One of the first questions I ask a voice student is, “What is the first thing you do in order to sing a note?” The answers range from, “Breathe from my diaphragm” to “Stand up straight” and open my mouth.” But I think that I’ve heard the right answer only once. The first thing a singer must do is to hear the note. Remember my second rule…you can find it in the sidebar. “It is always simpler than it seems.”

This is not exclusive to singers. This first thing you do pertains to any and every musician. Before you make a sound, you have to hear the sound you are about to create. This is a mental tool that is valuable in conceptualizing that which you are attempting to create. But the importance of hearing brings me to my subject.

Have you ever performed or attended a concert and experienced ringing ears afterwards? You leave the venue, get on a plane or go to your room and the ringing is more than annoying. You feel as if it will never stop. So you turn off the TV, shut off the iPod, anything to hear only silence. But the quieter it is, the more pronounced the ringing becomes. It is time to heal your hearing.

First, here is the fast lane explanation of how your ear works. Sound waves enter the ear canal, striking the ear drum, setting into vibration the attached stirrup which passes the vibrations along to a bone-like structure called the anvil after which the vibrations are processed by thousands of little hairs, each attached to a nerve which tells the brain what to think of it all. When the sound pressure is too high, those little hairs call it quits and your brain gets less information. So what do you do? You turn it up, of course. Causing more of the little hairs to take a powder, so you…turn it up!

Now, those little hairs are frequency specific and if the sound pressure level stays elevated long enough, they will lay down and stay down…forever. That’s why drummers often lose hearing in the high frequency range. Good god, hitting a snare drum all night long is worse than passing out targets at the firing range.

Alright, that’s the problem, now what is the cure? Don’t ask me, I’m no doctor. I guess that the ultimate solution would be to stop making all that racket and stop going places where they are making a racket. But you gotta work. You know how to rock and roll. Here is something that might help you to rock and hear.

Let’s get a little anthropomorphic here and think of all those little hairs as tsunami survivors. Once the racket stops, they are all clinging to each other in fear of the next wave. After the initial look around for survivors, they start to talk to each other. “Did you hear that shit?” “Yeah man, it was LOUD!” “Boy, it sure is quiet now.’ ” Yeah, I wonder what’s next.” Did you hear anything?” “No, you?” “Anybody seen Bob?” “He’s down for the count.” and so on. Now, these little guys are tiny and they have little tiny voices. But when enough of them start calling out to each other, we hear it as a ringing in the ears.

Having taught in the classroom, I can tell you that the best way to get the attention of a noisy class is to speak quietly. Standing in silence just makes you a target for paper airplanes. But a whisper will always get the attention of a crowd. So here is how I get the little guys in my inner ear to shut up and go back to work.

Put on a pair of good quality headphones. Now play a string quartet or maybe the Bach Unaccompanied Cello Sonatas. And turn the volume down to the point where you have to struggle to hear the music. Very low. Inside your ear, the little hairs’ conversation starts to dwindle and finally die down. When the music hits the inner ear, you can imagine them saying to each other, “Did you hear something?” “Shh! What was that?” “I think it’s a violin.” Shut up man, It sounds nice.” “Hey, let go of me, I can stand up on my own.” “Will you guys shut up already, I want to hear this.”

And soon, the little hairs stop talking and are back up and dancing. When you make them seek out something to do, something to hear, they work very efficiently. The ringing will go away, and you can finally get some much needed rest. Try it. A little classical music never hurt anybody and your ears will be full of happy little hairs for years to come.

Heal your hearing.

First things first. Before jumping into a series of vocal exercises that could easily harm more than help a singer experiencing fatigue, it is important to root out the cause of the problem. Again, keep in mind that every singer is different, with a unique instrument, and with a unique set of demands to be made on that instrument. Applying the generalized principles of “correct” vocal production can result in more problems than solutions.

Rather than write a boring litany of all the possible cause and effect formulae, let me illustrate by creating a hypothetical scenario. Sven the Viking is the lead singer of a metal band specializing in “Nordic Pillage Rock.” Sven’s band is preparing for a six month world tour and although he is gifted with massive physical presence, the stentorian tone which is his trademark is losing torque with every rehearsal. He wants two things. 1. The strength to sing a show without losing his voice, and 2. the prospect of beginning every show from square one rather then with vocal fatigue held over from the previous show.

Lets summarize what is before us:

Sven is a screamer…If we change that, his fans will pelt him with bottles.
Sven smokes…good luck changing that one, Sven just got out of drug/booze rehab and is clinging to his last known vice.
Sven is a hard worker and has reached his level of success by storming through whatever obstacles were in his path.
Sven has reached the point of saying, “It can’t get any worse, I’ll try anything.” He is receptive to my suggestions and “believes” that what I say will help him.

We start by listening, and watching Sven sing a song. Sven has no problem with support. But as I look at his upper chest and neck, I can see the muscles working overtime. Sven is trying to squeeze 10 pounds of sound through a 5 pound opening. He sings with his chin up and opens his mouth wide by raising his head. All wrong! But the sound and delivery are exactly the same as on Sven’s records.

Simply put, we need to find the range where Sven’s voice is most relaxed. I start by having Sven lay on his back. Now his head is in the proper posture for singing. (For a full explanation of this, see my entry Vocal Architecture.)

I have Sven hoot like an owl, very lightly and in his falsetto, or head voice. I find that there are 5 or 6 notes that he can “hoot” so we exercise just those notes, first by singing “Hoooo” in a light breathy tone as if blowing across a bottle. Remember, the idea is not to make a great sound, but to get the vocal machinery operating in its most relaxed state. I’m looking for free and easy vibration without the tension present when Sven does his act.

Next, I use the syllable “Voo” and exercise the same notes. I start with the “Hoo” in order to begin the tone with air. This allows the vocal cords to engage in a non-violent way with a minimum of tension applied by the surrounding muscles. (See my essay on this principle here) Using the “Voo” brings the initiation of the tone, forward as the lips form the “Vee” consonant, also allowing the tone to ride on a column of air. Repetition of these relaxed exercises will manipulate the mechanism and allow the vocal cords to vibrate freely thereby providing much needed therapy much as an athlete would have sore muscles worked on by a physiotherapist.

After the upper register feels free, I look for the most relaxed range of the lower voice. This is usually in the normal speaking range. The same principles apply, find the easiest notes and exercise them by beginning the tone on a column of air. The “oo” vowel is very helpful because when produced properly, it is not a loud vowel. I ask Sven to sing “Hoo” and “Voo” as if he were imitating very low level feedback.

Depending on the individual, various other vowel sounds are brought into the exercise regimen. Normally, “oo” and “oh” feel the most relaxed while the open “ah” will tend to expose problem areas. I will move through the vowels from “oo” to “ah” with an effort to letting the “ah” vowel be influenced by the habits of free vibration being learned from the “oo.”

This would be the very beginning. If Sven were not able to see me every day, I would record a regimen of exercises as he sings them and hope that he repeats these at least once a day. Progress is absolutely inevitable, IF the work is done. When Sven goes on tour, he will find that he is still screaming his guts out, his fans are loving it, and by sticking to a regimen of daily vocalization, his vocal mechanism will be able to survive.

Of course this scenario doesn’t represent the way it’s supposed to be according to every teacher I’ve learned from over the years. But what does Sven care about “Bel Canto” technique? Sven lives in the real world and only a real world approach will get him to the end of the tour.

So…to continue a discussion of vocal fatigue. There is a good possibility that I may go off on a bit of a rant but I’ll try to stay on point long enough to give some advice on conquering fatigue and rehabilitating the vocal mechanism. I find it important, however, to take a quick left turn and provide some background for my method.

I spend a lot of time in my lessons discussing what I call “vocal mechanics.” The human voice is produced by a machine made up of levers, tubes, reservoirs, intake manifolds, exhaust systems, tone generators, resonators, springs…Jesus, it sounds complicated, doesn’t it? The truth is, yes, it is extremely complicated. The good news is that most of these systems operate involuntarily and with utmost efficiency with every beat of your heart.

Singing can be a very simple process, and I try to keep technique as simple it can be. But vocal fatigue is a symptom of one or more of the many components of the mechanism being operated in a manner that causes other components to be overworked. At that point it becomes important to carefully analyze the singer’s technique with a mechanic’s eye toward detail and efficiency of operation.

Most singers suffering from fatigue experience discomfort or pain in the throat, hoarseness and inflexibility in the upper register. This indicates that the vocal cords are being misused. Now, try to move your vocal cords. Go ahead, move just the left one, now move the right one. Can’t do it, can you? So how can you expect to correct the abuse of the vocal cords without ascertaining precisely which component of the mechanism is not doing its job and causing the vocal cords to work overtime?

The vocal cords, or “vocal folds” as they are sometimes called, can more precisely be described as a valve. This valve’s primary function is to act as the last line of defense in protecting the breathing mechanism from foreign objects. When you swallow, the epiglottis closes over the airway to cap the opening. Below this cap, the vocal cords close across the airway just in case anything gets past the epiglottis. The vocal cords, or “valve” is closed when swallowing. Hum. Now try to swallow while humming. Impossible.

The function of the vocal cords as the “tone generator” of the vocal mechanism is secondary to survival, but primary for communication. It’s the architecture of the human mouth with it’s ability to form words that separates humans from the non-speaking species. The process by which tone is produced by the vocal cords is discussed in detail in my post from May, 2006 entitled, “Bernoulli, Doppler and Natural Vibrato’” found in the archives.

To illustrate how the abuse of the cords results in fatigue, hold your hands in a praying position with palms flat and together. Pull your hands three inches apart and put them together again twice per second lightly, so they just touch. Repeat this for the length of a short song…say, two minutes. This is a simulation of the action of the vocal cords when singing. Now repeat the process, only this time clap your hands firmly together, again, twice per second. Do this for two minutes. How do your hands feel? They hurt, don’t they? If you put your palm against your face, you’ll feel how hot they have become. This is precisely what happens to the vocal cords when you scream, yell or sing with crap technique. And as small and delicate as the vocal cords are, it’s no surprise at all that an ounce of abuse can require a pound of rehabilitation.

If you slap your hands together for an extended period, callouses will form at the points of most violent contact. When these irregularities form on the leading edge of the vocal cords, the surface of the cords are not able to come to a complete closure and some air flows through the opening(glottis). The resultant tone is breathy or hoarse, and there is a build up of heat and pain from slapping the cords together. Voila…Vocal Fatigue.

Okay, so I took a wide left, but let me get back on the road and suggest the first step in alleviating vocal fatigue. Step one? Stop talking! Don’t say another word. When you speak with a worn out voice, you just aggravate the cords. Step two, if you can afford to, don’t sing. It hurts and you sound like shit anyway, so just stop it. You’re doing something wrong and until you discover what that is, you’ll just continue to cause damage. Usually the fault lies in two areas. These are Breathing and Support, and Vocal Architecture, also covered in the archives. Step three, deep breathing exercises. There is no short cut. It all starts with breathing and it doesn’t have to be complicated.

In a future post, I will go into more detail as to the exercises that may be helpful in rehabilitating abused vocal cords. In the meantime, If you suffer from vocal fatigue, SHUT UP, DON’T SING, and BREATH DEEP.