Professional Sound Hygiene

Voice Exercises

Professional Vocal Hygiene Do regular vocal exercises.  Just as an athlete needs to exercise regularly to keep their muscles in top condition during performance, you should perform vocal exercises daily to optimise your vocal muscles and other structures. These exercises increase your respiratory support, ensure optimum flexibility of your vocal cords and are essential for quality resonance. Always start all vocal exercises with warm-up exercises and finish with cool-down exercises.

Physical Exercise

Professional Voice Hygiene Do regular physical exercise.  Remember, your voice is a reflection of your mental and emotional state and even how you feel about your whole body. Think about how your voice sounds when you have a pain somewhere or when you feel bad. Don't others, even those on the phone, notice that something is wrong? Therefore, a healthy body is essential for a healthy voice! With regular physical exercise, not only will your body posture improve, but you will also avoid stress, which we will discuss in detail later on about its effects on the voice. Correcting your body posture positively affects your respiratory support with proper skeletal and muscular support.

Smoking and Tobacco Use

Professional Voice Hygiene - Don't smoke!!!  It is not easy to understand why someone who cares about their voice smokes. Of course, we know that 60% of Turkish men and 20% of Turkish women smoke and that around 100,000 people die from smoking-related causes in our country every year, but what exactly does this bad habit do to vocal health? Smoking primarily leads to dehydration, i.e. loss of water.

Dehydration dries out the entire vocal tract, starting with the lips, and leads to irritation and inflammation in these areas. It also causes hoarseness and roughness in the voice, i.e. deterioration in voice quality. The worst thing is that passive smoking, i.e. being in places where there is a lot of smoking as a non-smoker, also has a negative effect on voice quality. Finally, you know that smoking kills (just look at the warnings on cigarette packs).   Cancer of the larynx (throat) is almost never seen in non-smokers and smoking is the main cause of laryngeal and lung cancers!

Drink water - Drink water - Drink water!

Professional Vocal Hygiene - Drink enough fluids. In order for your vocal cords to perform at the desired level, they need at least 2 litres of caffeine-free fluid intake daily. The healthiest liquid for your voice is water. Drinking 8-10 glasses of water a day not only provides the necessary lubrication for your vocal cords, but also reduces the necessary subglottic (pressure from under the vocal cords) pressure. Of course, these needs increase when performing in hot spots or at outdoor concerts in the heat. Unfortunately, sugary, alcoholic and caffeinated drinks do not provide the positive effects of water; instead, they lead to dehydration and increase your fluid needs.

I wish you a healthy voice.