some more water.  In fact, over the next few minutes drink the entire glass by sipping between ideas. Water thins out the mucous and creates a nice lubrication usually eliminating the globs that are causing the problem.
2. If your voice shakes : Sometimes your voice is unsteady because of nerves.  If you suspect this is the case for you, stop,  and take a breath.  Calm yourself down with low, expansive breathing.  Then speak again.  For some, starting each talk with a resounding, confident “Hello!” may be the cure for a shaky voice.  It gets the air moving, which is what you really need.  For more tips on handling nervousness, please read this post by Sandra Zimmer on Six Minutes.
3. If you get a tickle: Your first  response is probably to take a sip of water, which may work just fine.  But the tickle is in the larynx, usually, not the esophagus, so if the tickle doesn’t go away, a slight cough can help to clear the larynx of phlegm.  A tickle may also be caused by dry air on the vocal folds.  In this case, breathing in through the nose will help warm and moisten the air; take a low breath, letting the abdominal muscles expand and your throat relax.  Then be sure to actively use the air in the sound when you speak.

While there are potentially many aspects of a presentation that can take away from your presentation if not addressed (please read Joan Curtis’ Blog post on Communication Culprits), there is no doubt that a voice malfunction can make you feel embarrassed and uncomfortable.  Don’t let it.  Learn these tricks for dealing with it physically because sooner or later, you will need this information.  But when it happens,  know that it’s just part of the deal.  Your voice is your greatest asset as a speaker or singer, but it is part of your body and it has its good days and its bad days, just like your hair.

What other vocal issues come up for you as a speaker? Write a comment about it and let’s see what we can do to solve it or give you a quick remedy.  And if you stump me, I’ll do the research and get back to you.  I look forward to hearing from you!

Update:  Great recent post on another problem for speakers: stuttering.  Please read  Eloquent Woman

When I lose my voice, I try to remember this. “Your voice is not lost, it is just a little more quiet so that you can hear yourself think, hear the wisdom of God, and be inspired by others’ ideas. Use laryngitis wisely!”

To find your voice today,
1. Drink plenty of warm liquids… that soothe your soul.
2. Write notes instead of talking…particularly if they are consoling to the discouraged, and uplifting to all. If you have nothing positive to say, say nothing. Just listen.
3. Rest your voice.  Don’t fight it and try to speak anyway!!! If all goes as planned, you will need your voice  to be healthy and strong so you can express all the amazing things that are trickling up through the silence.

It’s Monday, time for Monday Night Football.  Fans will be screaming in the stands and in the living room.  Some will end the day without a voice.  Most people don’t give laryngitis much thought, treating it  much as they would a runny nose or a cut on the finger, thinking it will get better.  However, the voice is more fragile than one would think, and even one bad scream can cause permanent damage.  Screaming is considered to be vocal abuse, not just misuse.  In most people, the small muscles of the vocal folds cannot sustain much abuse and laryngitis is an indication that you went too far!!

So if you go too far with that screaming, be sure to get some vocal rest.  Be quiet, drink warm liquids instead of cold, and write notes to people instead of talking.  Give yourself a couple of days to recover.

Note on SCREAMING as SINGING:  My children used to try to convince me that “screamers” in rock music could scream without hurting their voices.  Basically, this is completely false.  There is no way to have a strong, flexible,  healthy voice if you scream all the time unless you are a vocal freak…and there are some of those around too.  On the other hand, if you like the raspy sound, scream a lot, smoke at least a pack a day, and if your voice gets tired, rock on.

Years ago, I was performing a role in a show when I came down with a bad case of laryngitis.  I did not have a cold, and it wasn’t clear to me how I had contracted laryngitis, but there was no doubt that my voice was gone.  Since the show needed to go on and I didn’t have an understudy, I did what any good singer would;  I went to see a laryngologist who gave me steroids.  The steroids cleared up most of the symptoms and I finished the run that weekend as if there had been no problem with my voice…mostly!

On the Monday following the show’s closing, I woke up to find that the laryngitis was back even worse than before.  I absolutely had no voice for days.  Subsequently, I learned that this can happen with the use of steroids because they don’t actually cure the problem.  They mask it.  I wasn’t too upset however because I needed the rest, but when two weeks went by without any significant improvement, it was time to return to the laryngologist.  After looking at my vocal folds with a laryngoscope he told me that it looked like I had been singing in a smoke-filled bar for hours each night! I needed extreme vocal rest. Since I had NOT been singing in a bar at all, or anywhere else for two weeks, he suggested that it must be allergies and prescribed an antihistamine along with the rest.  Eventually, the laryngitis went away, but it was still another few weeks before I was completely healed.

Looking back, it is clear to me that allergies were probably an important part of the picture, but I also know that I was going through a difficult personal time as well.  If I lost my voice today, I might ask different questions of the situation than I did at the time. Instead of running straight to the doctor, I might stop a moment to ask myself first what I needed to say that I was having difficulty saying.  I might ask myself something like “If you could find your voice, how and where would you find it? And if you could say anything you wanted to say without being worried about what someone else would think, what would you say?”

The part of ourselves we call our “voice” is more than muscles and sound.  It is how we express ourself in the world.   In fact, it is fascinating to know that our phsyical voice creates an image on an oscilloscope as unique as a fingerprint.  Your “voice” is a representation of the unique person you are.  It is a metaphor for your personality and ideas. In writing a blog or a book, your opinion is still your “voice.”  You can still “speak” in an e-mail.  You have a “voice” even when it is inaudible.  Therefore, when we can’t speak physically, it might be useful to look at the deeper issue of blocks to our personal expression for the underliying answer to the issue.