Below are a few things you can do to help prevent voice problems from developing. These tips are not meant to make you paranoid or to substitute for the advice of a medical professional. If you are concerned AT ALL about your vocal health see your GP or ask me for a list of singer friendly voice clinics in your area.

General health and lifestyle
Look after your general health, try to regulate your sleeping, take regular exercise and be aware of your psychological condition. All these things will massively affect your voice. Yoga, Tai Chi, Pilates, Alexander Technique are all great for singers to improve emotional balance, general health, fitness, posture and relaxation.

Environment
Check your environment. Try to maintain a warm & hydrated environment where possible; avoid extremes of temperature (e.g saunas), dusty, fumey or smoky environments. If you smoke try to cut down or stop.

Food and drink
Eat well (avoid over eating, fatty or highly spiced foods and late night eating) and drink plenty of water (sip approx. 2 litres of room temperature water a day). Alcohol and drug use can of course adversely affect your singing.

Warm up and cool down your voice
Warm up and cool down your voice before and after singing, this doesn't take long and we’ll go through these exercises in the lessons.
(Warming up exercises are necessarily different from working out exercises).

Steam your voice
Use the steam room at your local gym or just a bowl of hot water and a towel over your head. Steaming is great for all voice users and particularly good if you have a sore throat or cold.

Use good vocal technique throughout your day for speaking and singing
We will go through these techniques in the lessons but the most important of all is good posture (neck/back alignment) and retraction (open throat).

Clear tone
When singing keep a check on your clear tone. Ensure it's not constricted, strained sounding or excessively breathy. If you generally sing with distortion it’s my preference that you also practise vocal exercises with clear tone to stay aware of your vocal health.

Avoid vocal abuse
Avoid vocal abuse; coughing/throat clearing, try to sip water instead (if coughing is persistant go and see your GP), whispering, extended voice use against a noise or without rest, yelling without technique, constricted or excessively breathy tone, keep breathy singing quiet (volume 1 or 2/10).

Vocal Rest
Balance time of talk or singing with time of rest. Rest means silence or speaking in a quiet but clear speaking voice, just when you have to (don't whisper). This is even more important if you have a throat infection or laryngitis. Take care of illnesses.

Rehearsing and gigging
Ensure your audio monitoring/amplification is good both in rehearsals and at gigs so that you are not straining your voice. Keep a check on your volume and effort levels. In ear monitoring may be helpful for you. You may well need to re-work songs for live singing, in terms of key, quality choices. What sounds fantastic in the studio isn't always sustainable night after night on tour.

Most importantly……

Get to know your own voice

As a singer you must know your voice, what works and what doesn't work for you. You must take responsibility for your voice use.

Irrelevant of style or sound singing should always feel pretty nice. If you're voice feels sore, tickley, like you want to cough or swallow STOP singing and re-assess your technique, you are doing something wrong or you may have a vocal health issue that needs checking out.

‘……ANY change in voice quality (hoarseness, roughness, and breathiness), any pain or discomfort that develops during speaking or singing, and any vocal fatigue, (where the voice tires and fades), that fails to resolve after two weeks should be reported to your GP and investigated……’ Sara Harris (quote from british-voice-association.com)

Please ask me for a list of singer-friendly voice clinics which can be assessed privately or through your GP.

Your voice is unique and irreplaceable, look after it!