Voice Repair II - You Don't Have Anything to Lose Except Your Voice

Written by Diana Yampolsky

In this month's column I would like to talk a little a bit about what I feel it takes for someone to be a true professional singer. Afterall, what exactly is it that makes a singer a professional? Is it purely the fact that they are making their living as a performer? Some would say yes, but I disagree. I believe there are quite a few amateur singers making quite a bit of money. Do they actually know how to sing? Instead, my definition of a professional singer is someone who can deliver a professional level performance night in night out at every one of his or her shows. They are able to do this because of a true commitment to their craft. Professional singers are essentially the same as professionals in other fields. Think of a professional athlete. They have trained for years and been coached by professional instructors to the point that they can deliver a professional level of performance in every match. The same is true of doctors and lawyers. For example, an untrained doctor may get lucky and cure a patient once, but eventually the result will be mistakes and a malpractice suit or possibly even an unnecessary death.

The same result is inevitable for "unprofessional" singers except that in every case not only will their audience be harmed but they will also do damage to their instruments. This is why I have subtitled this article You Have Nothing to Lose Except Your Voice. Sure you may be able to record able to record a few songs so that they sound pretty good, but will you able to perform those tracks live? Actually, when you are an untrained, unprofessional singer you have quite a lot more to lose than just your voice: your audience, your career, money, means of expression. Everything!!! In cases such as these, prevention would have been both cheaper and less painful by far. When artists have to cancel shows (or even tours) due to vocal problems they lose thousands and thousands of dollars.

The first thing to be fundamentally aware of as a singer is that your voice is not like a guitar - you cannot simply replace the strings. You have one set of vocal chords and truly professional singers always treat them like gold. Unprofessional singers do not and the result is inevitably expensive laser scopy operations, medications, as well as frustration, lost time and income, and very real pain. The truth is that the majority of professional singers get by on natural talent or studio trickery, but they are also all but guaranteed to do damage to their voice. The catch 22 then becomes that you are 'professional' singer that can't perform live. In many ways, these poor souls are akin to someone who jumps out of an airplane without any instruction in skydiving.

It is my belief that anyone who aspires to become a professional singer should approach their career in the same way that people in other industries do and that means training. You need to understand the fundamentals of how your voice works and how to protect it in the same way that a lawyer has a dedicated knowledge of how the law works. In actuality, singers need to learn how to play their instrument in the same way as a guitar player or drummer. This will ensure that you can deliver a truly professional performance every time out. It also guarantees that you will not damage your most valuable commodity - your voice. Vocal damage, while not life threatening, is very much like cancer in that it is much harder to treat it once it has been diagnosed than it is to prevent it with a healthy lifestyle.

Unfortunately, in this day and age, people do not care much about the quality of their performances. They think that they look good, they have reasonably good songs, they are putting on an exciting stage show and, in their mind, that should be good enough. However, when the time comes and they cannot sing at all (and, in some cases, even speak) they run to people like me for help and, then as a side effect of fixing their voices, their singing actually becomes of a professional caliber - provided that the damage that they did to their vocal anatomy was not permanent.

The conclusion of all of this is to live by a philosophy of PREVENTION, PREVENTION and PREVENTION! And to acknowledge education opposed to ignorance in order to avoid a drastic voice repair which otherwise will be inevitable.

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