In which I do something I don’t think I’ve ever done here: give a vocal lesson!

I have a friend who kicks ass when she shows up at karaoke. She’s been in bands. She’s a singer. She comes to my gigs sometimes.

She posted this article on Facebook today, and I read it, and damn if it doesn’t need a rebuttal. And I’m just the woman to do it! (If you’re too lazy to read the link, it’s basically a bunch of bullshit about how your diet has a profound effect on your voice box, and how you should “eat light proteins” and “avoid dairy” before gigs.)

Over the years I’ve tried it all, and I’m here to tell you that it’s all bullshit. Your voice is no more sensitive to environmental factors than your ankles are. Yes, if you sprain your ankle you’ll need to rest it until it’s healed, but other than that you probably never really think about how your diet or the weather are affecting your gait. No one ever goes around saying dumb shit like, “I can’t have dairy an hour before I walk, because it messes up my ankles.”

The only meaningful factor affecting the voice box – beyond actual, literal illness – is your brain. That throat clearing thing you do? Has nothing to do with your diet. It’s all in your head. There’s nothing in your throat. (And you should stop doing it, by the way. It’s percussive. It’s bad for the voice.) The most important lesson any vocalist can grok is this one: you sound the same no matter how you feel. If you record your performances and compare the actual performances to your subjective experiences, you’ll soon realize that your subjective experience is bullshit. The subjective experience is in your mind and not in your voice, and it’s there to protect your ego from failure. Which means that it’s a lie and that it should be ignored until it goes away, which it eventually will.

If you let your mind dictate the state of your voice, you will never have to accept the results of your performances. It will always what you ate, or the weather, or germs, or the fact that you’re fatigued, or the fog, or the wind, or some factor outside your control that caused you to give a poor performance. And as long as you remain so helpless, you’ll never give the performances you’re capable of giving.

I’ve learned over the years that the only things that actually affect my voice are being sick and air travel, both of which make my voice sound a little bit dry. I’ve tried every single remedy there is and even hot water with lemon and honey doesn’t change the timber of a voice that’s honestly, genuinely dry due to coughing or flying. Though such remedies can be soothing enough to change my subjective experience and help me give a more emotionally present performance, they don’t change the way the voice sounds or the notes it can (or can’t) hit. The voice is either well or it’s not, and unwellness comes from percussive damage (coughing or screaming) or swelling, and not what you had for breakfast.

In short, it’s all silly singer superstition. Your voice box is part of your body, and it’s it’s just as adaptive and resilient as the rest of you. It doesn’t need a special diet. It doesn’t need you to baby it. You’ll want to avoid screaming and coughing where you can, and you’ll want to work it out regularly (it is, after all, a muscle), but other than that it needs no more special dietary care than your left quadriceps.

And anyone who tells you otherwise is protecting her own ego by maintaining a false belief that she doesn’t have total control over her own instrument.

It’s all in your head. Seriously. I’m telling you this from experience. And I’m also telling you that once you realize that it’s all in your head and that you have control over your instrument, you’ll be able to really, truly sing.

vocal cords: Two ligaments covered by a thin lining that vibrate to produce sound that is located in the larynx. The two ligaments are like stiff elastic bands, and behave like the strings of a musical instrument.