2-26-9 What I remember from when I was regularly singing was that: If I didn't sing for a couple weeks, like in between contract gigs that would happen sometimes during my bar band years, the first night back, or at the latest, midway into the second night, my voice would fracture and go hoarse; this was fairly common on the 2-nite-a-week gigs. The 5 day layoff between the weekend gigs usually let my strained vocal chords spring back toward normal. Early on, when the 3-nights-per-week gigs kicked in—one of which lasted a continuous year and a half!--were the worst to make it through that extra night with much of any 'pleasantness' left in my pathetic croak. But after just a week or 2, I found an extra durability that I would compare to callouses had built themselves into the fabric (?) of my vocal chords, and instances of hoarseness became fewer, then few. With onset of 4-night-per-week gigs, they hardened up even further and I never got hoarse again; until another 2 or 3 week layoff would occur again and, to a lesser degree, I'd go through the entire process-of-vocal-chord-re-acclimatization to the renewed levels-of-insistent demand on the singer whose dream strives for the pride of achieving that experienced level of proficiency, commonly defined as professional. Just as fingertips will grow callouses where the worst stresses are exerted by the musician's & instrument's demands, so will the vocal chords do the same; as will most areas of the human body. When pressed to new, abnormal duty, these luscious beautiful bodies of ours do fabulous duty on adapting & evolving to meet challenges found in all things, thoughts, activities, & attempted ones. And yes: Not being able to hear what I am singing sucked and sucks (From my perspective, I thought that your drummer should have been using brushes, & a sweeter more 'throaty' but 'light'-sounding cymbal. Your vocal chords were put under undue stress by the jangly nature of the drummer's crashes, & they proved unable to overcome the challenge. My instantaneous reaction to the DVD you just sent me, was an 'A-ha!” flash that explained why your voice shot itself—or, at least one of the many potential causatives of the condition of vocal chord failure commonly referred to as going hoarse. Later on in this letter I will mention another one. So: It was the extra hours spent singing in the 4-nighter weeks that further toughened my vocal chords, which strongly suggests to me that the ancient adage of practice-makes-perfect certainly holds true. ¶ Other parts of my functioning & constantly-adapting brain/body-vocal chord LOOP (is that where the term loopy comes from?) had also adapted itself to the increased demand by exerting a stricter 'husbanding' of the levels-of-output energies expended in an improved way that no longer allowed hoarseness to develop. ¶ I suggest that you might blow the money on a singing coach who calls her/himself a professional, with an eye toward gleaning more 'tricks' & truths seemingly mostly required for becoming rated as professional—the class implications in what I am writing about here demand an interjection into the train-of-thought I must have thought that I was pursuing before becoming distracted by the mention of class; which insists commentary: I believe that true art transcends petty issues in opposition to who gets to chose who is what class and who gets to define what class means, or should mean. Kind of a bunkum issue; what do they call that? A red herring: obfuscations thrown into a debate to confuse the issue. Oh yeah: Professional-grade quality is what I guess I meant, as opposed to professional class. But you know what I mean--I hope--when I suggest that a consultation for critical evaluation by one of those voice coaches who are worth their business card's claims, might prove to further, expose some as-yet-to-be sensed missing link type aid(s) in your future attempts to successfully-manage your voice-control worry factors. The dream states: The higher the quality (and creativity) of the performer's performances: The more gainfully-employed they will, or at least ought to become in an ideal world, become. Of course, when, or if, you think, as have I: that striving for gainful enjoyment tops the rat race seeking gainful employment by a factor of maybe 10-to-one, in my 'book. I get pretty plenty-satisfyingly high excited to just even think of realizing the musical quotient of the artist living in my genetic stuff's uncompromisingly continual surefire control over who we (think, wish, or actually) are & be & do; & how, when, where, & what we find fun, why we 'find' it 'fun', & the fun pleasures, as well as probably the not-so fun ones—and what guilty-pleasures we radiate toward.
Another very real potential threat to vocal chord reliability where dancing is going on is the additional and substantial dust getting raised from the (lower class) dancefloor by dozens of bouncing and stomping adults. That—ingested with each gulp and gasp—can (and did!) cause hoarseness to occur. I got sicker 'n shit from the dust raised by dancers at a blues band too doo at the North Bend community center about 10 years ago. Not having played or frequented dancehalls for a long time, I had forgotten about this threat's necessity for one to exert a caution when in that enviroment—plus: I was having too much 'fun' dancing to really have much of any sane brain in gear at the moment; and paid for it by hacking some ugly worrisome phlegm out from my lungs for 2 weeks thereafter. During those bar band years, I was able to interject a slow song or two in order to let the dust settle before whomping it up again. I have always radiated toward fast-metered songs, and only (reluctantly) did the slow stuff for dust-management considerations. Another factor in doing the slow songs was my awareness of the sweaty hyped up dancing couples' lusts to get some fresh belly-to-belly rubbing &squeezin' too—dancing has many similarities to mating dances in the natural world, and can satiate many of the associated desires of both sexes, until “last call for alcohol” spews forth from the bartender, and they can head for home toward the consummation of their favorite activity of the late night. I bet that just a session or 2 with a qualified voice coach will provide you some more tools in vocal-chord-management; plus experimental ideas to incorporate into any singer's struggle to achieve professional performing quality status level, etc.
I already told you about the beauty of the best time I ever feel that, as a singer, I really was in a ZONE-of-excellence for one night where I had hung my speaker cabinets above crowd level at the rear of the dancehall, 60-70 feet away, aiming back at the stage, so the sound of my voice was coming directly at the back of my microphone: the most optimum chance for limiting potential for the awful interference of feedback. And the band noise prevented most of my voice's echo-rebound off the bandstand's rear wall from re-entering the mike on its rebound, and suffered no feedback fuckups the whole night, while at the same time, was able to crank my mike's volume-knob up double above what most other crappier sound systems (attempted; or just plain not thought out) set ups allowed, as a rule. And heard myself so darn loud and clearly that I think I sang about as best ever as I ever have that evening. I know that I did not come away from that gig with the more usual sour taste feeling from all of the dozens and dozens of the more-lame sound set ups that I have experienced dictatorial use of during my performing times.
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