Vocalist Tips & Tricks

Let's start with imaginary optimal conditions. A couple of months before recording, a singer goes into strict training. They give up all smoke, alcohol and drugs (including anti-depressants and tranquilizers), dairy products, caffeine and sugar. They attend regular yoga classes and start working with a vocal therapist (as opposed to a coach) to learn to stretch, flex and develop the muscle groups that can tense up and interfere with vocal production. They avoid all situations where they are exposed to second-hand cigarette smoke.

This rarely happens.

Singers often come into a session with some half- baked notion that they should give up drugs, cigarettes and alcohol but they fail to realize that timing is crucial when it comes to this. The same two folds of tissue that you use to sing are used to cough mucous out of your system. Mucous is one of the main ways that your body deals with anything it perceives as toxin. It creates mucous and you cough it up. It tends to collect on your vocal folds during this process. Try playing guitar with mittens and you'll get a rough idea of how this can hamper you. Coughing slams the folds together and causes them to swell. Swollen folds are unpredictable and can cause problems with pitch power and resonance.

Quit means quit.

A lot of the people I work with are a bit hazy on this. The body often does a fairly decent job in the short run of assimilating substances that are bad for it. You won't start purging until your body gets a very clear signal that you are not going to ingest that particular substance anymore. A person who cuts down from a pack of cigarettes a day to several cigarettes a day is not likely to start coughing up the tar that lines their lungs and their vocal folds.

A recreational drug user who decides to give up cigarettes, heroin and pizza two or three weeks before an important recording session is quite likely to sound their worst. It's nearly impossible to accurately time when a person is going to get rid of mucous when they quit ingesting things, so let's break this down by substance. The first part of this article will focus on what an individual singer can do to get in shape for a recording session. The second part will focus on last minute tips for engineers when singers inevitably fail to get it together. Purging is the last thing you want to have happen during a vocal session.

Cigarettes

Nicotine is the most addictive substance known to man. The failure rate for people trying to quit is 95 percent a year. People often say that they love to smoke but I find this ridiculous. People love not having nicotine fits and are usually embarrassed to admit that they are in helpless thrall to a substance foisted upon them by evil corporations. Most hardcore smokers started as teenagers, a time of life when hormonal changes and a sense of immortality leaves them particularly vulnerable. If you are a social smoker with a habit of less than a pack a day for less than ten years then your prognosis for long-term abstinence is good. People giving up cigarettes with the help of a vocal therapist, acupuncturist and a nutritionist can often purge the tar within three to six weeks. Once again, quit means quit. If you're still smoking an occasional cigarette it's likely that your body will continue to assimilate the toxin rather than releasing it. Hardcore smokers are likely to have problems beyond purging tar from the folds and should try to quit at least six to eight weeks before a recording session. Nicotine withdrawal will cause anxiety and edginess that will impair a vocal performance. Acupuncture and massage will greatly reduce these negative effects. Before you start bitching about the cost of acupuncture or massage, think about how expensive cancer is and think about all the money you'll save by not smoking. You can probably afford a couple of acupuncture sessions a month with the money you save by not buying cigarettes. Unless you're experienced with having bodywork done, never, and I do mean never, have acupuncture or massage done the day of a vocal session. The release of toxins can make you feel dizzy, nauseous and or weak. I also don't recommend the patch for singers, as it will prolong the period before you purge and a busy singer wants to get this out of the way ASAP. Wellbutrin is effective but it can be very dehydrating and several singers I know said this made them feel crazy. It's best to just tough it out if you can.

Marijuana

One joint is worth about 20 cigarettes when it comes to your throat. Ever notice how quickly your pipe gets clogged? Pot smokers tend to have weak, strained- sounding vocals and a lot of pitch problems. It can take up to six months to recover from daily pot smoking that's gone on for years.

Alcohol

Alcohol causes severe dehydration. The dehydrating effects of alcohol take about four to eight hours to kick in and the rehydrating effects of room temperature spring water take three to five hours to kick in, so do the math. Drinking the night before singing can have a more negative effect than drinking during a session. There are a lot of well-mannered, high functioning alcoholics out there. Giving up your daily six-pack the day of a vocal session is a bad idea.

Heroin, cocaine, ketamine

Toxic chemicals ingested through the nasal passages end up where?

Anti-depressants

This one is tricky. I, for one, am never going to be the one to tell someone not to take this stuff, but I think they are widely overused and over-prescribed. They tend to very dehydrating and results vary widely. I've seen singers on Paxil who sound like angels and singers on Prozac with such intense dry mouth that it hurt to listen to them speak, let alone sing. At one point in Boston I had so many students on psychopharms that I called the voice clinic at Beth Israel to ask their opinion of them. Here it is: If a singer is so clinically depressed that they can't do the breath work necessary to inflate their diaphragm, then the use of these drugs can be considered appropriate. If they are being prescribed these drugs for something like a bad breakup the resulting loss of tonal quality could easily depress them further. That said, if a singer decides to stop taking these it certainly needs to be done with medical supervision.

Caffeine

Caffeine is very dehydrating and can cause stomach acid to hit the vocal folds. Vocal folds that have been bathed in stomach acid will not function very well for the next 24 hours or so. In addition, caffeine causes muscle groups to tense resulting in a tight whiny sound. To kick caffeine only takes about three days. Don't take aspirin for the resultant headache, as it often contains caffeine and aspirin can cause vocal hemorrhage. I've seen remarkable results in singers who give up coffee, and their skin often takes on a brighter color.

Sugar

Sugar really irritates the throat and tends to kill your bottom resonance. It will also cause muscle groups to tighten and it makes you more susceptible to infection. Kicking sugar can generally be done within a week. You might experience some fatigue and irritability.

Dairy products

I truly believe dairy is evil. It's meant for cows, not people. We're the only animals that drink another animal's milk. Cows have a much more hardcore digestion system than we do; they have three stomachs, for starters, and often eat nails rocks and all kinds of other crap when they're out grazing in the grass. Dairy products have been linked to all kinds of diseases and are a perfect conduit for pesticides, antibiotics and chemicals. Eating dairy and singing is roughly equivalent to melting cheese all over the fret board of your guitar and then trying to play. If guitars only came covered with melted cheese, musical people would still learn how to make music with them. Offer them a guitar without cheese, however, and they would never look back. It can take about four to eight weeks to eradicate dairy from your system, but I've also seen it happen much quicker. Giving up dairy the day of, or a few days before, singing is one of the most common mistakes I see singers make, as they'll be coughing it up in front of a mic. Singers who eat dairy often can feel the lump of phlegm that collects at the vocal folds, but it's also very common for dairy products to cause weak, unpredictable sound. Mucous can cause the muscles in the throat to tighten severely, hampering power and resonance.

Aspirin

Aspirin can cause vocal hemorrhage, so don't ever take it and sing. A common scenario? A singer who smokes and drinks in moderation or excess gets sick but can't cancel the show, so they take aspirin to bring their fever down and get through the show. At a certain point they taste something rusty in the back of their throat and lose their voices completely. Rarely do they do anything dramatic like spitting up blood, it's more of a "That's funny, I almost felt like I tasted blood in the back of my throat" kind of thing. If this happens you must shut up until the broken blood vessel heals. To do otherwise can cause permanent scarring of the folds. It generally takes about three weeks to recover from this. I've also heard of cases of female singers taking aspirin for cramps and hemorrhaging, so just stay away from it.

It should be noted that women are much more susceptible to the effects of drugs and alcohol than men, and in general they don't have the capacity for extreme volume that men do (don't look at me like that, it's true). Men tend to be bigger, louder and stronger, and there is no female equivalent to a William Burroughs. There is usually a three-day period of time when you're premenstrual when your voice will be glitchy and prone to cracking. Female singers should chart this out for themselves and find out exactly when this glitchiness occurs on a monthly basis. If you have the option I wouldn't record in this three-day time frame. It's usually three to five days before your period starts. The onset of menstruation tends to impart a darker, rougher tone to the voice, which is usually very attractive in sopranos. Most women are sopranos no matter how badly they want to be altos. Pitching your voice too low because you're afraid of the high notes doesn't make you an alto and this practice [known as undersinging] is one of the quickest, most effective ways to damage your voice.

Antihistamines and Decongestants

These are incredibly dehydrating and they really irritate the throat so don't take them, you'll sound horrible. Pollen is also very dehydrating and irritating to the throat. If you take over-the-counter or prescription remedies you will be doubly slammed. Allergies are very treatable if you go about it in the right way. You can take a homeopathic remedy called Pollinosan if you start a couple of weeks before your allergies get really bad. Avoid all dairy, bread, beer, chamomile and mint. Acupuncture really helps. So does snorting saline. Mix a tablespoon of table salt in a bowl of warm water and inhale hard through your nasal passages. Repeat once or twice. Don't wimp out with nettie pots. You want the warm saline to hit your larynx as well. Stop whining — just do it. You should do this after being exposed to second-hand cigarette smoke as well.

So how is this info going to be of any use to you the engineer? Here's a list of things you can do in the here and now to improve a session that's headed south.

1. The throat coat trick

Throat Coat is a wonder tea/drug for singers. It's made by a company called Traditional Medicinals and can be found in most health food stores. Make sure you get the box with the red stripe, the yellow striped box won't work as well. Brew it in a thermos. Cap the thermos tightly and let it brew for two hours until it is very thick and almost slimy. This won't happen unless you brew it in a thermos. If you just brew it in a cup the water will cool too quickly and it won't get thick. Drink four to eight cups a day the week prior to you session and drink it all day and night when you're recording vocals. This will reduce swelling and irritation in the folds and it helps to dislodge mucous.

2. Sokken plum candy

No other candy will do and this can be hard to find, though Whole Foods carries it. Ask your local health food store to order a case for you. It's made from barley malt and plum extract. The barley malt soothes the throat and the sour taste stimulates the saliva glands, helping to rehydrate the throat.

3. Wet heat and ice

Freeze small paper cups of water. Massage the throat area with these paper cup ice cubes and then wrap the throat with towels soaked in water as hot as the singer can stand. Alternate in five-minute intervals for about 20 minutes or so. This will stimulate blood flow to the area and force the muscles to relax. Please note that this needs to be wet heat and ice. Ice packs and heating pads won't be that effective.

4. Turn the vocals way up in the headphones

Most rock singers I've worked with have issues and insecurities with volume and power. Volume comes from resonance, not pushing, which is why great singers make it look effortless (for them it is). Pushing causes tension and tension kills sound waves. Turning the vocal volume up in the headphones will keep the singer from pushing too hard. (On the other hand, this will sometimes cause the vocalist to sing off key if they here too much of themselves and not enough of the backing track. Another idea here is to take off one headphone, or put an earplug in one ear so that you can hear both your own vocals as well as the backing tracks. -Ed.)

5. Clear the studio

All the band members have different ideas about why the vocals aren't working and most of them don't know what they're talking about on a technical level. The larynx is genetically encoded to express emotion, and this is a pretty automatic process. When you get really mad you don't stop to think, 'How can I make my voice sound angry?' It just happens. Tension and confusion will result in strained, unpredictable sound. After one particularly harried CMJ experience my management instituted a strict no-significant-others- allowed policy. I tend to think this is a good idea. Lack of personalities in the studio will help the singer to focus. Keep the lights low, the phones off and the interns quiet (or not present) to minimize distraction.

6. Don't tell the singer to breathe

Ninety-eight percent of the people that come to me for lessons suck in their gut and inadvertently hold their breath when asked to breathe (you know, that big intake of air?). This is the exact opposite of what a singer needs to be doing so don't use this imagery. It's too difficult to correct in the short term and usually takes a few months of training. Instead ask them to inhale gently through their nose with their mouth closed before they open it to sing. This will get them closer to filling the diaphragm with air in the proper fashion.

7. Don't get mad

Of course, you have a right to get mad, but don't do it. The voice, on a purely technical level, doesn't respond well to negativity [see #5]. If you freak out the singer they'll release adrenaline into their system and tighten their muscles. Don't tell the singer that they don't sound good either. Tell them they sound so good that you want them to keep singing and run a bunch of takes. Hopefully they'll relax and warm up into it. Forget about magical one-take vocals in situations like this and comp the tracks.

8. Don't break for dinner

Singing is physical activity best done on an empty stomach. Singing too soon after eating will cause indigestion, which will cause stomach acid to hit the folds. If the singer has been singing for awhile and is feeling lightheaded from lack of food, then I suggest grapes, soy yogurt, miso soup or a little bit of bread. This will keep their blood sugar from falling, but it won't cause their digestive system to kick into high gear.

If you're lucky enough to be working with a singer that wants to get their shit together, then I highly recommend working with a vocal therapist rather than a traditional vocal coach. A vocal therapist will take each individual singer's particular history into account and devise a system to erase the negative muscle memory that can result from pneumonia, oral surgery, whiplash, dog bites to the throat, hockey pucks to the throat, steel-toed boots to the jaw, hard palate reconstruction, temporomandibular joint syndrome, sports injuries, etc. A singer who has worked with a vocal therapist to strengthen, develop and relax the muscles can then seek out a myofacialist/ bodyworker to manually work out the tension in the face and throat area. This can be a bit intense, but you'll sing like a bird afterward and the positive effects can last for weeks.

Please keep in mind that there are a lot of exceptions to every rule. Some of the best singers I know smoke like chimneys, drink like fish and sing like birds knocking down barn walls. People like this need little direction from their engineers. however, and there is a lot of great music being made by great writers with average voices. Hopefully the info contained here will help you to push that particular envelope. One of the great things about singing is that it's almost impossible to predict just how far someone can go.