vocal fatigue

[frisbeeman]

So I sang too much yesterday and ended up with a bit of a sore throat. Today my throat was better but I thought it would be a good idea to not sing anyway. However, I decided to go through a quieter and not quite as rangy vocal warm up just to get my vocalcords stretched out. Was that a good idea or should I just shut up? I didn't feel any strain today when vocalizing but I probably will take tomorrow off as well just to be safe.

[Owen Korzec]

Here's how you know if you need to rest your voice. Sing stuff in falsetto/head voice for a few minutes, as soft as you normally can. If you any hear problems that aren't usually there (e.g. notes cutting out, not starting immediately, gaps in range, loss of range, weird sounds, big loss of cord closure), if anything's just behaving weird, then your folds are probably swollen. In this case you need rest if you want to heal as fast as possible. This doesn't have to be extreme rest. What I do is I will try to keep my speaking infrequent, correct technique, and occasionally throughout the day I'll do some light lip trills, or humming, or singing into a straw - anything light and with the mouth closed, because that kind of stuff is the most therapeutic to the voice and the only goal here is to heal. And most importantly, above all, be sure to get a full night's sleep (this is where the TRUE vocal rest happens).

Also, hydration and steam are also a great idea. Doing that light vocalizing in the shower, very good idea.

So that's what you can do to help yourself heal if there are problems in your soft singing. Mostly rest, and some gentle stuff.

On the other hand, if you sing in this soft voice and everything is operating fine like any ol' normal vocal day, then there's no need to rest, doing normal vocalizing, just a little less aggressively, is fine and a very good idea.

disclaimer: I'm not a pro vocal doctor or anything. Anything I say here could be wrong. This is just based on my limited experience, vocal training, and minimal internet research.

[ronws]

All of the above.

I injure my voice twice. Not causing soreness, at least that I could detect. But I had loss of range, tone, fine control. And recuperation was a combination of rest, not pushing the voice, very soft, falsetto-like descending slides, nor more than about 10 minutes at a time, twice a day.

And changing technique, part of which was learning not to do something stupid more than twice in a row.

And yes, going back to good technique and getting in the habit of that.