Keeping the voice fit and healthy

Your voice is a powerful tool for public speaking and for singing. A strong, beautiful, and clear voice is an irreplaceable feature of impressing everyone literally from the first words. Those who know how to train your voice can admit that it is a long and difficult way of practicing, but the result is worth going this way.

Not only singers should have a strong good voice. There are several professions: 

• Orator, 
• Announcer/broadcaster, 
• Director, 
• Journalist, 
• Teacher, 
• Singer, 
• Dispatcher, 
• Customer service,
• Receptionist 
• Sales representatives 
• Marketers 

For all this specialties, you need to have a strong clear voice supported by different types of training's.

There are 2 types of trainings available for healthy voice: 

1. Vocal training with a professional teacher and 
2. Home voice trainings. 

How to start training

Find below the most common voice training exercises: 

1. While preparing your voice you will make your organism ready and get used to singing. Singing is the best way to train your voice, even if your work does not include singing.

2. Train the connection of voice and hearing. Try to repeat musical notes from different songs without repeating lyrics.

3. If you have musical instrument, such as guitar or piano, use it for training. That is more effective by trying to copy the sounds with your voice. Use all range of notes for wider diapason.

4. Use a microphone to record your trainings and then to listen them. It will help you to hear your mistakes and to develop hearing skill. You do not need to use super powerful or the latest model of microphone, just use the one included to your phone or computer.

5. Try to join in singing any famous or just well known song. You should learn all the lyrics by heart so not to think what you are singing but to concentrate on how you sing. Compare the recorded result with the original version of a song. Do not be very upset if you will not like it – it is training, not a performance. If you can hear your mistakes, it means you can work on your self-perfection.

6. Use different parts of your vocal apparatus and nasopharynx to make different types of sounds. Try to sing not only with your throat, but also using your diaphragm to help making deeper and stronger sounds.

7. Try to crush your limit. Sometimes everyone who is singing feel that there is something like a threshold preventing of taking higher note so you almost have to scream. The thing is to put strengths in this scream, not desperation.

8. Always find some useful information from outer sources. Use internet, books, or friends’ advices to improve your skills.

9. Train your voice and body just like an athlete: Learn proper singing technique, don’t overuse the voice, get plenty of rest, eat a balanced, healthy diet. Singers are like vocal gymnasts who traverse their artistic range with apparent ease and flexibility. Gymnasts are extremely disciplined people who spend hours perfecting their craft and are much more likely than the general public to sustain an injury. Professional singers carry some of these same risks and must maintain a disciplined practice schedule with intervals of rest and recovery to perform at an optimal level, regardless of genre.

10. Let your voice shine. Attempting to imitate someone else’s voice or singing style can require you to sing or do things outside of your comfortable physiologic range or current vocal skill level. This could result in vocal injury. Also remember that if you are imitating someone who is already famous, their millions have been made. You want to be the next star that they hire, not just a copycat.

11. Pace yourself. When you are preparing for a show or audition season, you must pace yourself and your voice. You would not think of trying to get all of your exercise in at the gym by going one day a week for 5 hours. Rather, you should sing (and exercise) in smaller increments of time (30-45 minutes) each day, gradually building muscular skill and stamina. As you improve, you should be able to increase the amount of time as well as the difficulty of vocal skill.

12. Avoid phonotraumatic behaviors such as yelling, screaming, loud talking, singing too loudly. When you increase your vocal loudness, your vocal folds bang together harder (much like clapping your hands really hard, loud, and fast). After a period of doing this, your vocal folds begin to react to the impact by becoming swollen and red. Long term phonotrauma can lead to vocal fold changes such as vocal fold nodules.

13. Adequate hydration. Be sure to drink plenty of non-caffeinated beverages throughout the day. Although nothing you eat or drink gets onto the vocal folds, adequate oral hydration allows the mucus to act like a lubricant instead of glue.

Besides trainings, you also can improve your voice by eating useful products. There is some food, which can be helpful and some food, which can only bring damage. Below are some healthy foods for your voice: 

• warm water, 
• peach, apricot, olive oil (couple of drops), 
• food that contains protein (meat, fish, eggs etc.), 
• buckwheat porridge, 
• fruits and vegetables, 
• honey, 
• anise, 
• chicken. 

Forbidden products 

alcohol (some singers drink coffee with 50g of cognac before performance, but the effect keeps for 30 min and then throat begins to swell), 

hot and spicy food, 

hot tea or coffee, 

greasy snacks like chips, 

nuts, 

milk and milky products, 

cigarettes. 

Professional singers and orators know how difficult it is to keep the voice strong. They eat a lot and often – about 5-6 times a day. Opera singers know that extra weight helps to make the voice deeper and stronger. It is forbidden to eat 2-3 hours before the performance so not to feel tired, sleepy, or heavy. There is a popular recipe about keeping voice strong – to drink raw eggs. It is popular among those people who wonder how to sing better. This recipe does not help to improve your voice for a long time. Raw egg moistures the vocal cords and make the sound juicier. The most useful part of the egg for vocal cords is yolk.

How to get the voice back

If you suddenly have left without any voice because of cold, you can use these recipes. 

• egg cocktail made of raw egg with sugar and any strong alcohol (better to drink before sleeping and to drink with warm water, but not hot), 
• hot cognac (50 g) with lemon juice and honey (drink in small swallows), 
• boiled anise decoction with cognac and honey, 
• rinse your throat with chamomile decoction (add salt for stronger effect, repeat rinsing every hour), 
• tea with lemon and honey. 

As you can see, the most helpful ingredients are strong warm or even hot alcohol, honey, and lemon. All these ingredients make your vocal cords softer and warmer. They work as painkillers and stimulate your organism to get well sooner.

Useful advice about singing 

• Do not compare your voice with other people’s voices. Every voice and its abilities are unique. 
• Even if your voice is far from perfection you should know, that practicing can improve any voice. The only difference is in trainings’ duration. 
• Do trainings concerning not only singing itself but also concerning breathing exercises. It will help to develop your diaphragm. 
• Do not try to imitate someone’s voice in another tonality, especially if the singer is of the opposite sex. 
• Drink water before recording your tapes. It helps to remove crackles from your voice and to raise the level of endurance. 
• Give yourself time. Try not to overwork with your voice. If you feel fatigue then it is better to have some rest and continue training the next day. 
• If you still want to copy any singer then try to find as many his or her songs as possible. Try to understand the voice’s features. 
• Do not sing or even train if you have caught a cold or feel sick. It will only do harm and make the healing process longer. 
• Do not scream any notes because it can damage the vocal cords. 
• If you cannot take any note just sing it quietly for a while and it will come after some time. 
• Use the same amount of breath while singing loudly or quietly. Sing as easy and without any stress as possible.
• The sound has to have volume. That is why mouth should be opened and mimics should be moving.
• Choose songs that you can sing without feeling discomfort.
• Inhale and close the nose with the hand. You should not inhale using nose while singing so get used to this feeling.
• Start from a high note and then sing a random melody to catch the right sound.
• Keep your spine and back straight. Keep your neck straight as well so not to interfere to the sound to go through it.
• Put your hand on your belly and keep it there to feel how your inhales influence on your voice’s power.
• Speak consonants clear and make emphasis on the exact words.
• Sing the exact note and slightly push yourself in a forehead with your finger. This psychological trick will help you to remember the note.
• Sing both high and low notes to realize where the border of your diapasons is. By understanding this border, you can expand your abilities.
• Learn foreign words (especially that ones that came from languages, which have different alphabetic system).
• There is an exercise called “moan”, which was very wide-spread among announcers and broadcasters. To do it correctly you have to sit and relax. Than start to moan quietly as if you had headache. Turn your head and do not stop moaning. You can feel how the sound goes through your throat.
• Speak vowel sounds very clear as if you are pushing them away from your mouth. Speak consonant sounds as if you try to sing them. This exercise helps to strain your stomach and develop diaphragm.
• Whisper all sounds and then pronounce them louder. Try to be as loud as you can but do not scream.

if you do not use teachers’ professional help your learning process can be longer than you expected. This happens because teacher can prompt you better and more useful ways of training. By teaching yourself you can choose a couple of wrong techniques during the learning process, singers, especially young and inexperienced, often cannot practice because of family’s or neighbors’ displeasure. That is why you have to take into account how much time your trainings will take and where can you practice your voice. 

Everyone can have strong beautiful clear voice. The only thing that depends on initial data is the duration of training course, continue practicing until you notice the result, even when the wanted result is reached you can and you should continue exercises so not to lose the achievements. 

Believe in your success even if those who are around you, do not.