In this episode of Vocal Tips in 10, I’m walking you through a simple, strategic sequence of exercises to help your voice reset and start feeling like you again—without forcing or overworking.
We’ll work through:
This is the kind of reset I use with singers when their voice isn’t cooperating—so instead of guessing (or spiraling), you have a clear way forward.
00:00 Introduction to Vocal Health and Allergies
03:34 Exercises for Vocal Recovery
08:04 Floppy Jaw and Relaxation Techniques
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Hello everyone, thank you for being here. I have been getting so many messages from so many of you asking me how can you make your voice feel and sound as good as it can when you are dealing with allergy crud. here in the Northern Hemisphere specifically, we are in spring, one of my favorite times of year. My favorite times of year, spring and fall.
both the most funky for allergies. So, so many singers that I work with or singers that are reaching out for advice are talking about, I'm a little gunky, I'm a little flimmy, I feel a little swollen, I'm a little scratchy. What can I do to make it feel better? And so can get my voice back so I can do what I do, do what I love.
So that's what I wanna talk about today. I wanna give you some of my favorite exercises right now for recovering your voice when it doesn't feel 100%.
So I'm gonna start first with an exercise that seems so simple and it is in so many ways. But what I love about it is you can do it anywhere because it's quiet, it's easy enough that any level of singer can do it. And it can really help you sometimes diminish some swelling and irritation, get those vocal folds connected and vibrating so you can get some of that gunk off your vocal folds. And it's wonderful for resonance. It's also a type of SOVT.
semi-occluded vocal tract exercise, which if you've never heard of that before, or if you have heard of it and you thought, what does that mean? Semi-occluded means partially closed. Vocal tract, that's a tube that starts at your vocal folds that ends at your mouth. So a partially closed mouth, your vocal tract is partially closed off. So doing things like a lip trill, that's partial closure.
Singing through a straw into water, one of my favorites. So many different kinds of SOVTs that help set your vocal folds up as ideally as possible, and then they can have other secondary benefits. So this is just a gentle H-N, like you're going to say the word hun, but we're taking the vowel out in the middle. It's a hum, but instead of H-M, it's H-N.
That's your tongue on the roof of your mouth, right behind your top teeth. I just want you to think about singing it as lightly as you can. if you've got a little bit more swelling, anything like that, you might find that you can't do it at a really light volume. Do it at the lightest volume you can where you can sustain sound.
Ideally nice and light like you're humming to yourself and you want to try and hold it for about 10 seconds.
You just take that as gently as possible, meaning without pushing volume, without pushing pressure and power, there's no reason. You're humming to yourself. Up your range as high as you can and down your range as low as you can.
I bet some of you even after just that exercise will be like, ooh, that feels better. I do this one on one note. I love to just take it up and down. It's also a really great check-in to see how you're feeling. If you do this regularly and you know kind of what your top note is without pushing volume or pressure, if you know what your bottom note is, And then if you notice those notes seem to change, those high notes especially.
seem to kind of drop down. That's just a good thing to note. That lets you know, okay, I'm dealing with some swelling, some irritation. So it's a great check-in as well as a great vocal reset. You can also use this for a warmup, for a cool down, when you are feeling perfectly healthy, but it's one of my favorites for a nice little check-in and reset When I'm dealing with just a little
gunkiness, irritation, for whatever the reason.
I mentioned that singing through a straw into water, which if you are watching me on YouTube, I have right now is one of my favorites. It's one of my favorites no matter how I'm feeling, but it is especially helpful.
if you are dealing with not feeling 100 % for whatever reason. I have a large diameter straw here. It's kind of like a boba tea smoothie size straw. I'm gonna put it down in the water.
So when we sing through the straw into water, that water is creating some back pressure. That is what we do when we have a partial closure of the vocal tract. So I always like to start about a half inch to an inch in the water. I'm thinking about now, instead of the end of my vocal tract being my mouth, the end of my vocal tract is now the end of my straw. What I mean by that is I want one open tube from the vocal folds to the end of my straw.
I'm gonna put it in the water, half inch to an inch, and I'm gonna try to focus on resonant buzz around my lips. For me, it sounds like this. I don't know if you guys can hear, that was some really good buzz. That for me with this boba tea smoothie-sized straw is about an inch in. If you go deeper into the water, that is more resistance.
If you go less deep, more shallow, that is less resistance. Let me point out for all of you type A singers who've just heard that and just thought, I'm gonna go really deep then, because that means I'm really good. It has nothing to do with how talented or not talented you are. All of our bodies are different. It has to do with the right level of back pressure for your voice, for your body.
For most of us, I find that half inch to an inch is good. If you are using something larger like a vocal tube or some of those Dr. Vox, you know, giant tubes that go down into the big bottle, of course you can go deeper into the water. If you like those, that is wonderful. For me personally,
I don't feel as much benefit with those. You also can use a drinking size straw. Don't use anything smaller than that. Any of the singing straws, voice straws, they're wonderful. I love them. I use them all the time. You don't want to put that into water because you're getting back pressure there from the smaller diameter of the straw. The smaller around the straw is, that is more resistance. The bigger around it is, the larger diameter, that is less resistance. So you can take this straw in water
on anything, any exercise you want. I love to take it into songs, especially if you aren't feeling 100%. But let's talk today just about one of my favorite things is sliding intervals. So I might do that H in, that gentle humming on one note up and down my range to start. And then that feels really good. So I'm like, okay, I'm feeling better. Then I'm gonna do a sliding interval.
Let's say a fifth, that means five notes apart. And I'm gonna put the straw into water and I'm gonna focus on sliding. My water cup is very full. So again, if you're watching me on YouTube, I just splattered all over my face, but it was a nice refresh and.
I do one of those and I feel better. So I'll take those sliding intervals up and down my range. And then if you're working in a song and you've got a part that feels a little tight or just doesn't feel ideal, get your straw and water out, sing that section just like you normally would, through the straw into water, maybe a couple of times, then move outside of the straw and I bet you it feels better. If for any reason,
You don't love this. One, I would say play with the depth of the water. Try less deep, try a little more deep. Play with the diameter of the straw. Try a little bigger, try a little smaller. play with it and always do what feels best for you and your voice.
The next exercise I wanna give you is one I call floppy jaw. It looks pretty goofy. But what I love about it is it gets our articulators, our tongue and our jaw ready to go for more athletic work. But when we talk about recovering the voice or just getting it to feel better when we're dealing with allergies or a little irritation or gunkiness for whatever reason.
Whenever the vocal folds get a little irritated, many times these surrounding muscles, I'm talking to you jaw, tongue, neck, they have a tendency to tighten to kind of guard this area, to try and protect us. So I always want to look at the jaw and tongue and relax those, loosen those up, release some tension so singing feels even easier. So floppy jaw is where my tongue's gonna be hanging out on my bottom lip. I just want you to say, bleh.
and my mouth is open and my tongue is chilling out on my bottom lip.
I think about going to the dentist if you've ever had dental work done and the Novocaine has made your tongue just fall fast asleep. My tongue is not gonna move. Only my jaw is gonna move and it's just gonna flop open. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Now my top lip is on my tongue that is chilling out.
on my bottom lip. I want to be able to just let that flop around. And then I like to take this again. You can do it on any pattern, but we'd started with one note. We moved to a fifth. Let's now take it up to an octave and let's start to arpeggiate that octave, which just means we are plunking out the notes of the chord. So I've got my floppy jaw.
Again, I just did two of those and I'm like, I feel better. I just got nice release in the jaw and the tongue that are such a big part of our singing.
And then I want to give you one more Now I want to lock into some really nice resonance and I want to connect my range from bottom to top in a way.
that feels really good. So I can get my voice back to working as close to 100 % as I can. So for this sound, we're going to do another semi occluded vocal tract sound. Really what I find it ideal for is resonance and I love it for register connect. That just means we're able to go from the bottom to the middle to the top of our range and it feels and sounds like one voice. We're gonna do this on an NG consonant combo. It's like you say the word sing.
but you're just gonna hold the NG.
Let's take it over that octave again. So sing, hold the NG. No sound is coming out of your mouth. It is completely nasal, just like that beginning HN is completely nasal. Sing. All I'm doing here to ramp it up a little bit from the octave we did on floppy jaw is I'm sustaining that top note for a moment, letting it ring out. Sing.
I get really good resonance. Again, it sets up my vocal folds ideally. And I like to do this after I've done a couple of those other SOVTs. I've sang through my straw under water. That genuinely massages the vocal fold tissue, your laryngeal tissue, which man, it feels good all the time, but especially if you aren't feeling great. I've released some tension in my jaw and my tongue. And hopefully after just these four exercises, you are finding you are feeling a whole lot better.
And these exercises are a tiny glimpse of what you find inside of my voice gym. My voice gym has over 150 exercises, And I know just hearing that can be overwhelming, but the reason why is because we are all different levels of singers. We have different voices. We work in different genres, different styles. We have different goals.
And my hope with the Voice Gym and for all of my people that use it is that whatever you need, it's there. It's really clearly laid out. I've got a vocal rehabilitation section. I've got a tongue and jaw section, a SOVT section, all the way through high notes, low notes, mix voice, agility, stylistic exercises. It's just so much great stuff. The Voice Gym is part of my Vocal Pro Collective, which if you've listened to this before, know.
It is my favorite place to be. It has the voice gym and so much more. It's content with coaching and community. I'll put that link down below. the voice gym is now available as its own standalone offer. And what you get with the voice gym is access to this massive library of all of my exercises.
from over 20 years of coaching, 40 years of singing, more than 40 years of singing.
all really clearly laid out. And then every Monday, I send you a new vocal workout, five to six new exercises with sing-along audio tracks and a video breakdown by me. And the reason I do that is so you don't have to guess anymore. You don't have to waste your precious time searching around for exercises and then think like, I doing these right? Or are they working? You have everything just handed to you on this lovely musical silver platter.
So I will put that down in the show notes as well. I hope this has been helpful you all. If you try these exercises reach out, let me know how this landed for you. Thank you for listening and I can't wait to see you in next week's episode. Bye.
