Dr. Rose PCMEA

“Exercise good vocal hygiene, reasonable care- not paranoia- and you should have few, if any, problems.” Scott McCoy

 Excess voice loading: amount of voice use level of voice use emotional factors (stress)  Classroom acoustics (or, even worse, outside!)  Background noise  Atmospheric irritants/Humidity levels

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 Warm up before you teach  Build in rest periods  Amplify or use other signals  Vary the voice color  Avoid overuse  Find ways to limit stress in the voice  Modify bad acoustics  Stay healthy  Avoid irritants

 Do a singing warm-up! OR  Stretch the body  Hiss  Humming sirens  Buzzy sirens

 Breaks  No yelling!  Avoid talking over noise  Avoid coughing/throat clearing  Avoid whispering  Only give 95%  Limit non-work use  If you become hoarse, back off

 Hydrate/avoid dehydrating medications  Control or avoid reflux  Don’t smoke

 Very soft glides  Measure maximum phonation time  Compare s/z ratio

 Rest the voice!  Sleep!  Steam

  side_the_Voice_e-book.html side_the_Voice_e-book.html

 Is Your Voice Telling on You? How to Find and Use Your Natural Voice by Daniel R. Boone is out of date, but quite good  The National Center for Voice and Speech ( has a helpful list of common medications and their effect on voice at as well as many other useful areas, especially in the health section of the sitehttp://  is a site set up to help people with voice disorders, but has very clear information about anatomy and physiology