Hi guys, it's Tamara and I want to share with you my top 5 health tips for
vocalists and singers. I've been teaching for a really long time, almost 10 years
now, and apart from the obvious such as making sure you get enough sleep,
drinking lots of water, staying hydrated and making sure you don't stress a lot, I
thought I would share my personal top 5 points. My number 1 point is 'screaming
and whispering' watch these! Screaming obviously can be really detrimental to
the voice if you do it for long periods of time. I tend to find young students
who came into my studio would have just gone to a concert or a sports carnival
and had been screaming so much that they would actually lose their voice
completely and expect to get a lesson that day, which wasn't gonna happen.
You can't put the strain on your voice like that. So imagine that your vocal chords
are your hands and if you constantly clap your hands like this, like when you're
yelling, it's gonna be like this. What's gonna happen is they're gonna go fully
read, mine aren't too red, but they go to red and look horrible and be sore
and that's what you're doing to your little vocal cords. Whispering on the other end
of that, can be really detrimental as well because you're talking with very
little air and the vocal cords are stretching to try to meet together. So
try and avoid this particularly when you're unwell or that you'd had a lot
of overuse on your voice. Tip number two is steaming. I love a good steam and that's
why so many people love singing in the shower, because it makes us feel open and
hydrated and feeling great. Now you can have that experience yourself if you
have your own little handheld portable steam like mine. I have this one, this is
an Australian product, it's from Bos...bosisto and I put this
in our pharmacy in Australia. I did try to find this exact brand in America but
I couldn't so I found a different one on Amazon. I
put the links below for you guys if you are looking for something. I like this
one because it's not too fancy, it doesn't have to plug in, very easy to
actually put it in the dishwasher and put it together really easily. Now, I put
about a third of steaming hot boiling water and sometimes I like to put a
little eucalyptus, like a eucalyptus drop in that or like really open up the nasal
cavity and then I just sit on steam. Two tips to watch when using the steamer is you
should not let a child uses unsupervised, there's little holes in here and they hot
boiling water can come out and burn a child or yourself, so be careful. The
second one is, you should not steam 30 minutes, till 30 minutes full or after
you have sung, it brings a lot of blood flow to the vocal cords and you have to
be careful that you don't bring too much stress on to the vocal cords when you
are singing. My third tip is that you should watch over use of your voice. I
find that a lot of students I get have full-time jobs or have been students all
day and then they come into the room and then they sing and then they go and do a
gig afterwards, or they do a performance and then they go to a party it's
a lot of stress on your vocal cords. I personally found this, I found probably
in my third or fourth year teaching, I was teaching all day I would go home
and teach home students and then I would go and do a gig that night and then I
would do that all again, the next day and my voice got so exhausted. If you are
finding you are getting vocal fatigue, I highly suggest you try and
give yourself a rest or even going to an ENT to get your voice checked and make
sure that everything is in order and all healthy. Tip number four is creating an
unnatural sound with your voice and I say this because as singers we love to
listen to other singers, so we are inspired to learn all different kinds of
music, however you have to be really careful that when you go to sing as
yourself, you are not creating a sound that is not natural to you. For example
if you really love Christina Aguilera, you're really inspired by her runs and
her beautiful high pitches, but then her really sort of raspy and a earthy sounds
down the bottom, you have to be careful that when you go to sing you're not
trying to completely mimic her sound, because A) that won't sound like you and
B) you might be doing damage to your vocal cords and your vocal system and
you want to really avoid that. And tip number five is watch what you eat, now
this is very important because if you go to bed and just before you go to bed you
eat all sorts of things like sugary drinks, or sodas, or really tomatoey
sauces, or fatty foods, or salty foods you might actually create a chemical
reaction in your stomach, which later that night will create reflux. Reflux is
not great at all, it feels awful and what will happen is your acid will come from
your stomach all the way up into your nasal passage and can actually pour a
little bit onto your vocal cords, which is so gross and also really can do damage.
Stomach acid outside of the stomach can actually really hurt tissue outside, so this
area here, if you will lying down and the stomach acid goes all the way up, it can
really hurt you. So really watch those sorts of foods, especially before bedtime
I'm not saying don't ever have them, like things like coffee, I live off coffee, but
we want to make sure that you're aware of when you eat them and how much you
eating them. And there are my top five tips! Guys, I hope you enjoyed this video
and please if you have other tips you want to share with our community, put
them in the comments below. I would love to hear from you and I would love to
know if any of these have been helpful to you I'll see you next time. Happy
Singing! Bye!