Iris’s criteria for a healthy voice.
I’m often asked what I’m looking for in a healthy voice. It is true that every voice has it’s own unique sound but I have noticed over the years that certain responses allow your voice to stay strong, healthy and beautiful while other responses do just the opposite. Some singers say they don’t sing any more because they are too old. Some say they don’t sing because their voices hurt after singing. Others say they don’t sing because they can’t match pitch or have always been told they have a terrible voice and should remain silent. My mission is to work with your voice and allow your voice to change.
Paul, one of my students said, “We take our voices for granted. We think what we have as a voice is just what we have. There’s no changing it. Now I know that I can change my voice. It’s quite amazing when you think of it. “
Isn’t it nice to know that unless you have some very real physical problem with your voice or if you are hearing impaired, you too can change your sound. Is this change immediate? No. Sometimes, if you are like me, when I met my mentor Ken Nielsen, you may have years of bad vocal habits to unlearn before finding the voice that is truly yours.
Here is my criteria for determining a healthy voice.
- You need to have access to both the upper and the lower register. That means whether you are male of female you need higher and lower pitches in your range. It’s how they work together that will ultimately give you vocal freedom. (see definition of registration below)
- A healthy female voice will have at least a 3-octave range or more. The range of a healthy male voice will be 2 ½ octaves or more. For non-musicians that means your goal is to have many high and low notes available to you as possible.
- A healthy voice will be able to sing or speak loudly or softly on any given pitch.
- A healthy voice will not cause you pain when singing or speaking. ( You may experience some fatigue after exercising the voice. That’s okay. Remember it’s a muscle. Muscles recover. Fatigue goes away. Pain caused by improper vocal use, only gets worse.)
- A healthy voice can express all human emotions, love, hate, joy, anger, fear etc. If every song or every speech of yours sounds exactly the same you might want to contact me. There are better ways to convey your message.
If you desire this kind of healthy voice you need to be curious. Experiment with different sounds. Put the aesthetics aside and trust the process. Even ugly sounds can be good for the voice. Not sure how to start. Contact me. I’ll assess your needs to determine what I can do to help.
A healthy voice is a beautiful voice.
( A vocal register is a range of tones in the human voice produced by a particular vibratory pattern of the vocal folds. These registers include mod
al voice (or normal voice), vocal fry, falsetto, and the whistle register.[1][2][3] Registers originate in laryngeal function. They occur because the vocal folds are capable of producing several different vibratory patterns. Each of these vibratory patterns appears within a particular range of pitches and produces certain characteristic sounds.[1][3][4] T
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vocal_register
