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What does someone who sings in a community chorus or church choir need to know about vocal pacing?
| Celebrate World Voice Day April 16 |
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| World Voice Day encourages men and women, young and old, to assess their vocal health and take action to improve or maintain good voice habits. The American Academy of Otolaryngology—Head and Neck Surgery has sponsored the U.S. observance of World Voice Day since its inception in 2002. The theme for World Voice Day 2012, “Your Voice Counts,” reminds us that our voice is essential for any number of basic activities—speaking with family or colleagues, placing an order in a restaurant, and our favorite, singing! |
The goal of vocal pacing is to save your voice from overuse, and the strategies really depend on the demands that a particular singer is facing.
Vocal pacing for community chorus singers is mostly about getting the right amount of voice use at the right time―that is, more voice use when the demands are lower and cutting back on voice use at the time when the performance comes around.
You may be singing once or twice a week and everything is fine. And then when you get closer to a performance, suddenly the demands ramp up and you can overwhelm your baseline stamina. I always get a lot of calls from singers right around the time the symphony is doing a big choral piece―singers really struggle with the demands of multiple rehearsals and performances.
Intermittent singers really need to have a regular vocal exercise routine in much the same way as someone who is performing in a Broadway show or in opera. You need not limit yourself to your routine once or twice a week. I generally design a 15-20 minute vocal exercise routine that should be done four to five days a week. That is an adequate amount of practice to prepare for those times when vocal demands ramp up.
The strategy would be different for singers who are performing every day. I just did a workshop for The Lion King tour and the strategy was to unload all the voice use possible. With eight shows a week, these singers didn't have any trouble getting enough singing!
Here’s a “for instance.” On Sundays I sing in a church choir in the morning and then a cathedral choir in the afternoons. With rehearsals beforehand, I may sing four or five hours that day. Usually by the end, I am pretty spent. Any strategies for this situation?
In those situations, I would recommend making sure your voice use on Monday is really light and if possible, that your Saturday use is light, too. This is challenging for church musicians because it really restricts what you can do socially on the weekend. For most people, Saturday is the night to have a dinner party or go out to a restaurant. But if you have a lot of social voice use on Saturday, you’re not going to be rested enough for your Sunday demands.
The voice can handle those times when the demands ramp up if there is adequate time for recovery. A big part of vocal pacing has to do with speaking voice use and a lot of that is social. When I am working with people who are struggling with overuse, I sometimes suggest that they go so far as to inform everyone in their social circle that evening outings are out before a big performance.
Some vocal demands have nothing to do with singing. People’s day jobs may require lots of voice use.
Yes, that is a huge issue. There are lots of choristers who are music educators. They have unbelievable vocal demands throughout their week and then choir rehearsals on top of that. You need to be really strategic in that situation. A strategy for music educators is to offload voice use where possible. Can students do section leading? This would be possible in any choral situation—using the strong singers in the group to help out with some of the teaching, demonstrations, drilling of parts—so that the director can avoid using her or his own voice to teach parts. Another strategy, especially if choir members are relatively uneducated musically, is to make recordings of the parts and have singers learn them on their own. In that way, teachers are really modeling good vocal pacing. It saves wear and tear on the singers' voices to listen to their part three times and sing it once, rather than singing it over and over again.
Another strategy is to show students how to rehearse without actually singing. Singers can still mentally learn notes by following a score while listening to a recording, or using a keyboard to pick out their part.
Do you think people are aware of their voice use? Often, we go through our days not thinking about it very much.
For that reason, I often have people keep a voice journal for several weeks where they keep a log of their daily voice use. It often goes something like this: had a conversation with kids over breakfast for 20 minutes; talked on phone with mom for 15 minutes; led a 30-minute meeting at work, followed by multiple phone calls; had lunch at a noisy restaurant and had to talk over the din... and on it goes. The exercise of keeping a daily log can be very informative—most people underestimate how much they use their voice in a day. Writing it down, even though it is tedious, helps them identify the places where they can lighten the vocal load a little bit. We go through the journal together and target the things that are doable for them.
I had one patient who called her mom every day. That was part of her routine and the expectations in her family. So she would talk to her mom for 30 minutes and then start her busy work day. We strategized about how she could meet her mother's need for information while saving the wear and tear on her voice. She decided she would still call every day but they would limit the phone call to five minutes, just touching base, and she would send an email later to catch her up on the details, which is what her mother wanted to get out of that phone call. The family was happy with this new arrangement, the communication needs were met, and this singer offloaded two hours of voice use per week. That one change made a big difference in her vocal pacing.
It takes time to get in the habit of monitoring voice use, but once you do, then you can take steps to save it from overuse. I often describe this to people as having a vocal clock—they have so many hours and minutes of voice use in any given day before they cross the line into too much. They have to figure out how they want to spend those minutes.
