GETTING BACK INTO VOCAL SHAPE AFTER TAKING A BREAK

When the pandemic hit in March, our lives were turned upside down. So many activities came to a screeching halt. If you are a singer, I know your singing activities were all shut down, such as choirs, high school musicals, night club gigs, recitals and more.  

So, what have you been doing? How have you spent these months? I am not singing nearly as much as I was. I still teach, but I’m not performing anywhere or preparing to sing anywhere. I started finding my voice losing steam after singing for a short time. It was time for me to take my own advice that I give to my students every day.

If you stopped singing altogether, and are ready to get back to it, treat your voice the same way you would treat your body after not going to the gym for four or five months. You wouldn’t go back to the gym and bench press the same weight you did five months ago. You need to build back up. Being a vocal athlete, you are working little tiny muscles within your instrument in your body and care should be taken when starting back up.

So first, assess your voice and be honest. You may have been singing a little or maybe even have continued voice lessons. Good for you! Perhaps you just aren’t at the place you were when you were performing or rehearsing several days a week. Here are some tips to get you back on track:

1.  GET YOUR PHYSICAL HEALTH IN LINE. You know the drill: Up your water intake; clean up the diet if comfort food has taken over your life; Get plenty of sleep; Exercise. Nothing new.

2.      ALIGN, MOVE, BREATHE.  The whole body sings, so whatever you have learned about alignment, movement and breathing, start with these things. Do stretches. Check in with your body and notice any tightness in your joints and loosen them up. Align your body, by stacking it up from the feet, hips, shoulders, and head. Don’t stiffen up like a soldier, but don’t collapse the chest or slouch. Activate your muscles for breathing by expanding your ribs on inhales. Get the whole body ready to sing.

 3.  BACK TO THE WARM-UP HABIT. If you have not been singing at all, the warm-ups will actually double as strength builders at first. I’m a huge fan of SOVTEs (semi-occluded vocal tract exercises.) I call them low impact warm-ups. These include anything that partially blocks airflow such as sirens on an ng, singing through a straw, lip trills, tongue trills, and fricatives. Try gliding through your range as low and as high as you can go for a few minutes. Sing a song or do scales with a straw. If you vocalize 5 minutes at a time with an SOVTE several times a day, you will be surprised how quickly your voice will respond. This is a safe way to get things moving again. After a few minutes of SOVTEs, open up the gates and vocalize with open vowels throughout your entire range. After getting the voice warm, start going through your songs and getting them back in shape.

4.  SLOWLY INCREASE TIME. The first two or three weeks back at it, I suggest singing with intention every other day. What do I mean by that? We often sing a little here and there, washing dishes, in the shower or in the car. That’s fine. I encourage all singing. It all counts! But when you sing with intention, it is a time of skill and strength building. For the first couple of weeks practice with intention every other day for about 20 or 30 minutes. This includes exercises and singing songs you are working on. Then you can add days and add time until you can sing at least an hour straight without getting hoarse or over tired. You can continue increasing the time until you are at least where you were before you took a break. I always suggest taking a day off every week to give your voice a rest.

5.  TURN UP THE VOLUME WITH CARE. When you are getting back into vocal shape, it isn’t wise to start with your most intense belt song. But don’t sing everything  breathy either. Easy does it on the volume. Try sustaining notes going slowly from soft to loud and bring it back soft again. (Messa di Voce exercises) Sing your songs at a lighter intensity and build it back up to performance volume. You will be glad you took your time to do this. You don’t want to get hoarse and be forced to be on vocal rest for a week or two. Stability out -weighs pressed and pushed volume. Once you can sing at your former intensity, do it! Take that voice for a run at least three days out of the week.

6.  BRING UP THE RANGE BIT BY BIT. When you first assess your voice, you may be disappointed that you can’t sing as high as you did a few months ago. Don’t worry. Your range will come back quickly. It didn’t go anywhere. You just need to access it by gently bringing up your range step by step. Start vocalizing in your comfortable range then in each practice session bring up the range a half step at a time during an exercise such as a scale or an arpeggio. You can also take a song a half step higher and so on.  Within a few weeks you will have access to your full range and if you keep it up, perhaps you will increase your range higher than it was before.

7.  TRY SOMETHING NEW. This is a perfect time to learn new songs, work on your musicality, and try new styles.  If you don’t already have a vocal coach, this would be a great time to look into that. A voice teacher can safely get you back to speed efficiently. A great advantage  of having a teacher is they can be that extra set of ears that can tell if you are singing in an unhealthy way and they can guide back on track.

I hope these tips have helped you. The worst case scenario would be that you don’t do anything, then things open up and you hit the road with your band and lose your voice the first night. That is what nightmares are made of. Be prepared because eventually we will be back out there singing. I don’t know when, but I do know that I want to spend this time wisely. When you look back on this season of your life and somebody asks you, “What did you do during the great pandemic of 2020?” I hope your answer will be, “I became better because of it. I had some down time and I improved me.” This applies to all aspects of our lives right? But that’s another blog.

LET ME KNOW HOW I CAN HELP YOU!

Email me from this website or you can also find me on Facebook and Instagram. (RitaCastilloVoice)

Stay brilliant and sing on!