Are You Straining to Sing? Advice from Celebrity Voice and Performance Coach Jeannie Deva

Tue, 10/07/2014 - 3:41pm
Written by Jeannie Deva

You can hear it in the quality and feel it in your throat when it happens. The muscles tense and pull, your tone gets kind of pinched, pitchy and shrill. And if your voice doesn’t break you can consider yourself lucky.

Perhaps you only experience strain on certain occasions. You might think it’s because you weren’t born to sing in certain keys or just have a naturally low voice or the song is wrong for you (even though you love it).

And it’s true; you can lower the key or simply cut out certain songs from your repertoire. But, there is a hidden reason why you may find yourself straining. Not knowing what it is makes it easy to blame it on other things. That, not being the real reason, keeps the solution illusive and at arm’s length. So, are you ready for the unveiling of the guilty party?

What is Strain?