5 Best Tips to Take Care of Your Voice

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The success of your voice acting career depends on the health of your vocal cords. Whether you’re an aspiring artist or are an established one already, you have to practice the same level of carefulness at all times. 

For taking good care of your vocals, you have to go way beyond than merely speaking softly to prevent strain or refraining from yelling. A thorough care routine includes a lot more factors that can exert stress upon your vocals if you’re not careful. 

Sing like they do in the west end

For a successful voice acting career, you surely acknowledge that your voice is the most important tool. In fact your entire career relies upon it and this is why it is even more crucial to ensure your voice is ready to roll at all times. We all know how common it is for voiceover artists to give a dozen auditions in a day. What if there comes a time when you get a sudden-audition call but you’re not ready for it? You’ll lose precious opportunities unfortunately. 

Our top five tips below will help you ensure your voice is in the best shape throughout your voice acting career and otherwise too. 

Proper Hydration

The first most important tip is to hydrate your vocal cords and your body sufficiently. For this, you must drink plenty of water and try sticking to non-caffeinated beverages only. We know it can be hard to avoid to the endless cups of tea and coffee if you’re living in particularly colder regions. But the fact is that alcoholic and caffeinated drinking tends to dry your vocal cords out.

In fact, alcohol consumption can also irritate your throat’s lining and that is sure not going to make your voice sound impressive to the industry giants. Consuming water such as mineral water will greatly help your vocal cords. Since there are many proven benefits of drinking mineral water, this is a better alternative for caffeine or alcoholic drinks. Hence, you must not only drink lots of water but a great tip is to also have warm or room temperature water right before your voiceover sessions. 

If you have very cold liquids you may end up restricting your vocal cords. Extremely hot liquids too will not do any good and can irritate your cord. You may have also come across many advices that emphasize on how good lemon in your tea or water can be good for your voice. 

While it is true that lemon inclusion in your beverage gives a refreshing vitamin C boost but if you take it before or during a voice session, it may dry your throat. 

Lifestyle Matters

You may question how your lifestyle choices have anything to do with your voice. Truthfully though, your lifestyle has a significant impact on your voice in multiple ways: stress for starters. Stress tends to tighten up your vocal cords, neck and jaw and can also cause several illnesses resultantly.

Hence, you must avoid stressing out and exercising and sufficient sleep is extremely helpful in this regards.   Secondly, your hygiene choices matter significantly as well. Once we progress into adulthood, we somehow stop paying attention to essential practices such as washing our hands after we’ve been to public places. This is why adults are usually more susceptible to flu bugs because we keep transferring germs onto our faces when we touch our faces with unwashed hand. Repeated cold and flu episodes can damage our vocals bit by bit. 

Food choices are also an essential part of your lifestyle. As a voice acting artist, you need to be very conscious of what you’re eating daily. Spicy and tangy foods are surely appealing but these cause stomach acidity, pushing it towards your esophagus and throat (we call it reflux). This ends up irritating your throat, making your voice sound scratchy. 

Meditation 

A mini meditation for approximately five minutes daily works wonders for your throat. You can relax your neck and throat muscles quite wonderfully with a short session daily and prevent straining your vocals. 

For this meditation, you only need to check for tension in your throat and neck area. Then follow it up with a short exercising of rolling your head from side to side a few times. Practice this exercise by positioning your chin on your chest before you begin rolling. You could add a short yawning exercise too in this session since it further helps relax the vocal and throat areas. 

No Smoking

This should probably go down in all caps most specifically for voice acting artists. Smoking is the worst thing a voiceover artist can do for their vocals and you absolutely refrain from it. The worst irritant for your vocal cords and airways are cigarettes and they build up permanent damage there. 

In fact, not only should you avoid smoking yourself but you must also be careful of not turning into a secondhand smoker. When you’re in the company of those who’re smoking, you inhale just as much of the irritant as puffing on the cigarettes yourself. Ongoing smoking in any form can gradually destroy your vocal fold’s structure and decrease your voice pitch. 

10. Rest Your Vocals Completely in Sickness

One essential tip for your voice during times of illness is to give it a complete break as well to recuperate. When you try to push through voice acting sessions even when you’re sick, you tend to make your voice hoarser. Instead, it is best to let your vocal cords rest too till you have recovered completely, especially during upper respiratory infections or coughing. 

You will instead speed up your recovery if you talk lesser, avoiding straining your vocals and stay hydrated all through the sickness. In fact, if you’re down with a flu or cold during winters, you could even try keeping your neck warm with a muffler or a scarf during the illness.  

Final Thoughts

A few essential practices are necessary for keeping your voice in optimal condition throughout your voice acting career. In addition to speaking softly and avoiding yelling as a permanent habit, it is vital to eat healthy, sleep well and eliminate voice irritants from your daily life. 

With continuous care and mindfulness in matters of your vocal cords health, you’ll maintain optimal quality of voice for the long term.