Another hoarse problem?

Jozzy

Hi guys! I'm glad to be part of this awesome community of singers that are training with Ken's course and method!

I've been singing for about three years but I decided to start with the KTVA course just a year ago and the results are truly amazing.
I've been through all volumes practising almost every day and spending a lot of time on understanding the basics. At the same time I'm singing in my hard rock band, testing myself and taking care of my voice trying not to oversing, use glotal compression, vowel modification etc.

I do 3/4 of 7 days a week of all volume 3 exercises (1 hour), I add some mix/head exercises too. No problems in my throat.
I only feel the high larynx position because of the high pitched exercises, but no soar throat or hoarseness.

That said, I want to ask about a little hoarse (i think it is) that I'm experiencing after rehearsals and I think the cause is the lack of a proper warm up, but I'm not sure.

I leave work at 6:00PM and I do 30 min of warm up over volume 3 while driving to the rehearsal place (I don't like to proceed this way but I don't have more time available). Then about 30 minutes preparing the equipment for rehearsal etc.

After that we spend maybe 1 hour and 40 minutes of rehearsal doing high pitched chest voice songs (own songs). At the end there's no soar or pain (great!) but just a little bit of hoarness on my low register. After have finished, I have 30 minutes of vocal rest, and then I do some burbles, tongue and LAH exercises connecting chest with head without any problem, but now I feel this little 'hard sounding' (little hoarse?) on low register, and even talking. After a few hours, when I drink, I feel better and at the very next day I do some burbles and LAH very gentle. After having hydrated me I feel normal again.

I'm a little bit scared because I don't know if this could be only fatigue for the almost two hours of singing in top of my range. I don't know if I need to warm up more and better (I would like to do all Volume 3 relaxed without driving!!) and I don't know If my technique is wrong, but in this case I'm not pretty sure because I don't have any problem doing the exercises for one or two hours. Maybe I don't compress properly on some songs... Or maybe a mix of everything... Any idea or similar experiences?

I'm going to try to upload some samples of my songs and exercises if this can help.

Thanks for your support!

Wigs

A couple of things, I sometimes had the same thing happen to me in the early days of volume 3 because its so demanding. I would be a LITTLE husky in my speaking register after, no soreness and Im fine the next day, in fact the next day my lower register is awesome! The other thing is that volume 3 and your style of songs by the sound of it means you spend alot of time in your upper register, so your voice gets high set, its harder to use the lower and your speech level sounds different.

All this SOUNDS normal to me, the best thing is you haven't identified any pain and you are clear the next day. Im not a musician at all but I know in the moment its easy to over sing and use too much air, but I reckon its more that you have just done a fairly demanding practice. Kudos for the warm down after as well, you are really doing what you should to look after your voice.

mctornberg

@Jozzy, do you still experience the same or has it been better since June?

I just read this topic and feel the same, no problems any longer to sing but a little husky when speaking. I went back to the course to really follow Ken and focus on building even better chest voice to grow the voice more and more to see if that can help me.

Jozzy

mctornberg said:

@Jozzy, do you still experience the same or has it been better since June?

I just read this topic and feel the same, no problems any longer to sing but a little husky when speaking. I went back to the course to really follow Ken and focus on building even better chest voice to grow the voice more and more to see if that can help me.

Thanks for asking! Definitely it was a problem of technique.

I realised by experience that warm ups were enough to rehearse or even record on studio, which I did a lot in summertime. I tried recording the same song over and over just looking for a specific tone and colour. Sometimes I used natural distorsion, others I tried adding some screams.

Finally I found out that were some specific moments during the song, that I added this "colour" or "tone" by pushing too hard on the throat. I had to understand how to achieve this sound (like a Sammy Hagar or Airbourne distorsion) using hyper glotal compression at times and using some growl techniques with a lot of compression on the diaphragm too and getting a "growl" sound with the mouth instead of the throat.

Summarizing, it's important to sing in the way we do the exercises. If you feel husky or hoarse, start a detalied analysis of your performance and try to find those exact moments that you think are critical or harmful and try to replace it for a safe technique. If you are pushing too hard on your chestvoice without distorsion and you feel a husky or hoarse voice,you should analyse your range and try to use head voice or mixed voice connecting it properly, if not possible, avoid singing that song!. That's what I think is the best way to improve and understand our own skills.

In my case, the proof for all this was that I made a concert with my band (Sixstrings) on september and was able to achieve the tone and distorsion I wanted for 1 hour without any kind of pain or hoarness after the show.

I hope this help! And keep on singing!!