9 
The Care and Feeding of Great Voices
THE MORE time you spend doing vocal exercises and concentrating on your speaking and singing throughout the day, the more you’ll probably come in contact with odd bits of advice about the voice. I’ve noticed that not only do my students become more sensitive to information in magazines and the media but people who know they’re working on their voices inevitably want to pass along things they’ve heard. These bits of guidance, from friends, celebrities, “experts,” and the manufacturers of helpful products for your throat, cover the whole gamut. I know, because I’ve probably heard them all.
Many of my students ask me about old standbys, like drinking hot tea with lemon and honey for a sore throat. I see people sucking on special lozenges before big speeches or presentations. I take calls from parents whose children love to sing but who have been told that voice lessons are bad for kids.
Who and what do you believe? What really works and what does more harm than good? It would take an encyclopedia to sort out the facts from the folklore, but in this chapter I’d like to address the most common questions that come up about the care and feeding of the voice—both yours and your children’s. I’ve drawn my conclusions about what’s effective from my own experience and the impact I’ve seen on the voices and vocal health of thousands of students. You’ll find a whole range of techniques here for improving your voice from the inside out. Try even a few and you’ll feel and hear amazing changes.
What’s the best thing I can do for my voice right now?
The most important piece of advice I can give you if you want to get the maximum performance from your voice consists of three words: drink more water. If you’re serious about sounding better, have a glass of water as soon as you finish this paragraph. In fact, sip water whenever you think of it, and prompt yourself to think of it by keeping a water bottle with you all day.
Water is vital for your voice because it helps your body provide the lubrication that protects the vocal cords. The cords vibrate the whole time you’re speaking or singing, and they even vibrate when you’re asleep and dreaming of talking. All that movement could easily be irritating, but when you take in enough water, the body can produce the ideal protective substance: thin, watery phlegm. Like oil in an engine, it keeps friction from damaging the moving parts.
Just imagine what would happen if you rubbed your hands together for the entire time you spent using your voice today. First, your bare skin would turn red and swell. Then, if you continued for a long period of time, your palms and fingers would protect themselves by developing extra layers of skin at the points of contact. If you’ve ever taken guitar lessons, you’ve seen how irritation creates calluses.
Your vocal cords, when they’re not properly lubricated with phlegm, do essentially the same thing, first swelling and reddening, then forming their own variety of calluses: nodes or nodules. Nodes and nodules have a drastic effect on the voice because they keep the cords from fully closing, and sometimes, even after they’ve been removed surgically, they can still cause problems. There’s much evidence to suggest that the first one you get predisposes you to more, so this is a cycle you definitely don’t want to set in motion.
Don’t get paranoid about nodes, by the way. As long as you follow the program I describe in this chapter and remove the strain and pressure from your voice, you’re at extremely low risk. I’ve worked with many of the top laryngologists in the country, who send their patients to me before they consider surgery. With the right techniques, I’ve been quite successful at eliminating the problem.
OK, I’ve got the message. How much water do I need to drink?
For the average person, eight glasses a day is adequate. The kidneys tightly regulate the water content of our bodies, and under normal circumstances they do an incredible job on eight glasses. If you want to be sure you’re drinking enough, just watch the color of your urine. When your system is adequately hydrated, it will be clear, and if you’re running low on water, it will be more yellow. Keep in mind, if you use this test, that vitamins and medicines can significantly alter urine color and distort this technique’s accuracy.
Humans are more than 70 percent water, and we need to keep replenishing the source. Most of us don’t realize that our bodies are losing water all the time. Even at rest we lose half a liter of water a day, and that amount increases with any activity—including singing. Water vapor leaves your body with every breath, so to stay properly hydrated, you’ll have to either stop breathing or drink enough water.
I know you’re concerned that you’ll spend half the day in the bathroom if you consume eight glasses of water every day. Still, I think you’ll find that a couple of extra trips to the loo are a low price to pay when you see how much more efficiently your vocal cords operate.
When you start drinking enough water, your days of having a dry throat before you go onstage, or step in front of your board meeting or jury, will be over. Now, you may have tried to soothe a scratchy voice in the past with a glass of water before going on and noticed that your drink had very little effect on the way your voice felt or sounded. That’s because you can’t just pour water down your throat as though you’re watering a plant and expect it to go straight to the vocal cords. Remember that there are two passages in the throat, one for food and liquid and the other for air. When you drink, water doesn’t go anywhere near the cords—they’re in the other passage. So the water you drink right now, hoping to help your throat right before your speech or song starts, can’t do the job. But the water you drank last night or an hour ago can. Water gets absorbed by the intestinal tract, and it’s then transported through the bloodstream, which acts as an elaborate sprinkler system, bringing moisture to all the tissues of the body.
Won’t drinking too much water wash the vitamins and minerals out of my system?
Yes, but it’s almost impossible to do. If you drink six to eight gallons of water a day, your blood chemistry may go out of whack, a condition called hyponatremia. But don’t spend a lot of time worrying about this. It’s tough enough for most people to drink eight glasses of water a day, much less eight gallons. Your body is designed to absorb the nutrition it needs. A general rule to remember is: If you need it, your body will keep it.
You keep saying water. Won’t any fluid help my cords?
What I advise my clients to drink is pure, unadulterated water. Cool H2O, straight, no bubbles, no chasers. At least half a gallon of it a day. Coffee, tea, and soda are liquid, but they’re not the same. The problem is that the “added extras” in these other substances can create a different kind of phlegm problem: too much of the wrong kind.
A little phlegm is good, but when your body begins to supply more than you need, the result isn’t pretty. Your cords can wind up covered with thick, sticky mucus (remember: phlegm is just mucus of the throat). It’s a bit like having peanut butter on the rim of the jar when you’re trying to close the lid. Your cords can’t meet completely, and as a result, it’s harder to produce sound.
The following list will help you make an informed choice about what you want to drink by clueing you in on the effects of the problematic ingredients in many beverages.
Caffeine. If you’re a coffee, tea, or soda fan (the labels of your sodas will tell you if they’re caffeinated—it’s not always obvious), you may already have noticed that you need to clear your throat a lot. That’s because caffeine acts as a diuretic and flushes water from your system. Loss of moisture makes the mucus in your throat more concentrated—thus the throat clearing.
What’s happening is that when your body gets dehydrated, it pulls water from tissues that are less vital to survival and sends it to the ones that keep you alive. The mucous membranes, salivary glands, and other nonvital tissue give up water to maintain normal hydration for organs like the heart, liver, brain, and kidneys. That’s why your mouth gets dry and your phlegm gets thick.
In addition, because caffeine speeds up your whole metabolism, it stimulates the mucus-producing cells and they work harder and faster, creating higher-than-optimal levels of thick phlegm. A faster metabolism also uses more water, which leads you right back to dehydration.
If you’re a serious coffee drinker, I won’t stand between you and your morning cup of joe. One cup won’t really hurt. But I strongly advise you to stop there and to switch to decaf (or water!) later in the day.
Sugar. Some doctors believe that excess amounts of sugar may add to the production of thick mucus. But unless you’re diabetic, your body should be able to regulate itself, as long as you’re drinking adequate amounts of water. That said, I’d still like to caution you about your sugar intake. Many people, including me, believe that excess sugar consumption is bad for the voice. Many of my students have noticed that they have more thick phlegm when they’re eating a lot of sugar. Do your own test and see if cutting back on sugar helps—then adjust your diet accordingly.
Acid. Carbonated sodas are acidic. If you live in a cold climate, pour a can of cola onto the ice on your windshield and watch it act as an instant defroster. Or just watch the ice cubes disappearing into your glass of soda.
What happens to this kind of acid inside your body? Actually, many scientists say, not much. The acid level in your stomach is so high that the soda has no tangible negative effect. But I’ve personally observed that drinking sodas leads to substantial increases in mucus production for many of my clients. And even natural acids, like those in citrus fruits, have a similar negative effect. Citrus, in the mouth, makes you salivate, and even though that doesn’t necessarily make the phlegm thicker, extra saliva, even the watery kind, can be bothersome.
Many people think that citrus cuts phlegm, but strange as it sounds, I’ve noticed that the opposite is true. I remember working with Def Leppard during a tour and seeing that one stagehand was assigned to make a mixture of warm water, sugar, and fresh-squeezed lemons before the band arrived. For good measure, the drink also contained eucalyptus and an over-the-counter product that was supposed to coat the throat. I asked for a taste, and it was good, good, good. Joe Elliot, the lead singer, drank it constantly through the rehearsal.
At the end of the day, I took Joe aside and told him I had good news for him—he was going to have a lot less of a problem with thick phlegm… but he was going to have to trade in that lemonade for water. Joe’s basic response was: “Lemonade! How can you take away something as innocent as lemonade?” But three days after the drink disappeared, so did most of his phlegm trouble.
Alcohol. Most of you know that alcohol dehydrates the body, bad news when you’re trying to keep your cords hydrated. But a lot of singers and speakers swear by a drink or two before going on. The truth is, with your first one or two drinks, alcohol lowers your anxiety and is actually somewhat stimulating. Most people have trouble focusing when they’re anxious, and that’s why they often feel that a drink not only calms them down but makes them more alert. If they continue to drink, however, they feel the sedative effects of the alcohol, which makes the normal performance of every muscle in the body slower and less accurate, clearly affecting both speaking and singing. These effects may show themselves after even one drink if you’re like me and have a low tolerance for alcohol.
The choice is yours. As long as you have four to six hours for your body to break down the alcohol before you need to perform, and you’re not pregnant or an alcoholic, two glasses of wine a day, or a couple of beers, is probably fine. (Keep in mind that the less you weigh, the less tolerance to alcohol you have.) I don’t recommend hard liquor simply because its high alcohol content makes it more difficult to deal with. While an American beer may be between 3 and 5 percent alcohol, 100 proof whiskey has a 50 percent alcohol content.
These are my guidelines: If you have a big presentation or performance scheduled at 8:00 P.M., don’t drink with dinner. If you need to count on your voice at ten the next morning, it’s fine to drink with your evening meal, but be sure not to continue at breakfast. Also remember that it’s best not to drink without eating. Alcohol alone can lower your blood sugar, and you need normal blood-sugar levels to maintain the energy required to think and make great sounds.
If you’re going to drink, think moderation, hydration, mastication (chewing, that is, eating), and duration (that is, give your body time to recover).
I hear I should avoid dairy products? Any truth in that?
When I have a student who’s always clearing his or her throat and who has obvious problems with too much phlegm, sometimes all I need to do to clear up the problem completely is eliminate dairy products. My student Carly Rae Jepsen, the artist who recorded the song “Call Me Maybe,” is one of many who owe their rattle-free voices to cutting back on milk, cheese, and yogurt. For a substantial number of my students, eating dairy products is a troublemaker, and because this is such a common problem, I think it’s worth experimenting to see if avoiding dairy products will help you.
Medically, it’s unclear how or why dairy products increase the production of mucus in your air passages and intestinal tract. One theory is that in order to digest dairy products, the body secretes specific pancreatic juices and, at the same time, releases more mucus into the air passages. Without getting any more technical, let me simply add my voice to the millions who see dairy products as problematic for vocalists and wholeheartedly advise restraint in this area.
If I’m working with a professional musician on the road who tells me, “I can’t survive without my cheese pizza,” I’m sympathetic. After all, we’re talking about a major food group for the rock ’n’ roll industry. So I try to suggest a compromise. I think it’s OK to stop off at a pizza place, if that’s what you like to do, but get the pasta with tomato sauce (tomatoes are excellent phlegm fighters) instead of the giant wheel topped with mozzarella.
If calcium is a concern, look for alternate sources. Broccoli is a great one. Your voice will thank you, and the rest of your body will too.
Hot drinks are so soothing! They’re good for the voice, right?
Many people believe that a nice hot cup of tea is comforting to the voice. But even after you remove the caffeine, the lemon, the honey, and the sugar, you still have a problem: the heat. The temperature of any fluid affects the size of the tissue it comes in contact with. Heat causes blood vessels to dilate (open up), allowing the liquid portion of the blood to leak into tissue spaces, which causes swelling. (Cold, on the other hand, causes blood vessels to constrict, lowering the amount of fluid in the tissue and causing it to dry.) Even though the liquid you drink goes nowhere near the vocal cords, they’re affected because all the blood vessels in that area—head, neck, and throat—respond to the heat of your tea.
If you want to be in great voice, drink cool water, or warm decaffeinated tea, but try to avoid both piping-hot and iced drinks.
Someone told me that red meat was bad for my voice. Is that true?
When you eat red meat, or any heavy meal, your body diverts blood to your stomach and intestines to aid in digestion. This takes blood away from the muscles you use to speak or sing. Digestion is energy intensive, and while it’s in progress, there’s less energy available to the throat and related muscles.
On days when you really need your voice, have something light to eat. That way your body can focus on producing sound, not be diverted by breaking down food.
Are you kidding? I can’t do all this. I didn’t sign up for a diet makeover!
Every body is different. You may be one of the lucky few who can eat a whole cheese pizza, wash it down with a couple of glasses of lemonade, and see no effects at all on your voice. But if too much phlegm is coming between you and a voice you can trust, I hope you’ll do an experiment: Add more water to your diet. If you can’t drink a half gallon, drink three more glasses of water today than you did yesterday. Try cutting back on caffeine. See what happens when you reduce citrus or sodas. Give yourself a vacation from milk and cheese. You needn’t do everything at once—play with the variables and see what works best for you. Only you can determine the benefit you’re gaining from these changes.
And if you can’t make a long-term change, think about making short-term shifts when you need to count on your voice for an important job or performance. If you want to sound great on Wednesday, enjoy your dairy foods the weekend before, but cut way back from Sunday night through Wednesday. As you cut back on dairy, increase the amount of water you’re drinking. By the time you step into the spotlight, you’ll be able to concentrate on presenting your material rather than worrying that you’re clearing your throat too much.
Ultimately, I can’t tell you what to eat and drink, but I will tell you this: Hundreds of my students have taken these suggestions to heart, and they’ve got the clear voices to show for it.
What should I do if I wake up hoarse?
First, swallow. Does your throat hurt when you do? If so, you may have an infection that needs treatment. I don’t advise doing any exercises when it hurts you to swallow. Instead, rest your voice. Limit the amount you speak to what’s absolutely necessary, remember your diaphragmatic breathing, and see your doctor.
For all other levels of hoarseness—the days you wake up sounding extremely scratchy or gravelly and the sound persists for more than an hour but your throat doesn’t hurt when you swallow: You might be dealing with edema—swelling of the vocal cords as a result of minor vocal abuse. Maybe you used your voice improperly at a ball game or in an argument. Whatever the cause, the problem can be fixed by doing the general exercises.
As I’ve mentioned, the best thing you can do to reduce swelling of the cords is the low-larynx sound, so add it to the exercises. Start with the one-octave exercise, using the normal sound of your voice, then do the exercise again, adding the Yogi Bear sound. It may seem odd, especially if you’re used to going silent anytime you feel hoarse, but this is therapy time. Do the exercises in this way for about ten minutes, then start removing the low-larynx sound. I’ll bet that you’ll feel much better. If not, keep doing the low-larynx sound all the way through the general warm-up routine. If your voice is stronger, keep your voice in good shape for the rest of the day by doing a quick review of the problem-solving techniques you used to correct your particular vocal problems. Don’t let yourself fall into old habits that add gravelly, brassy, or airy qualities to your voice and strain it in the process. Don’t forget to speak up!
If you reach the end of the general warm-up and still feel hoarse, you’ve done everything you can by yourself and there must be a medical reason your cords are still swollen. Be gentle with your voice the rest of the day. Don’t talk unless you need to, don’t yell, and don’t forget your technique: be sure not to use airy tones or whisper, and check in to be sure you’re breathing diaphragmatically. Then, the next day start right back in using low-larynx sounds on the general warm-ups.
I’ve performed vocal-exercise first aid for many singers and speakers with important meetings or performances that just couldn’t be canceled, and I can assure you that if you use the technique I described above, “miracles” are the rule, not the exception.
I met John Gray, the best-selling author of Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus under the tensest circumstances imaginable. He was about to start filming a three-day seminar that would be turned into a series of videotapes for a new television infomercial. Hundreds of thousands of dollars had already been spent on sets, cameras, and crews, and the cameras were ready to roll. There was just one problem: John’s voice was almost completely gone.
By the time my plane landed and I got to the hotel where he was staying, it was thirty minutes till showtime. I listened to him speak and could tell that his cords were inflamed and swollen, so we started in immediately on the low-larynx exercises. Within about ten minutes he had 40 percent more voice than we started with. I asked him to speak a few more lines and noticed that his voice was airy, definitely a problem that would dry out his already troubled cords. We solved this problem quickly the way I’ve shown you, primarily by using thick-cord sounds like nay and nah, and using googs and gugs to regulate the air. We also increased his volume. And finally, I showed him the basics of diaphragmatic breathing.
In about twenty minutes he had recovered 90 percent of his voice, and he sailed through the next few days.
You’ve got a powerful, and healing, set of tools in the techniques you’ve learned so far. Don’t hesitate to use them. It’s cheaper, easier, and more effective than popping a lozenge or buying a throat spray when you’re hoarse.
So what about those lozenges and throat sprays? My friends swear by them.
I don’t think you should rely on them. What your vocal cords need is moisture, and they’re not getting enough of it from these products. When you suck on a lozenge, most of the benefit comes from swallowing. As I’ve mentioned, the movement of swallowing actually helps to lubricate the cords slightly. Water, free from the tap, is a better solution. I also find that people run into trouble especially with products that numb the throat because they don’t address the cause of the problem; in fact, they mask it.
When you see throat sprays made especially for singers, keep in mind that they’re mostly just water, with additives like eucalyptus. I’ve nothing against eucalyptus, but the real effect of the spray comes from the water you inhale. It certainly wouldn’t do you any good to drink a concoction like this.
I also see people chewing gum, thinking that it helps keep the throat moist. This, too, is a misconception. There’s no moisture in the gum itself—you supply the moisture, and your mouth tries to help by producing more saliva. That can throw you out of balance, and create problems rather than solve them.
Save your money. I recommend vocal exercises and plain water. If I do find a lozenge that works, I’ll put my name on it.
I’ve heard that spending time in wet saunas is really great for the voice—is that true?
Wet sauna. Sounds good, doesn’t it? All that steam must be doing something fabulous for your vocal cords. Well, I wish it were true, but remember what happens when you sit in a sauna or a whirlpool: you sweat, becoming dehydrated. Making your body lose water only takes moisture from the cords, and that’s hard on them and your voice.
Next you’re going to say humidifiers are bad.…
Humidifiers, I’m glad to tell you, are wonderful. Sitting in front of a cool mister and breathing is great for your voice. I like cool misters more than the hot, though if you already have a hot one, that’s fine. When you inhale, water droplets actually do come in contact with the vocal cords and topically moisten the tissues. It feels wonderful—and it is. Some high-tech Japanese companies make small handheld humidifiers with attachments that fit over your nose and mouth like an oxygen mask. If you see one, get it.
Most of the time, by the way, I suggest using a humidifier only when you are feeling vocally under the weather. The rest of the time, the body should do quite well keeping the cords hydrated, especially now that you are drinking more water. Please remember to clean the unit often, when you’ve been using it, to keep bacteria and fungus from building up.
Someone told me that swimming wrecks your voice—could that be right?
Swimming is great exercise, but chlorine can irritate the linings of the nose, mouth, and throat. I know you’re not drinking the pool water, but you can’t help but ingest a little when you move your head in and out as you breathe. Watch for irritation, and drink a lot of water if you’re a swimmer.
You haven’t mentioned smoking.…
Let me start by telling you how smoking affects the vocal cords (we’ll skip all of its other well-documented negative effects). Remember that there are two openings in the throat, one for water and so forth and one for air, and because of that, the vocal cords don’t get moistened directly when you drink water. But when you inhale anything—cigarettes, cigars, pot—the smoke goes straight to the cords. Take a drag and a hot, chemical-filled cloud begins to dry up the natural moisture there, reversing most of the good work you’ve already done.
No amount of smoking is healthy for the cords. I tell people that if they want to study with me, they have to stop smoking. I do have some students who are legitimately dealing with their serious addictions by cutting back. But in my heart of hearts, I believe that singing and smoking are opposite functions, and if you want to sing well, or to speak well, you must make the change and quit. Lots of smokers point to Frank Sinatra as an example of a person who could light up the stage while he kept lighting up, but I can guarantee that if Frank had quit, he would have had a hundred times more voice at the end of his life than he wound up with. You say he was good? I say he could have been a lot better—and that’s the level that interests and satisfies me.
The key point is that any smoked inhalant, whether cigarettes, cigars, or pot, directly irritates the vocal cords with heat and chemicals. It also damages the lungs and eventually decreases the amount of air available for singing or speech.
I want to make one note concerning cocaine. It is a powerful vasoconstrictor and can limit the supply of blood to the tissues to the point that they actually die. Imagine what coke is doing to your throat if it can burn a hole in your nose. You can sing when you’re high, but the long-term effects of pot and coke will send your voice straight into an early retirement, if the life problems don’t.
My voice is no good in the morning. Is that common?
A lot of singers and speakers are adamant about not wanting to make appearances in public or the office in the early morning because they think their voices don’t “wake up” until much later. Actually, their voices would be fine at any hour if they used my consistent and effective way of warming them up. A number of my students are dancers, and some of them don’t get out of bed without stretching. If you rely on your voice to sound great, you need to build a little vocal stretching into your day.
The real reason our voices often sound lower in the morning is that fluids collect in the tissues of the throat from lack of use, mucus builds up, and the throat is dry from mouth breathing during the night. When the cords are dry, they don’t move as well, and in order to make higher pitches, the cords need to move together and dampen. Until they can, you sound low.
Can I warm up by singing songs?
It’s a bit of an old wives’ tale that you can warm up your voice by simply singing songs. Actually, if you knew a song that went from chest voice to middle to head without building pressure, that would start the ball rolling in the right direction. But most songs aren’t structured that way, and without the help of technique, people can’t get through them without straining. The general exercises, though, offer a fail-safe warm-up that puts your voice in great shape, so you don’t have to worry about it for the rest of the day. You don’t have to do the whole warm-up. Just five or ten minutes, starting with gug, will get the engine running.
I know you’ve got things to do, kids to dress, breakfast to wolf down. But you may want to set aside time before work so you’re in top form for your first phone call. This kind of thing can be fun if you just change your mind-set about it. You’ll enjoy yourself more if you say, “I love doing this—can’t wait to practice. It makes me feel good,” instead of “That’s a chore. I don’t want to do it.” It sounds funny, but you might get the boost you need by describing your brief warm-up time in a new way: “Today I’m empowering my voice.” “I’m doing my vocal strengthening.” “I’m a vocal goddess.” If it brings a smile to your face, it’ll probably make warming up easier.
I work weird hours—does that harm my voice?
Some of the artists I work with have wild schedules. I got a glimpse of this when I traveled with Eminem. On that tour I was coaching the warm-up acts, Papa Roach and Xzibit, as well, and I basically kept the same hours as the performers. The schedule was grueling: They might finish a show at eleven or twelve, but then it was time for meeting and greeting—talking to the press, executives, backstage folks, as well as fans who wanted autographs. It was typically 3:00 A.M. before we got on the bus, and after the excitement of performing, no one wanted to sleep. We’d get into the next town at six or seven, and that’s when we’d go to sleep, getting up again around noon.
This kind of routine is very hard on the voice. In fact, any schedule that keeps you talking more than twelve hours a day takes its toll. If your voice were perfect, you could speak effortlessly nonstop, but for most of us humans, any amount of vocal work—speaking or singing—beyond twelve hours pushes us into vocal twilight time, when our voices are susceptible to the greatest damage. Your whole body is tired, and you’re probably more dehydrated. If your schedule is crazy, try to give your voice a break after that twelve-hour mark. My best recommendation, though, is to get enough sleep. It doesn’t matter all that much when you get your seven or eight hours in, but you need it. Vocal wear and tear is cumulative, and rest is a great way to recover. A biological clock sets physical and mental changes in motion as the sun sets and the moon appears, slowing your body down to prepare for sleep. The best way to keep this natural process from affecting you adversely is to get adequate rest and take excellent care of your body.
Do I have to be as big as a house to sing opera?
We’ve seen so many zaftig divas that it’s common to think a bigger stomach means a bigger voice. That’s a huge fallacy. Increased body fat has no positive effects on the way you sound. It makes the body work harder, and it doesn’t do anything to change important factors like the capacity of your lungs. No, you don’t need greater body mass to achieve fabulous vocal resonance. You need great technique, and dedication to developing it.
I’m sure my child’s got vocal talent. What do I do now?
Over the years, I’ve worked with students of just about every age. Every child can sing, and those who love to will receive extra benefit from exposure to music and good technique. If a small child wants to take lessons, and has a sufficient attention span to focus on a teacher for twenty or thirty minutes, you might want to give lessons a shot. I’d suggest letting your child listen to the audio exercises on the website with you and join you in imitating sounds. (I’ll talk more about this later in this chapter.) You’ll get a chance to impart solid technique in a way that suits your son or daughter—a little at a time. Just hearing the sounds will help. There’s no need for perfection. You’ll know you’re getting it right if both of you are laughing and enjoying yourselves.
Many child psychologists have argued that it’s potentially damaging to tell a child that there’s a right and a wrong way to sing, and some experts believe that parents ought to reserve their comments, except for a hug at the end and an encouraging “Louder, honey,” along the way. I understand the point of that advice—lasting harm can come from critiquing a child with statements like “You’re straining. That’s bad. You’re bad,” or “Too bad you’re tone deaf,” or “Let’s not think about singing anymore. How would you like to try the tuba?” But I believe that there are warm, loving, positive ways to expose a child to the basics of music and solid vocal technique. To stick with the “louder, honey” school of vocal coaching for a diva in diapers limits a child’s perspective and possibilities.
I’ve worked with my daughter, Madison, since before she was born, and I’d like to share a few of the lessons we’ve learned. I hope they’ll inspire you to share your own love of music and singing with your child. Broad exposure to music, to your own good technique, and to lessons that come in the form of play can make a lasting difference to a young person who’s just discovering his or her instrument.
Starting Young
Doctors have told us for years that children in the womb hear sounds from the external environment, and legions of expectant mothers and fathers have talked and sung to their unborn babies. I was curious about the effect of such conversations and lullabies, so for several months before Madison was born, I’d put my head next to my wife’s abdomen at the same time every day and sing the baby the same three songs. I hoped that those songs would somehow be meaningful to her, and a week after she was born I put that early exposure to the test. I heard her crying, and to comfort her, I decided to sing the three songs I’d been piping in. Her reaction was dramatic. She didn’t sing along, of course, but she stopped crying immediately, looked directly at me, and seemed extremely happy. It looked like recognition to me. I had sung other songs to her since she arrived and had never gotten that response.
Perhaps I was a little zealous about teaching her music. From the day she got home from the hospital, I’d set her next to the piano and sing a few minutes’ worth of scales. As I played and sang, I would sing out the letter names of the notes I was hitting. We also took care to fill her environment with music, playing children’s songs and classical music in the house and even in the car.
By the time she was one and a half, she was singing continually. And by the time she was two, she was singing along to the Disney classics. She’d wander into a room as Belle from Beauty and the Beast, transform into the Little Mermaid, swim around a bit, and exit as Snow White. I had ended my little experiment in exposing her to music long before, but she had, on her own, become the diva of the house. People would hear her voice, on pitch and connected from chest to head, with vibrato, and stare in disbelief.
Yes, thankfully she’s got great genes, and that’s a wonderful head start. But I know that it takes nurture, as well as nature, to make a singer. Without the music that was put so easily within her grasp, her talents might have remained dormant, along with the obvious pleasure she gets from singing.
I took a much more relaxed approach to exposing my second child, Colin, to music. I didn’t sing songs to him while he was still in the womb. I waited until he started asking me for bass lessons and piano lessons and guitar lessons and wanted to join a band. He’s thirteen years old now, and driven by his own desire, he has the same love of music as his sister. Expose your little ones to music you love and that they enjoy. And don’t be afraid to play. I taught Madison vibrato while we were watching the Cowardly Lion sing “If I Were King of the Forest” during The Wizard of Oz. When the song ended, I exaggerated the funny-sounding vibrato we’d just heard and asked if she could do it. Together for a moment or two, we both made the sound. I even shook my head so that she could put some kind of physicality together with the sound. Within a couple of days, she was singing vibrato perfectly, and not shaking anything. Did I really teach her how to do it? No. Did I open the right door? Yes.
Another way to open doors for a small vocalist is to let him or her study an instrument. Call me old-fashioned, but I believe the piano is the best choice for developing musical knowledge. Studying piano combines music theory, ear training, sight reading, hand-eye coordination, and rhythm practice. It’s a pretty unbeatable package. Yes, I know I’ve said that you don’t need to play an instrument or even read music to be a successful singer. But in this virtual reality, where we can plot out ways to give children the best grounding possible, I’d have to say that music lessons are an advantage. If your child is just not interested in piano, any instrument will do. Understanding how music works will make it easier for your child star to navigate the world of notes, structure, and imagination that’s encoded on a sheet of music.
Let your children sing with you, and if they want to imitate the sounds they hear on the audio recordings, let them try. Just remember that play and joy are the keys to a child’s discovery of music and voice. When Madison and I sang along with the Cowardly Lion, we were just having fun. It was a game, not a singing lesson. She didn’t feel any pressure from me to achieve certain sounds. We just enjoyed ourselves—and learned something in the process.
Kids and the Exercises
Everyone can eventually have chest, middle, and head voice, but in children perhaps five and under, both boys and girls, it sounds as if only two voices are present. The vocal cords are still changing, and they’re simply not long enough to produce three distinct colorations. Instead, there’s a definite lower voice that I still call chest, and a higher area that is not completely head but not thick enough to be a real middle. As the child gets a bit older but has not yet reached puberty, he or she will begin to show signs of having all three voices. To work with my exercises with your children, both boys and girls, use the female exercises, which are set in the right range for maximum benefit. Don’t expect to hear middle if your child is under five, just let your very young singers move back and forth from the low voice to the higher one. The aim, here, is to break down the walls that could otherwise keep them locked in either chest or head voice. As they smoothly work through the crossover points, and get a little older, their voices will be making way for the middle that will miraculously appear as they grow. Until then, the single most valuable thing you can do is to make sure that they don’t get caught in chest voice, or strain. And, of course, make it fun.
Only You Can Decide What Level You Want to Reach
Some of the suggestions I’ve made in this chapter no doubt seemed extreme. A half gallon of water a day? Cutting out dairy foods? Singing to babies in the womb? Yet these are the tested techniques that have resulted in excellence, for the professionals I teach, for my own family, and for the students who are just starting out. I hope you’ll take this information and run with it. Experiment. Eliminate the physical obstacles that are standing between you and a fabulous voice. You’ll transport yourself—and maybe your lucky child—to the next level.