If you repeat it badly, it becomes a bad habit. Sorry, but years ago when your mom insisted you practice your piano because, after all, practice makes perfect, she wasn’t quite right. When you repeat something, it becomes a habit.
To understand more about what causes hoarseness, check out this video: It may be wrong for you or you just may be doing it wrong. If any exercise or song is consistently throwing up red flags, discontinue it.
These are the canaries in the coal mine, warning you something is amiss before your voice becomes full-blown sore or hoarse. Increasingly breathier or raspier tone when speaking or singing A persistent itch or tickle in the throatĤ. The urge to clear your throat excessivelyģ. Your voice might be trying to tell you something if, as you sing, you experience:Ģ. When you practice, watch for these red flags. Bipedal strolling is just too efficient to bother with bloody elbows. Our bodies have an intrinsic intelligence dedicated to self-preservation and functional efficiency. How do you know if you are practicing an exercise or song that is wrong for you? Your voice will tell you. Different singers have different needs, which is why you need a teacher to guide you to the right exercises and songs for your voice. An exercise that helps Joe Blow YouTuber might harm you. Not all singing exercises are created equal. Then what is a singer to do when they practice and their voice is sore after? They still need to practice, right? Usually when I dig a little deeper with these students, the particulars suggest that practice itself is not the problem, but instead the content, approach, and/or length of that practice are the culprits. Hoarseness or laryngitis often involves irritation and swelling of the mucous membranes (not muscle tissue) that form the cover of the vocal folds. Your voice is not sore because you “gave it a good workout” and if you just guzzle a protein shake and some amino horse pills, those high notes will be big and bulging by morning. Let’s go on record: your voice should never hurt after you sing. If it does, something is wrong. You might have to modify, minimize, or completely stop what you’re doing, but your singing motto should never be: Like a doctor, I believe every teacher should adopt the Hippocratic oath: In fact, it feels worse! As a singing teacher, I take the wellbeing of my students very seriously.
That’s the implicit assumption hanging in the room when students tell me their voice isn’t improving when they practice. But deep down we know practice is good for us…like brussels sprouts. Somewhere someone told us something about 10,000 hours of practice…and then you’ll have mastered the thing. Granted, most of us would rather spend 10 hours practicing and the other 9,990 binge-watching Netflix.