This is incredibly unscientific, but take a stab at it anyway....

Raspiness plagues many singers. Some singers get a raspy voice because they are suffering from a cold or sinusitis. Others have raspy voices from short term vocal fatigue and on long- term over use. There are things you can do to help preserve and strengthen your voice when it is hoarse. This article will discuss how to clear your raspiness in singing.

                The activity that yields the most immediate results is breathing in steam. The great thing about steam is that it immediately reaches the vocal chords when you breathe it in. A few ways you can breathe in steam is by drinking hot tea, taking a hot shower or wrapping a hot wet towel around your neck. Steam paired with lemon and honey hydrates the vocal cords and clears phlegm to make your voice much clearer and easy to use. Another way to overcome raspiness is to monitor how much you talk.

                Singers need to realize that the vocal cords they use to speak are the same vocal cords they use to sing. If you talk loudly or often throughout the day our voice will not be a full capacity when its time to sing. Take note of how loudly you speak. You may find that you talk with the windows down or over mucous while riding in your car. You may also find that you talk over loud cafeteria noise at work or school. All of these things wear down on your voice. Lastly, a way to overcome raspiness is to sing ‘off the voice.

                There is a technique called singing in the mask/ singing in mixed voice/ or singing in the middle voice' that helps you to overcome raspiness. The technique allows you to place your voice in a highly resonant area of our face so that you are using natural acoustics, which is your skull, to project the sound. The technique makes you feel a ‘buzz' in your lips, nose and eyes. You are essentially singing ‘over' the raspiness to produce a clearer sound.

                Raspiness/ hoarseness can happen for many reasons. Very few voices are naturally raspy. Most voices have become raspy due to illness or misuse; In any case, these are some great ways to overcome raspiness. Hot steam, monitoring your speech and singing in the mask will help you speak or sing with a clearer, more resonant voice.



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Here are three tips to overcome performance anxiety:

1.  Know your material very well. Practice reciting it while imagining you are actually in front of people. You never know what you’ve truly memorized and what you haven’t until you try to perform it.  You will probably black out the first  few times but it’s a good thing to learn how to get through these feelings and still perform. The next step is to perform it in front of a few loved ones.  Don’t be silly and laugh if you mess up. Instead, give a serious rendition and allow them to tell you where you need improvement. If you can this enough times you will allow yourself to adjust to the initial shock of performing for an audience. 

2. Do breathing exercises to reduce your performance anxiety. Breathing exercises help to release tension in your throat and abdomen. Before you start, inhale and count to four and exhale and count to four.  Doing slow breathing also slows down your heartbeat. This helps to reduce your nervous feeling and make you more relaxed and focused when performing. 

3.  ‘Getting into character’ helps with performance anxiety. It may help to imagine yourself as someone else while performing. You can channel their personality and confidence so that you don’t feel so vulnerable while performing. Consider it acting in some ways. Study the writer’s perspective and allow yourself to become that character when singing. To do that, you should study how the ‘voice ‘of the song thinks, feels, and acts. Empathize and embody that message when you sing. Remember, the audience essentially just wants to hear the message you are bringing anyway. You just happen to be the messenger.

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So, there 3 types of vibrato I generally use in my singing. There aren't any labels for them, but I think as i describe how i use them for singing you'll understand.

1. The Fast Vibrato. I spent a long time trying to match the pulsations of Whitney Houston and I finally got it! I use that the most because I sing urban music which tends to have alot of runs. Also, urban music doesn't always have the most colorful melodies so  I add fast vibrato to give it personality, depth, and movement. It gives my voice a bright, weightless feel, which i like.

2. The Natural Generic Vibrato- I use this when practicing non- urban songs. That fast vibrato does NOT transcend genres, so you have to have a slower fuller one so you don't always sound like a church singer on every song! Learning to relax the back of the throat will give you the flexibility to sing many genres with a relaxed tone. My goal is to always sing with a vibrato that is double the time of the meter, especially when recording. So it sounds clean when you start stacking your vocals.

3. Heavy prominent vibrato- This vibrato works great with stage singing like plays or choirs. It makes your voice sound bigger and fuller. When you round your words with it it helps create drama. This is done by creating a little wobble in the back of the throat. the sound is 'throaty' or tense'. It is often accompanied by chest voice singing.

Those are the 3 vibrato techniques I use in my singing. Please comment on this and tell me what you think!!

So I've been thinking about vibrato all week and wanted to share two vibrato types that are completely undesirable under any circumstance: the wobble and the tremolo. There is never a time when these two vibratos are acceptable. 

T is a sign of too much looseness at the base of the tongue. It is often accompanied by an unnatural darkness of tone. As the term 'wobble' implies, the vibrations are too far apart and the two notes are too distinguishable.

Tremolo occurs when there is an unnecessary amount of tension at the base of the tongue. It is often accompanied by an unnatural 'lightness' of tone, or a falsetto sound. It gives the impression of a sheep's 'baaa'.

Both of these are signs of'overkill' in some area and you need to find balance in your singing. Here's a tip that may help:

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