How best to recover from a strained voice...

e2chawkeye

Last night In preparation for our first open mic scheduled for this evening our trio had a full rehearsal during which I sang more than I ever have. This morning I woke up with a sore throat...the kind of "enlarged tonsil" feeling we have when on the verge of becoming sick. So, my question/plea for advice, how should I spend today in preparation for this evening's gig? No talking...drink gallons of water....sip warm tea with honey...go back to sleep for the rest of the day? And, how should I adjust (if at all) my warm-up prior to singing this evening. Any advice will be greatly appreciated!

HuduVudu

I will give you this example. If you run 6 miles and you usually on jog for a half a mile and you are really sore, do you rest? ... NO! You would do a lot of light stretching and maybe small walk. So it is for your voice. Drink plenty of water to re-hydrate, and do a very light vocal warm-up. Don't over work your voice, but gently wake it up and try to lightly stretch it.

Hope that helps.

e2chawkeye

Thank you for the advice....certainly makes sense and I had planned on doing just that. I recall Ken talking about this on one of his videos, but I don't have the time to search all the DVDs to find what suggestions he had to offer. Maybe he will get back to me?!

bentk

It depends how badly your throat is 'damaged'. If you are completely hoarse, you might not even do any workouts at all. If it starts to fade and get better, you might introduce some very light scales, especially the lip burbles and tongue exercise. I think Ken's advice to keep singing is more directed to having a cold or something else relatively minor. Furthermore, when completely hoarse you can barely talk normally anyway. If it's 'mild', i would definitely start doing a few light warmups with the easiest and low volume scales. Just seeing how that goes.

However, the most important thing is to know why you had a sore throat. Do you have it more often after singing?

All the best,

Ben