hey chris liepe here with five habits that might be killing your voice without you knowing it
and what to do about breaking these habits simple shifts that you can make so you don't
fall prey to them and in fact use your awareness of them to catapult your voice into a better place
singing well is a lifestyle activity it's not about how disciplined you are in your
practice or how long you practice or what kind of information you take in it's about
the types of habits that you adopt and how you experience your voice as you're singing
and i help a lot of people experience their voice on a deeper level if you'd like me to come
alongside you and help you experience your voice on a deeper level the best place to start with me
is by clicking the link below and joining my free voice course and there's other
ways that we can get involved together from there i say this on every video
but it's amazing how many ways that i'm able to help vocalists once they join me for this course
all right here are your five habits that might be killing your voice number one you're using
too much air and you're using too much air consistently now this one is it's not only
controversial but it's very very sneaky because we're told oh you got to use enough support oh
your your voice you know your voice is burning out enough or you're getting a horse or you're you're
singing with a lot of tension more support more support well it's not more support that we need uh
and it's it's not necessarily more of anything in fact a lot of times it can be less but a balanced
support i've done a lot of videos on this channel talking about the right way to use support and in
my free course that i just talked about i'll i go through this in detail with another student
in the room but it's not about using more support because when we have that mindset we
end up we end up burning out our voice we end up in this sort of one voice mode where we're
we're singing like this and we're singing loud and we're maybe we're not even singing loud but we're
focusing on pushing and and engaging and then when our range gets limited and we're always singing at
the same volume and we're always blowing the same kind of air out our outer vocals we're not using
enough range-filled dynamic speaking we're not doing all these other things we should be doing
because we're focusing on more support and we're blowing too much air how many times have you been
in a live situation where either you couldn't hear yourself very much or you were kind of nervous or
you're in a recording situation where you're less uncomfortable the first thing you do is you start
sort of sing shouting your dynamics go out the window and then you burn your voice out over
time when you make a habit of using too much air you train your muscle memory in your vocal being
to sing kind of in just one way and then the problem perpetuates itself so
how do we not fall prey to this ugly habit we need to make sure that we are using the right kind of
and the right amount of support more on that in my free course or a lot of other videos i've done
on this channel but the quickest takeaway is something i've also talked about before
and that is make sure that you can sing lots of notes in lots of different ways
quietly quietly loudly raspy purely what's your tone like focus on dynamics and that rather than
just focusing on support focus on dynamic delivery it's gonna help you not use too much air not burn
out your voice okay voice killer number two not the right kind of vocal rest and overuse
slash overuse we can tend to get into these habits i know i have of okay i gotta be disciplined i
gotta i gotta practice i gotta record i gotta film so many videos i've gotta do some cover
songs i've got this other project i have to do over here and we get caught up in in producing
and or practicing with our voice and we don't give it time to rest and recover that's kind
of the obvious one but the right kind of rest is really really key first of all you can practice
your vocals your singing a lot by simply just listening and internalizing and and memorizing
things and singing quietly and experimenting with different placements and stuff like that
it doesn't have to be this lavish practice session so you can even rest within your practice sessions
you can also learn to listen to your body when it comes to well have i had enough stop going for
i need to practice a certain amount of time so that i can accomplish my goals and start
thinking about how your voice feels while you're doing it so that you don't reach this point of
diminishing returns how do you know if you're over using your voice well apart from taking inventory
and all the other ways you use your voice apart from singing when you go to sing is your voice
cooperating with the ideas and sensations you want to bestow upon it and experience
or do you feel like you're sort of in a fight with things that you think you can do or that
you should normally be able to do but the that you aren't able to do well at the moment don't push it
listen to your voice if your voice isn't behaving with a certain thing that you're doing
lean away from that and lean into something else that you do really well with your voice and make
that your practicing even make that the object of your creativity i've talked about this in
other videos too but in this context of overuse we always want to walk this balance of following the
path of least resistance into what our voice is in a good mood for and healthily pushing our mind
in perspective and our voice in a way that helps us grow but we have to be connected to how things
feel if you are truly connected to how things feel and not sort of greedy for a good sound
you will not overuse your voice and you will rest when you need to rest all right killer number
three reaching for notes that old habit of playing a note on your guitar or your piano and going
okay i'm gonna hit that note okay i got it i got you know whatever it is and then
oh i hit that note when i was when i was reaching for it there and then you go to a song and then
you're reaching for it in an unhealthy way and there's all sorts of things that are out of whack
because you're not focused on the right things you're focused on reaching for that note your
airflow's not right support's not right you're getting your throat involved you're where's your
what's your vowel formation like or your vowel modification like uh where are you placing your
resonance as you go up to hit that note are you in head voice or chest voice are you trying to ease
into that note remember i said all notes always are you are you trapping your perspective into
you have to hit this note a certain way or are you allowing yourself to experience it in a variety of
ways so that you can accomplish an expanded range over time and with resonance variance and all
these other things i've talked about but simply reaching for notes which is what so many people do
will kill your voice because it leads to these other problems that i've already talked about
these other killers it's a it's a gateway to using too much air it's a gateway to over using
your voice and not resting properly because oh i gotta hit that note i gotta hit that note in this
context no you don't you need to take things slowly and mindfully and experientially so if
we're not gonna reach for notes what are we going to do we are going to make the habit of thinking
down on notes this means when you are trying to expand your range or expand your range or get
up to a particular pitch for a song you want to hit that note in the lightest most comfortable
wonderfully honoring to your body way that you can possibly hit it
and then you must experiment with resonance and placement
to think down on the note so i'm going to go a little higher as i'm comfortable
and then i'm going to harness all these things i'm going to harness proper support airflow
management resonance transfer larynx position vowel formation tone control
and then i'm going to join it to other areas of my voice it's not about the note it's about
the whole picture and by starting in a way that's the most honoring to your body and the sensation
surrounding that note and then easing into it and then connecting it to other comfortable notes
we are doing what real singing should be doing anyway we're looking at a broader context using a
broader set of tools don't simply reach for notes it will kill your voice all right next number four
not warming up properly or not warming up enough well you say how do i warm up properly and
how long should i warm up before my voice is ready those are great questions and i have a
link to a warm-up video that i did a while ago left in the video description you can see what
my general daily warm-up looks like it's pretty unconventional but it's less about what warm-up
routine you follow and more about how you learn to experience your voice and listen to your voice as
you're warming up so in answer to the question how long do i warm up and how uh do i warm up properly
answer those questions i want to ask some questions for you to help you determine those
best for yourself are you starting with your head voice quietly coaxing your voice downward
into your chest instead of starting with general chest voice stuff and then pushing
higher this is really going to help you warm up properly are you listening to the way your voice
feels rather than how it sounds at the beginning middle and end of your warm-up
really keeping in mind what your voice is doing well for the day and what it's not
doing well for the day that's a huge part of warming up what are you warming up for
what kinds of things do you need to coax out of your voice for what you're about to do are you
just warming up to practice that's going to be a very different and probably longer warm-up than
if you're warming up for a show or you're warming up for a lengthy recording session
because our goal for warm-ups is not to get to the point to where we're doing really awesome stuff
is to prepare our voice and mind for being in the right posture to do the things that we want to do
so how long should i warm up question it really depends on where you're going after you warm up
ideally we want to warm up until we feel our voice wake up and just like waking up in the morning we
all wake up a lot better when we are coaxed into a uh into waking up rather than a rude alarm
awakening right we need to coax our voice into existence warming up with a routine can be okay
but it must be done mindfully simply having a bunch of scale exercises or things that you
always do if you're plowing through those things and you're trying to exercise your range and warm
up different parts of your range that can actually dewarm you up it can actually make your voice
frustrated and and just in a bad mood as opposed to coaxing it into doing what you want it to
do so be very very careful again i've talked more about this in that video that i linked to
uh down below uh now the last killer is this not through moderation pursuing healthy lifestyle
habits i've said this before i'm going to say it again what is good for the body
is good for the voice what is good for the mind is good for the voice
it's not so much about there shouldn't be so much about what you can get away with and still sing
well it should be a lot more like what can i do to treat my body and mind to the most
healthy states and then a great free sounding voice with a mindfulness of all these other things
is going to be ready for me because i have served my body well i am serving my voice well
so i get lots of questions like well will smoking screw up my voice what
about drinking what about alcohol what about uh this food or that food or this drug or that drug
the answer is anything too much broccoli too much juice too much water anything
will screw up your voice and it's not good for your voice if it is not considered
in moderation with everything else that you're doing a little bit alcohol is it's nice
i think smoking is is horrible simply from an airflow perspective because
you're drying out your cords quite a bit but there's there's other ways to relax
food all foods i don't shy away from any foods
or any drinks but the proportions the proportions that you consume
are going to determine what happens with your body and therefore your voice so don't say no no
i can't i can't do this at all because of my voice learn to practice moderation and listen to your
body and you see a theme here learning to listen don't wait for someone else to define moderation
for you don't wait for someone else to define a routine for you dig in experience ask the right
questions feel out oh yeah i think i guess i did have a little bit too much to eat tonight because
i noticed that food was coming up as i was going to bed you know subtly and i'm a little bit hoarse
the next morning also eat less the next day and see if that happens or maybe i did have
a little bit too much alcohol i do feel a little bit hoarse or yeah i was um when i eat this food
my son was practicing for a vocal solo earlier today and he had milk for lunch and then
went to sing and for a minute he was like what why is my voice not behaving that well it's because
you just had milk milk isn't bad you can have milk but maybe not right before you sing
but these are things that you have to learn and experience you can't just have someone telling you
don't have milk or don't have apples or don't have this or don't have that you need to internalize
these things and really take ownership of them and create a lifestyle that is good for your body
and then by default good for your voice so i hope this has been inspirational for you in really
getting to know yourself and asking some questions are there things that i'm doing
in my life and my vocal practices that are killing my voice and causing struggle where there doesn't
need to be struggle leave some comments below let me know how these tips helped you be sure to
check out some of my other videos and subscribe to the channel if you haven't we'll see you for more