Vocal rest

Due to high vocal demands these last couple of weeks, as well as some illness that has been passed around, the issue of vocal rest has come up quite a bit. So let's explore just what vocal rest is, when it's needed, and how it can benefit you as a singer.

At face value, vocal rest is pretty self-explanatory: it just means resting your voice. But does that mean you have to be absolutely silent? In most cases, no. These days, about the only time singers are told to go on complete vocal rest (no singing, no talking, no whispering, etc.) is when they are recovering from vocal surgery. In most other cases (like illness or vocal fatigue), some light vocalization—like humming and straw phonation—can be good for the voice, as long as it is limited.

Since the vocal folds are made up of muscle and tissue, ANY vocal use can cause fatigue if it goes on long enough—even alongside an impeccable technique. When fatigue does occur, it's generally a good idea to reduce overall voice use so the muscles have adequate recovery time.

However, in many cases, it's not the singing that gets us into trouble. It's often all of the "extracurricular" voicing that causes problems.

A 2013 study published in the Journal of Singing led to some interesting discoveries. The researchers (Christopher S. Gaskill, Jennifer G. Cowgill, and Shenendoah Many) tracked six first- and second-year undergraduate students at the University of Alabama who were majoring in either vocal performance, music education, or music theater. The researchers asked each student to wear a vocal dosimeter for five days, which measured their total voice use during that time (singing and non-singing). Here is some of what the data reveal:

• "Most students accumulated much more nonsinging time than singing time."
•  One of the students reported a session of “singing in the car” that lasted for 23 minutes, which revealed a very large vocal dose within a short period of time. 

In addition, in one instance during the week, a tenor music theater student commented to one of the researchers that he had just come out of a rehearsal that had been vocally taxing because it involved “a lot of talking.” However, when they compared the dosimetry data from the rehearsal (which lasted 1 hour) to the time spent socializing immediately after the rehearsal (which lasted approximately 1 hour and 20 minutes), the student used his voice TWICE AS MUCH while socializing than during the rehearsal. Besides using his voice more during that time, he also spoke at a higher pitch and with greater intensity.

This data caused the researchers to conclude that "...the most vocally demanding times for students may often be outside of required singing activities, and that [students] may be very poor judges of their own perceived vocal doses."

So when students tell me they have put themselves on vocal rest, I always want to know if it is only their singing that they are restricting. As this study points out, all of the other vocal activities (talking, laughing, etc.) can actually be more vocally risky than singing.

Of course, we have to take care of our voices. We need periods of rest that allow us to recover from the high vocal demands associated with being a singer and actor. But we also need to be mindful of how we are using our voices throughout the day so we are not unknowingly adding to an unsustainable vocal load.

How has your singing been this week? How do you manage heavy vocal demands?

Now go practice.

Belting, Legit, and Mix...Oh My!

Vocal pedagogy sometimes suffers from the lack of uniform terminology. Although we all agree on what to call anatomical terms like larynx and diaphragm, when it comes to the words we use to describe technique, it gets more subjective. For instance, asking singers and voice teachers to define words like "support" or "head voice" would likely result in some pretty varied responses.

In music theater singing, a few examples of yet-to-be-absolutely-defined terms include "legit," "mix," and "belt." Maybe it isn't that important that we all agree on the definitions and sounds these words invoke. On the other hand, if teachers and singers can't even agree on how belt singing sounds different from mix singing, how will we ever agree on the vocal technique that allows us to create those sounds in healthy and effective ways?

To help address this conundrum, Dr. Lynn Maxfield and I set up a research project to see if singers and casting directors agree on what constitutes legit, mix, and belt singing. You can read our full paper here (it's free until October 23rd!), but here's a brief summary of what we did and one of the big things we discovered:

We asked four professional female music theater singers and seven student female music theater singers (college freshmen and sophomores) to perform a series of pitches in what they considered to be a belt sound. Then we had them sing the same pitches again but in a mix sound. Then we asked them to sing the same pitches once more in a legit sound. We recorded each of those sounds and played them (in random order) for five casting directors of regional Equity theaters to see if they could tell which style the singers were choosing.

In the end, the casting directors were able to successfully identify the style the singers were intending in a statistically-significant majority of the time. They had even higher percentages when identifying the professional singers' intended style than with the students.

These results should be encouraging for music theater singers since, even though legit, mix, and belt don't have set definitions, singers and casting directors may mostly agree on what those styles of singing sound like. Therefore, when a casting director asks a singer to "be more belty" or to "use more of a mix," the singers may be reasonably confident in what sound the casting director expects.

Now if we could just agree on how to make those sounds!

How has your singing been this week? How are you progressing toward the goals you outlined in the last blog?

Now go practice.