This is probably a really dumb question, but I've been puzzling over it for a while. What are the ways in which you can damage your voice, and how does it remain damaged? When people talk about ruining your voice, what do they mean by that?

I'm not at all questioning that poor technique can cause damage, I've just never really fully grasped how.

Hi Meerkat

Your voice happens because your vocal cords vibrate as air passes them to produce sound. Generally, when we talk about damaging voices we mean doing harm to the vocal cords so that they don't produce the sound you want or, in drastic cases, any sound at all.

Most common, and thankfully temporary, is something like laryngitis, where the cords are inflamed and won't vibrate. It's cured by resting and waiting until the voice returns. And the more you push the cords to work while they're not right, the longer it will take for the voice to come back.

Have a look through Satine's posts on this forum. She's had a lot more serious vocal trouble, from straining her larynx too much as a result of poor technical training, I believe. She's recovering slowly now, but has had a great deal of set back.

At the worst, if one has really strained one's cords to excess, the voice can go altogether, and not come back. This happened to the pop singer (and later Irish president) Dana. She had to take a year off singing until her throat recovered, and then had to re-train to sing again.

My own near-miss happened when I was in my early twenties. I was doing a holiday job as a telephone operator for BT, and came down with a cold which (typical for me) hit my throat. My supervisor wouldn't let me go off shift, so I was there for eight hours and in that time I literally talked my voice away. As a result, I had such severe laryngitis I couldn't say anything for a fortnight, and couldn't sing for nearly three months. It took ages after that before the singing sounded right, too.

For that reason, I'm now ultra-cautious about what I do when my throat's dodgy. Yes I sang a recital on Tuesday, but I had hardly spoken and hadn't sung since the previous Wednesday, and again have hardly spoken and haven't sung since. I have arranged for someone else (Deborah) to do the announcements at the concert tomorrow, and if I can find someone to sing my half of the duet with Amber I'll do so. And for the rest of the time I'll rest my voice.

Hope this helps a bit. Jod's probably the person to give you the full gory details, she studied this stuff.

Cheers

Katyjay

You've got things mostly covered, except that if you use your vocal folds when they are inflamed, or really overstrain them, you can develop a small lump on the side called a nodule. Nodules can be removed surgically, but that is risky. Better not get them in the first place.

A nodule and botched surgery finished the career of Julie Andrews. That is why it is important to make sure that your neck muscles are otherwise relaxed when singing, and that you don't dehydrate.

And don't use anaesthetic lozenges or sprays, they mask problems an could make you do something that would really harm your voice.

JoD

Jod

Would you consider taking a mild painkiller, while still not using the voice and keeping hydrated, a risky activity? I certainly found that having an aspirin meant I could swallow more comfortably, but I was mindful not to push my voice at all.

Ah ok. My gran had nodules, but I didn't realise that they came from vocal strain. Always assumed they were a product of smoking. She had a very husky, breathy voice after they were removed.

She famously (in family legend terms) asked her doctor 'Doctor, will I ever sing again?', to which he responded 'Could you sing before?'. Her answer 'No'. She was an odd woman, my gran...

I've had laryngitis before, but had never really considered it a potentially long term problem.

Are some people more susceptible to injury than others?

Nodules have a variety of contributory factors, and smoking's a classic one. Even second-hand smoke is a bad idea for your voice, as well as your general health.

Your gran sounds like quite a character.

Any illness or injury can turn into long term trouble if you don't treat it correctly - the throat's no different from the rest of the body with that.
In some ways it's more risky, in that you can feel quite alright generally and not even have any throat discomfort but still have your larynx out of order - and that's when you run the risk of pushing it too much.

I don't know about susceptibilities, but some people are more risk-takers and I'd guess that's got to be a contributor to injuries too.

Given I almost run on Paracetamol and Ibruprofen, probably not. The asprin will make it easier to swallow due to its anti-inflamatory properties. If I have a sore throat and need to keep going I swear by fishermans friends and loads of water.

If you don't push, you'll probably be fine, but if you know you have taken a painkiller that has dumbed down pain in the throat go easy.

But Katyjay you know as well as me that when you are teaching and performing, there are times when the things that you do are not always ideal. I taught singing for three hours with tonsillitis. Had to drive for an hour in each direction, and it was only on arriving home that I realised I'd been running a temprature of 38.5 oC for the whole morning.

Thanks Jod.

You've echoed what I was trying to say, but a lot more clearly.

When your throat's not right, you don't take unnecessary risks with it, and you do what you can to minimise any risks you do have to take.

The biggest danger with any painkiller is "forgetting" that it, rather than the healing process, has taken the pain away - and therefore doing too much too soon because your perception of the damage is muted by the painkiler. Painkillers aren't there to "let" you do things your body can't do right now, they are to help you control the basic necessities of living.

When I hear about great singers whose voices were "ruined", like Maria Callas. I wonder what it means. A classical Indian singer who works with my dance teacher is said to have stopped singing because his voice has "gone" - ie been ruined. This man had a fantastic voice when I last heard him, but my teacher claims his voice has been ruined through not "looking after himself" - smoking, drinking, junk food etc, not enough sleep (nb I've also heard the same said of a certain Miss Church, but won't speculate there! ) . . .

I work in a call centre and often worry that eight hours shifts in which I am constantly talking won't do my voice any good . . .

Guzzle water and you'll probably be ok. Call centre workers often end up chewing gum to prevent themselves from getting a dry mouth. Between large quantities of water its not such a bad idea!

I've also heard that excessive amounts of ibuprofen, and especially aspirin, can make you more susceptible to vocal cord haemorrhage. While in theory this is almost certainly true (blood-thinners and so forth) in practice I'm not sure if the average dose would put you at risk. Either way, I refuse to take aspirin now, and won't sing if I'm on ibuprofen.

Nodules are sadly not the only way to damage the voice. There are a good many more scary things that can go wrong with the cords (incidentally, I heard that Julie Andrews' botched surgery was in a bid to get rid of a cyst, not a nodule - the former develops organically and often without cause whereas the latter is usually sparked off by some kind of maltreatment) and there are numerous websites with icky pictures if you're really fascinated .

Also, I see I've been mentioned earlier in this thread *grins and waves*. I feel like maybe I should clarify...the damage done to my voice was largely muscular and bits of my vocal apparatus had just been taught to sit where they didn't want to (and had been doing so for eight years or so). I feel like a bit of a drama queen being thought to have serious vocal damage...very little actually happened to my cords (apart from a wee bit of inflammation). I was certainly at high risk for nodules and/or vocal haemorrhage but I was lucky (especially considering my teeny tiny vocal cords). Rather than being serious as such, muscular technical problems are just a pain in the rear more than anything else...they take an excessively long time to sort out since everything has to be re-set, and some people just leave it too late to reverse the effects, but it could be a whole lot worse.

I had a student once who came for a consultation and I refused to take her until she had been seen by a laryngologist. Her voice was intermittently fading mid phrase and sounded husky. She was a non-smoker, but was a professional singer that had been pushing her voice to obtain high notes that were beyond her range in Phantom of the Opera. She had had no singing lessons up to that point! The only way to achieve notes higher than your range is to force air past the vocal "chords" so that they clash together, for want of a better way of putting it. It was illustrated at a singing teachers conference at the Royal Academy by the lecturer clapping his hands together loudly.
She was diagnosed with nodules, luckily not severe ones, but treatment was a months total silence.
She is now an air hostess.....

Ann

Asprin does thin the blood, and therefore can lead to haemmorage. Ibuprofen is realted to Asprin and there is a small risk.

Satine you are quite right about the muscular apparatus. The amount of time I spend in lessons trying to get people to relax their neck muscles is huge. The number of people who will not open their mouth at the back due to a tight TMJ (Temporal Mandibular Joint) again is vast. After sorting out breathing its the next most common technical problem I have to sort out.

In an ideal world we would all be having Alexander Technique, or doing Pilates to concentrate on getting the body aligned, and being aware of posture. Poor posture effects all the singing apparatus. I sometimes feel I'm teaching more about deportment than I am singing, and that it just to insure that my pupils are using their voices properly.

Is that the hinge of the jaw, jod?

If so, it's often a site where people hold emotional tension - stress, anxiety, anger, emotional pain. (Hence our many idioms in the west - like biting back anger, chewing on an emotion, etc) Releasing it can be a huge challenge for that reason. In therapy work (which I don't do any more, but used to) I used to find a combination of progressive muscle relaxation, and visualisation (the warm golden light spreading through the body one is particularly effective) helped to start easing that tension.


On a slightly different note, I noticed yesterday that I hold my head at a very very slight angle when I sing. When I straighten it, the tiny raspy breathiness that I hear around the edges of my voice immediately disappears. Weird how those little things make such a big difference!

Yep TMJ is the hing of the jaw