Kathy Alexander and Jermaine Jones share their thoughts on how to sing when you’re losing your voice.
Music Teacher | Vocal Coach | Co-founder of Singdaptive
JERMAINE JONES
Singer-songwriter | Producer
We asked Singdaptive instructors for some tips on what to do if you are losing your voice and you need to sing! Today, we hear from singer, author, vocal coach, choir director, and Singdaptive co-founder, Kathy Alexander; and singer/songwriter and producer, Jermaine Jones, on their best tips for singing while losing your voice.
Kathy Alexander with Her No. 1 Voice Hack for Losing Your Voice
Tips from the Team Transcript: There are a lot of voice remedies out there that are giving us loud messages of, “Do this; this really works,” but those remedies can sometimes distract us from the basics.
Sleep. If you’re worried about your voice, if your voice isn’t feeling right, you have to remember it’s just like any other part of your body that may not be feeling well. Therefore, you need rest and time to heal, and your voice is no different. Please never forget the power of sleep when your voice isn’t feeling right, so get lots of sleep.
The next tip I would give when losing your voice is deliberate periods of rest throughout the day. Take vocal rest throughout your day as much as you can and give your voice a break. Let it relax and be silent as much as you can until you start to feel better.
Number One Voice Hack If You Are Losing Your Voice
Jermaine Jones on Making it Through the Performance When You’ve Lost Your Voice
Tips from The Team Transcript: There’s a bunch of different tricks and ways to get through a song or a performance when you’ve lost your voice. The first thing I would say is remove the songs from your set list that you know you just cannot deliver today. Take them out altogether.
No. 2: Sometimes people will pull the mic a little bit away from their mouth when they’re hitting high notes. That way if you crack, or if you’re a little pitchy or flat, because the mic is so distant, your voice might get lost in the air, and the audience might not hear your mistake. But sometimes they might. So that’s still not the best way to handle it.
For me, the best way to handle it is to find ways to adjust the melody of the song, and go for a different note within that key or chord, and is within the range that you do have to work with. So take for example, the song My Girl. If I want to sing My Girl, and I’m not in my best vocal shape, I will adjust the line “when it’s cold outside, I’ve got the month of may” to sing a lower note on “cold” that I can reach comfortably on that day.
I will replace it with a note that is a little bit lower. That’s my favorite way of handling that. So what that means is you’re going to have to rehearse your songs with an intended, adjusted way of approaching it. That way, you will know what areas you want to adjust before you perform, and you will do it intentionally. Don’t try to figure it out on stage. Try to do your homework, try to rehearse it, and get it the way that you want prior to performance. Give it a shot.