Strained Voice When Singing

Do you have a strained voice?

Do you strain when you sing?

Does your voice feel tired during or after singing?

If you answered yes, then keep on reading because I am going to talk about everything you need to know about vocal strain.

Are not sure if you are straining your voice?

No problem! I'll tell you about the most common strained vocal cords symptoms and how to recognize if you are damaging your voice or not.

Are you not sure how to heal a strained voice?

No problem! I'll tell you exactly what to do to get rid of strained voice symptoms as fast as possible.

Are you not sure how to sing without strain?

No problem! I'll also share some fantastic exercises to produce sounds in a healthy way without strain.

Having strained vocal cords is a serious problem that can lead to permanent structural and functional changes.

But don’t panic!

If vocal cord strain is uncovered early and appropriate steps are applied right away, changes on the vocal cords are fully reversible.

But how do you know if you are straining your voice? The bad news is that you will never know 100% if your vocal cords are damaged or not, unless you visit a voice specialist who can look at your vocal cords directly with a scope.

The good news is that there are some ways to recognize warning signs of vocal strain. If you pay attention to these signs, you can protect your voice.

Here are 3 tips to help you recognize vocal strain.

Tip 1 Observe

Sometimes you can see visible signs of strain on your neck, jaw and shoulders. So, bring a mirror into your practice room and do your vocal routine in front of a mirror.

You can spot unnecessary movements and tension right away and stop them before it’s too late.

Tip 2 Feel

If you are feeling any discomfort, pain, soreness, or tightness in your throat during or after singing, you know that you are not using the right technique.

Singing should never feel painful. Therefore, pain is a very clear indicator that you may be straining your vocal cords.

Vocal fatigue is another warning sign that your voice needs immediate attention. Vocal fatigue means that the voice quality declines during a speaking or singing task.

Your voice gets progressively hoarse or breathy and it may feel weak after singing or talking.

Get to know your voice intimately. Know what your voice likes and what irritates it. Keep on improving your awareness of how it feels when you sing.

Tip 3 Listen

Even though singers are encouraged to feel, not listen to their voice, sometimes it is very obvious that the voice is strained.

Any changes in the voice quality may indicate structural changes on the vocal cords. If you sound hoarse, raspy, harsh, breathy, or croaky, that is a good indicator that something is happening to your voice.

If you suddenly lose your voice after singing, you may have vocal trauma and you need to visit a voice specialist as soon as possible.

Here is a video to learn more about this topic. Enjoy!

Link to the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLP2XAZC1zQ

Causes of Strained Vocal Cords from Singing

While there may be several reasons, the most common cause of strained voice is inadequate vocal technique. It all comes down to a balance between the vocal cords and the air pressures below the vocal cords.

If the air pressure is too high, the vocal cords have to resist this pressure and as a result, they strain.

It is very common to use too much air or create too much air pressure under the vocal cords in inexperienced singers.

But there are some easy vocal exercises that will teach you how much air to use for sound production.

How to Heal Strained Vocal Cords?

Here are some tips on how to soothe strained vocal cords and what you must do on the way to vocal strain recovery.

Tip 1 Rest Your Voice

When you have strained vocal cords from singing, meaning that your voice feels tired, strained, painful, hoarse, breathy or croaky after a vocal practice or performance, your voice is telling you that it needs a break.

A break from talking and singing.

I know this may be difficult for some chatty people, who cannot go one day without talking or singing.

There are two types of vocal rest – absolute and relative.

An absolute vocal rest is prescribed for people with a serious vocal injury, such as vocal hemorrhage or for people after a vocal surgery.

Hopefully, that is not you!

A relative vocal rest is decreasing demands on your vocal cords, which means using your voice for only necessary communication needs.

Tip 2 Steam Your Voice

You as a singer already know that hydration is a basic vocal hygiene rule to keep your vocal cords in the best shape possible. However, internal hydration such as drinking of water takes time.

Luckily, there is external hydration in the form of steaming.

When you inhale steam, the water droplets come into direct contact with the vocal cords and hydrate them directly. Steaming is an effective vocal cord swelling remedy that helps to bring the swelling down.

Tip 3 Try Laryngeal Massage to Eliminate Strained Voice

Have you heard about laryngeal massage before?

If not, that is ok.

Laryngeal massage is a therapy technique to eliminate vocal strain, during which a specially trained professional or yourself use hands and fingers to touch and manipulate your larynx to achieve less tension in this area.

Laryngeal massage is not for everyone but some singers and voice users love it. Your voice, which is housed in the larynx is surrounded by several muscles. Some muscles are deep in the larynx, some are on the surface. We have access to the superficial muscles.

Tension in these muscles can cause strain and tension inside your larynx. By massaging the muscles and manipulating the larynx into a more relaxed position, we release tension and improve the vocal function.

Tip 4 SOVT Exercises

What the heck is that?

SOVT stands for semi-occluded vocal tract exercises and it’s a fancy name for exercises during which we create a partial closure or narrowing in the vocal tract.

Examples of semi-occluded vocal tract exercises are humming, lip rolls, vocalizing on some vowels and consonants that narrow the vocal tract.

Here is a video with more detail on the topic of how to treat vocal strain:

Link to the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77NpmXttXbI

If you want to know how to not strain your voice while singing, if you experience a strained voice or vocal cord swelling, let me introduce you to 3 vocal exercises that put less stress on your vocal cords and make sound production more efficient and easy.

Semi-Occluded Vocal Tract Exercises for Strained Voice

Yah, I know.

A terrible name.

The narrowing or partial closure causes a build up of pressure in the vocal tract above the vocal cords.

This pressure helps produce sounds in an efficient way because the pressure below and above the vocal cords equalize, which creates optimal conditions for the vocal cords to vibrate freely.

They vibrate with less effort, less impact and the vocal cords assume a more balanced position.

In simple terms, semi-occluded vocal tract exercises help you learn how to sing without straining, with less vocal effort but more efficiency.

Traditionally, these exercises have been used in speech therapy, but now they are becoming more and more popular among voice teachers and singers. These exercises are especially helpful for singers who use too much air or too much air pressure when singing.

Link to the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6tfo5bTPy0

They address many vocal issues, such as:

• extending your vocal range,
• smoothing out register transitions,
• improving resonance,
• eliminating tension,
• strain,
• and many more.

Exercise 1 Humming

Who does not know humming?

It’s a great exercise for warm-ups, cool-downs and technical practice.

Humming exercises have endless possibilities. You can sustain the hum for as long as possible, you can do vocal slides and sirens, you can hum arpeggios and scales.

The sensation of vibration will change with different pitches but you can always find the best resonance for each sound by manipulating the position of the jaw, tongue and soft palate.

And if you feel adventurous, you can play around with the position of the larynx and lips too.

Exercise 2 Fricatives

Fricatives are speech sounds that are produced by moving air through a narrowing created by bringing two articulators together.

For example, the S sound is created by moving air between your tongue and upper teeth, the F sound is created by friction between the upper teeth and the lower lip.

For this exercise, we will be using voiced fricatives. Choose one of the following sounds, z as in zebra, zh as in measure, v as in van, or the th sound as in they.

First, just sustain the sound on a comfortable pitch in your speaking range. Pay attention to how much air you are using for sustaining the sound. Actually, it’s not very much, right?

And while you can use fricatives for any vocal exercise, such as slides, sirens, arpeggios or scales, we are going to sing a part of your song using this sound.

Singing on fricatives is a good way to learn how to avoid vocal strain while singing your repertoire or difficult parts of your song. These exercises decrease vocal effort and increase ease of singing.

Exercise 3 Straw Phonation

Straw phonation are exercises, during which you produce sounds through a straw. You can submerge the straw in water to get immediate visual feedback about airflow during sound production.

You can also use straw phonation exercises without water.

A famous vocologist, Ingo Titze, has extensively studied sound production using straws. His research confirmed over and over again that straw phonation has many benefits.

You can use straw exercises to warm up your voice and cool it down after a performance or vocal practice. Straw exercises are used to rehabilitate an injured, strained or tired voice and you can address many vocal issue and problems with straw exercises.

I feel like straw exercises are hugely underutilized in spite of their many benefits, therefore I decided to make another video on this topic.

More on Straw Exercises

If you want to know how to strengthen vocal cords without straining, try straw exercise.

Straw exercises or straw phonation have many benefits for a singing voice. Here are some examples:

• Straw exercises are excellent vocal cord closure exercises so you may use them to eliminate unwanted breathiness.
• Straw exercises encourage legato or smooth singing because they require a steady airflow.
• During straw exercises, your vocal cords are aligned well, therefore these vocal cord exercises help erasing breaks in voice.
• My favourite benefit is sound production without muscular and vocal effort. You don’t need to press or strain your muscles to sing, therefore these exercises are wonderful for strained vocal cords but they are very useful for any singer who wants to learn how to not strain your voice when singing.

When you produce sounds with an open mouth, without narrowing, the vocal cords have to resist the pressure that is created below them. But if you create narrowing in the vocal tract, in the case of straw exercises, the narrowing is at the lips, back pressure is created.

This back pressure above the vocal cords then encourages better vocal cord position and vocal cord closure.

Sounds complicated but it really is not.

This is what you need:

• A straw or several straws of different widths.
• A glass of water (optional).

I use straws made out of actual straw and because they are completely natural, they already come with different widths. If this is your first time doing straw exercises, then experiment with different widths of straws.

The smaller the diameter, the more challenging task because the back pressure created by this thin straw will be larger.

Here is a video demonstrating a basic straw exercise:  

Link to the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wab-i0kYMjs

I hope you found this information helpful. If so, share it on your favourite social media! Thank you for your continued support!