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You are going about living your best life, excited about an upcoming gig, crushing fear like nobody’s business and BAM! You wake up the morning of gig day feeling not quite right. Maybe you feel a little sore spot in your throat, your nose is stuffy, or even a full-blown allergy attack has left your voice ragged. You sound like crap and fear leans on you hard.
How will you ever make it through this gig?
7 Things to Do When Your Voice Sounds Like Crap
•Rest your voice as much as possible prior to your gig. Total. Vocal. Rest. No talking. No singing. And certainly, no whispering (ever, ever, EVER). If your voice is feeling puny, you must save it for gig time. No exceptions.
•Drink water like it is your job. I’ve said this before, but I will say it, again and again, to remind you of how important it is: Drink half your body weight in ounces. That should be your norm in a 24 hour period (ie. if you are 100 lbs, you drink 50 ounces). While this should be your daily practice, if you wake up and your voice is worrying you, you really need to push the hydration and be sure you are getting all of your water intake and then some.
•Sip warm Throat Coat tea before, during and after your warm up to give extra assistance in warming the voice and keeping the throat moisturized in a way that plain water doesn’t.
•Warm up should consist of mainly gentle humming a couple of hours before the gig. Rule of thumb: When your voice is like this, you need to do MORE humming, rather than other vocalization exercises. Let the humming help you diagnose where your voice is today. Is there a catch in a certain part of your chest voice? Your mix voice? Your head voice? Note that and keep humming. Easy does it, now. Do not hum loudly or vigorously. Just gentle humming from low to high and back down. It is quite possible, that gentle humming might work out the kinks in your voice.
•Sing or speak at full voice ONLY when necessary during your sound check. When you do start to sing or speak about an hour before ‘go time’, warm up with some light buzzing. Then start to sing some gentle scales with open vowels at only half voice. (Speakers, I’m talking to you, too!) Again, gently does it here. Really pay attention to your body and what it is telling you.
•Delegate as much as you can vocally during your gig to take some of the load off of your voice. Are there any places in your presentation where you can rely on somebody else to help you? Can someone else do the merch pitch? Sing unisons with you? Emcee the event for you so you can save what you have for your keynote? Strategize as best you can in order to preserve what you’ve got.
•Sip warm Throat Coat tea and gently hum throughout the performance (off mic, of course, ha!) and whenever possible, to keep the voice flexible and loose.
THE SHOW MUST GO ON
Waking up on the day of a speaking, singing or acting gig with a voice that is not in prime shape is stressful, to say the least. Don’t panic. Take a deep breath. Stay calm and give these tips a try to hold on to the voice you’ve got. If you know of other things that have helped you preserve your voice, leave a comment below for The Voice Love community so everyone can benefit.
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