[00:00:00] Welcome back to Find Your Voice, Rock Your Confidence. I am your host, Sloane Reali and today, you know, we've been talking a lot about the tools in your toolbox. In fact, today's episode is titled How to Use Your Vocal Toolbox, Essential Techniques for a Healthy Voice. Let me say that again. Essential Techniques for a Healthy voice.

Now, we've been talking a lot in re recent episodes. I've been talking about breath. We haven't talked a lot about posture. I'm gonna speak to that a little bit. Embracing your unique sound. That was last week. Lots of fun ways to explore that. Practicing. I haven't spoke a lot to that just yet.

And of course, I talked about finding a community other like-minded. Friends, singers people that wanna do open mics, maybe poetry emerging artists that wanna share their [00:01:00] unique messages. Speaking of, we all know who Billie Eilish is. She's very interesting. You know, for a long time I thought that she just had this tiny, tiny little vocal range of like six notes.

But then I heard her doing some jazz and. I, my mouth was on the floor. It's like, okay, go girl. Anyway, I love today her quote, I'm starting with, according to Billy, there are always going to be bad things, but you can write it down and make a song out of it. So I love that she is very involved in the industry and has contributed awesome and won awards and all kinds of fun things.

So today I'm gonna tweak things just a little bit in addition to, Things I've already addressed in previous podcasts. You know, good breathing posture, embracing your sound, finding your community. I wanna speak to the effects of not doing these things correctly. What can happen when we're not? Taking [00:02:00] care of our voice.

So, you know, the, the very first one, just some simple healthcare things. This is something I complete in person with individuals when they come to me looking for vocal coaching services. But some really simple things. Do this little checklist on yourself. Are you hydrated? Are you drinking enough water?

So, you know, I. Water, food we can live without for a period of time before we disintegrate. Water. We need water. Air. I'm gonna come back to that. We can't go very long without, but water is really, that's that thing when, when we have air and we're breathing as human beings, water is the next thing that our body is looking for.

Hydration. I shared a story, I think it might have been last year, a friend of a family member who had gone out on a fishing trip. It was a [00:03:00] few days, of course, they took, you know, food, water, beer the gentleman came back, got off of the boat and ended up collapsing. We don't know what happened when he was diagnosed.

We didn't have had a heart attack or a stroke or what. Anyway, the, the, the man was hospitalized and. He was hospitalized for dehydration when they asked him, you know, when was the last time you drank water? It had been a few days. So, you know, don't be deceived by thinking, you know, well, I, I drink my coffee, or I, I have my tea and there's water in that you know, other beverages that we might be drinking.

Water is essential now for, for keeping the vocal cord muscles. Hydrated, keeping everything hydrated in our body, but especially if you're using your voice professionally or for singing or hobby or emerging music, whatever you're using your voice for. Hydration is really critical. Things that [00:04:00] dehydrate the vocal cords.

Good thing to know, I've already mentioned them. Caffeine, alcohol, smoke of any kind, vaping, some medications. Those things dehydrate your vocal. Chords now, you know, no shade on any of that. You know, if you're an an adult and you know, these are things that you enjoy, you know, time off, whatever, you know, go for it.

But if you have to use your voice, if you're leading a meeting, if you're jumping on a Zoom call, if you are training. New training, whatever it is, make sure that you're hydrated. Even the singers, I'm encouraging even our karaoke club, you've been hearing about that. I'm still encouraging the singers, you know, have your water nearby.

You know, take a sip of that before you go jump on the mic. It's gonna make things a lot easier. Other things. Foods, certain foods. The only one that I really point out is the effects of dairy. If you are not a big dairy eater, no worries. If you like your cheese, if you like your ice cream, no worries.

Avoid those [00:05:00] things before you have to be using your voice. A lot of emerging podcasters, or I've got some special things coming for all of you in the future. So, keep your, your ears and eyes. Open for that. But if you are launching a podcast, if you are just starting out, if you're feeling this grovey thing, uh uh, sometimes dairy can contribute to that mucusy thing, actually, not sometimes, all the time, any type of dairy, yogurt, cheese, ice cream, milk.

All of those things will create a sticky phlegmy response in the throat. Making it more challenging. You'll find yourself this clearing of the throat needing to clear that out of your vocal cords which is not a good thing to be doing either. So just avoid the dairy. It's a digestion thing. Play with the timing, right?

If you have, you know, milk with cereal in the morning, and then you've got your. Your show or your event a couple of hours later, you should be fine. Pay attention. So much of this is about being mindful. [00:06:00] It's about being intentional, how you're using your voice, what you're putting in your body, what you're consuming, how that affects your voice and the end tonal quality or the sound, the product of that sound, things that are contributing to that.

And then exercise. Okay. Who knew. So anything that you do cardiovascularly to get your heart rate going to, ideally three days a week where you are moving, you're getting that lung capacity in, in, you're increasing lung capacity, you're engaging your cardiovascular system for say, 20, 30 minutes at a time, two, three days a week.

That is all about increasing your lung capacity. So staying hydrated, avoiding dairy before you're going to be using your voice in any particular way, and continuing to exercise. Now that can be swimming, playing basketball. It can be [00:07:00] riding a bike hiking brisk walk. Anything cardio.

It doesn't have to be a long duration. When I am getting artists ready to go on tour, big tours some of my funnest sessions were with the Peachtree Rascal Boys. Love you, miss You. They're all out in Asia doing their Asian tour right now. But getting these guys ready, their first concert ever.

First live performance ever. Was Lalapalooza in Chicago. So who knew? We started out, you know, with the music, with making sure that was all intact. Then we started working out on the stage, their stage presence, how they're going to address their audience, who's where at what time. But a real key, not just for them, but other touring artists have been really getting them in.

Physical shape, not, you know, it's mental is only one piece of this, but connecting that mental to the physical [00:08:00] and being in physical, athletic, endurance type of shape to be on the road, night after night, stage after stage, weeks at a time. Sometimes. Now I'm not saying if you are doing this as a hobby, this is just something that you're doing for fun.

No, no worries. But you start performing regularly, as some of my recent performers discovered, it's a lot. It's one thing to be sitting down at an open mic with your guitar or your piano doing a few songs, but you start incorporating more upbeat songs where you're getting your audience up to dance. You are now moving.

That takes a lot of coordination and one of the, the easiest, quickest ways to do that is to keep yourself in physical and mental. Shape. So there is that. I wanna come back to, you know, the first thing I wanted to address today was the breathing. And if you are a woman listening to this, I have already put a shout out.

I'm gonna put it again. Guys, love [00:09:00] you. No shade. Need you. You're, you're the other piece of all of this. But ladies, if you are listening, please head over when you're done with this. Go get into the Find your voice, rock your confidence. Women's Facebook group. We are going to be addressing for the rest of the month, I'm going to be addressing every Wednesday 2:00 PM Pacific Live.

I'm going to be specifically hunkering down on all about the breath. So there is that coming back to what happens when we're not breathing correctly, what happens to our voice? When we're not, I'm gonna give you a short list here of things that happen when we are not breathing correctly. One, if we are not even connected to that solar plexus muscle, which operates and coordinates the diaphragm muscle.

If we are all up in that shoulders and neck, first of all, we are completely disconnected. We are creating tension in the neck, the shoulders, your [00:10:00] upper back. We're disconnecting, we're not centered. If we are holding back, if you find yourself self, self-censoring yourself for fear of what are they gonna think, what are they gonna say?

I don't wanna look dumb. I don't wanna look like I don't know what I'm doing right? This is not helpful. This con con contributes to. Not being connected to the breath. All right. Vocal fry, that thing there, that is energy sitting in my throat and I'm really exaggerating that right now. But how many people do you know that do this?

I think it is partly a cultural and a generation thing. I find it with a lot of not as much lately, but boy, there was a period there where I felt like every young adult coming into the studio, Was using Fry. If you are an adult that might be using this, you know, again, [00:11:00] bringing it back to mindfulness, bringing it back to being really intentional.

What is happening with your voice? Is it a clean, clear, tonal quality? Is it supported with breath? Vocal fry is an airflow issue that is energy, literally sitting on the vocal cord muscles that needs to be moved out. Stuttering. It's a, an airflow issue. I've had clients come through who can sing complete songs from start to finish without a single stutter, but get them speaking or doing a presentation or leading a meeting at work.

Nervous all up in the head. Total disconnect from the solar plexus, from that breath, right? It's also a different part of the brain. We're using the brain in a different way as well. But the primary issue, the primary way to solve that is breath. A consistent [00:12:00] flow of air not being in the body, shallow breathing.

Overthinking, strain and overuse. Sleep deprivation. Okay, sleep is where our body, everything resets and reboots. If you are not getting a good night's sleep look into reasons why that may be happening. There's so many reasons. To keep us awake at night. But I can't say enough about figuring out good sleep.

You know, I'm talking seven, eight hours a night is what our body needs. Unless if you're suffering with sleep apnea snoring can be disruptive to sleep. There are all kinds of great remedies non-addictive medication, not medications you know, melatonin and other C B D. There's C B n all kinds of products on the market.

That are non-addictive, good for your body, help you get into that sleep state and stay asleep. Not getting enough sleep [00:13:00] will affect how your voice sounds the next day. Stress. Any number, varieties of stress, emotional stress, mental, physical, I already mentioned dehydration. Environmental factors smoking, smog.

Allergies are a real issue right now. After all of the rain that we've had has really, there are things blooming that we haven't. I don't, I've seen things blooming, I've never even seen bloom in the area that I live right now. So all of those factors. Now, you know, I think, and, and again, you know, I'm not a therapist, I am not a doctor.

I'm speaking from my own personal experience, having grown up very sick as a child, heavily medicated prednisone. All kinds of things to keep my airway open. I, I suffered with, with asthma, allergies bronchitis, pneumonia very ill, heavily medicated healthier than I've ever been in my entire life.

I take no medication for anything. [00:14:00] On the rare occasion I might be having an environmental. Allergy ish type thing. I have found that Zyrtec is a pretty benign, very small no side effects. And that has worked for me. So that's just my 2 cents there. So I wanna come back to that breath. All of the things that can affect our breath and how we breathe.

Posture, I have not. Spoke a lot too yet. But posture is definitely key, again, with anything that we're doing, but especially with our voice. And one of the things that has happened with people working more and more online is we tend to collapse that solar plexus muscle. We tend to cave into ourselves, rolling those shoulders forward.

Now we're like the, the, the shape of a, a sea, a giant sea posture. What happens when we're, we're collapsing and on our body and we're not [00:15:00] using that nice tall, that string out of the top of your head, pulling all of those vertebrae from your sacral all the way up through the solar plexus, the lungs up through the top of your head, if any point in your posture.

Is collapsed or kinked, it is going to affect the airway. So I can't say enough about, you know, paying attention. Again. Even if you're sitting in your chair or your car singing, you can still have beautiful posture just by rolling those shoulders up towards the ears and back rolling your hips, tucking those, those hip bones, the sit bones underneath, rolling your hips forward.

That is going to be better than not doing anything at all. So, you can still have beautiful posture, even in a sitting position, which is going to make everything else [00:16:00] easier. So throw out any slouchy habits that you have, right? If you're gonna embrace that inner diva rockstar business, if you're here for singing posture is definitely a piece of that.

My third tip today. I spoke a little bit about embracing your unique sound, right? Practicing one of the things, you know, I, I, I really believe that we all have natural gifts and talents that we've been given. I believe our natural gifts and talents are not for us to keep for ourself, right? We're here to be a light in the world to others around us.

We never know. You never know who you are going to affect. That's sitting in the same room, or maybe you're doing a podcast like myself, somebody who's listening, who you something goes really deep and really touches them in a way that moves them. Story. A woman years ago, [00:17:00] she, her first language was Spanish, but she made it into this Irish band.

I just have to say. A native Spanish speaker. Singing Irish music is one of the most beautiful sounds I've ever heard. So fast forward. She's really nervous. You know, she's new. She's never done this before. She came to me because she just needed some vocal coaching. Didn't know if she could even do this.

They loved her, of course, so I can't even remember her name. It was so long ago. She's singing. It's an Irish pub here in town. It's a packed house. Dan, Sarah, I think was the name of the band. I can't remember. If it's even, I don't even know if it's still around, but they were really fun, upbeat, Irish.

Anyway, she's singing, she's doing her thing at the end of the night. A woman from the way back in the back of the room approaches her. [00:18:00] With tears, and I don't even remember the conversation itself, but the, the point I'm making is that when she sang this song, it moved this audience member so deeply that she made it a point.

To come up and find the singer before she left that evening to let her know. When you sang that song, it reminded me of this thing that happened and I'm, it made me so happy and sad simultaneously, and thank you so for singing that song. Okay. That was exactly the, the last little nugget, the icing on the cake.

The cherry on top. For this singer who, this was just something she was doing for fun. She was not a professional singer. She, she auditioned, she made it into the band. They loved her, they loved her energy, loved her sound. But that is exactly what she needed to keep her going to [00:19:00] know that, wow, I had no idea I could impact somebody to that degree.

So, you know, again, you know, sound, music, everything is vibration. Everything is a frequency. And that's a whole episode in itself. So, Finding your sound. Don't be in a hurry to find your unique sound play experiment. See what resonates with you. See what lights you up, see what gets you excited. Just as well, pay attention to the songs or genres or styles that don't fire you up.

Right. If there's any, anything that, that is not working, you don't need to stick with it. Now, I will. I will admit, when I'm working with new singers, This is not emerging professional artist people, but somebody coming in who's had zero vocal training ever and aren't even sure if they can do this. I would go through our whole evaluation.

If they decide they wanna stay on after that evaluation, [00:20:00] there's never an obligation to continue. But should they stay on? I do give training songs. They're my tried and true. They work forever. They get instant results and so I, I will have a singer sing something that they're not really connected to. And I've had a little bit of a.

You know, I've, I've had new singers say, I really don't like that song, or I just, I just don't feel a connection to that song. Sometimes I'm having you sing something you're not connected to for the purpose of training the vocal chords for the purpose of what that song will teach. You know, if I need you to.

Connect to that breath, I'm gonna have you doing a whole lot of pant breathing and body pulsing. This is part of the technique that I teach in, in songs that you might not really like. If I have someone who is, maybe they're really quiet and they're not used to being loud. You know, I [00:21:00] get this a lot.

Your, that personality style is, you know, I'm good, it's good, but, but the singer wants to do, you know, a big classic rock song or maybe they wanna do a big ballad but they're not quite there yet. So I'm gonna pull out something I've already worked with and I'm gonna have you train on something that you might not be really attached to or even care for, but I'm having you learn the song for the purpose of.

Training that part of your body, training your body to grab that breath, training your body to get open, what I call forwardly placed, right? So, sometimes I have you do songs you might not like for the purpose of training. Now practicing, I haven't spoke a lot to yet either. What I will say is that the more practiced that you are, And the more rehearsed and the more you know your material, whatever it is, whether you're presenting something at work or a [00:22:00] presentation on Zoom or you're going to be singing, so.

The, when that is so ingrained in your body. It, it's kind of funny. I, I, I encourage the singers, you know, you're ready to perform and share a song with the public when it is playing over and over in your head. When you can't, you go to bed at night and it's still playing. You wake up in the morning and there's that song again.

Those are great. Songs to perform things that you know so well. If you have to do it again, you're just, you're gonna get sick. You can't stand it any longer. But well rehearsed, well, you know, it, it's in your body, you know your cues, you know your, your power pauses right now. There is the other extreme of that.

There is being so practiced and so rehearsed that you've literally. The life is gone. It's, it's [00:23:00] just become this rote thing that you're doing. So it, it really is, it's a dance between being practiced and ready to go out and share it, be of service to the audience that you're gonna be sharing it with.

Right. Getting out of your head. It's not about you. Right. We're, we're trying to get out of the self and be of service, love and service always. And that place where you've done it so many times that it's just dry, rote, boring, you can't even bring life into it live anymore. Because, because now even you are sick of it.

So there is a dance, it's a fine line, but once you find it, that's where you wanna hang out. And then finding your support system surrounding yourself with like-minded singers, mentors, coaches. Peers you know, finding that community where you can all shine together, work together in a creative sense.

Now, one of the things that [00:24:00] happens when we don't have that support right today is, is what happens when we don't have people to support us in a creative endeavor like this. Well, I. You'll find pretty fast if you don't have somebody that is giving you feedback, that is supporting you, that's making you know, suggestions, you know, and of course, you know, it's two ways, you know, if you're working with other people, you know you contributing as well, but, It can be a lonely road if you're on your own.

Right now, I personally, I, I am a, a lifelong learner. I am very big on professional coaching. I also have, I have my own. Vocal coach. I haven't seen her forever. Shout out Kimberly Ford, wherever you are. I'm not sure what she's doing. I know we have a, a jazz camp scheduled this summer but it's being held in Los Angeles this year.

So, Kim Collins Kimberly Ford. I will miss you. I can't, I can't make my way down there this year, but [00:25:00] coaching, mentoring huge. Right now I am in. I'm probably in three different, they're a combination of coaching mentoring, networking groups for women, and, and it's, it's relatively new. After the pandemic, I, I honestly didn't even.

Think I was still going to have my vocal coaching business. I didn't, I had not caught on and I didn't see that you can do this online until after I was very late to that party. And what happened is I really got out of the progress or the, the, I got out of this is gonna be an edit right here at 26.46.

We're gonna delete all of that there. I got out of the practice. Of being in the rooms with other women. Other peers, other women professionals and entrepreneurs like myself. And it, it was scary. You know? [00:26:00] All I had was my own, you know, thoughts in my head telling me, okay, Sloan, this is it. You're going down again.

You know, Close your doors and say thank you to the universe. It's been a great ride, but I had actually, my book publisher suggested that I go plug into the eWomen Network. Little shout out ladies. And it was the best decision I have made for myself this year. I plugged in. I'm, I'm networking, I'm on the monthly meetings.

I'm in a mastermind, very small group of women where we are coming together, sharing our challenges, and I am so on fire, like it really just having. Other women around me saying, yeah, what are you doing, Sloan? Get on the bus, let's go. And the feedback has been phenomenal for upcoming programs and courses and other things I'm gonna be [00:27:00] offering coming up real soon.

So don't. Try to be a lone ranger. You know, even if you're just doing this for fun. I've mentioned in the recent weeks, go get yourself plugged into what's going on in the community. You know, Facebook, you can go look, you know, Facebook, you know, live music notes I think is something we've got here in town.

You know, open mics, karaoke go. Plug in. Don't be shy. There is somebody else waiting to connect with you out there. There's someone else who can't wait to join forces with you and contribute and give you feedback. So for today, how to use your vocal toolbox essential techniques. For not just a healthy voice.

Today really is a, the holistic approach, right? What's going on in your head? Keeping yourself physically healthy with posture, breathing, eating the right foods that support an a sustainable clean. [00:28:00] Clear, vocal, tonal quality for your voice, whatever you're using it for. So on that note, thanks so much for tuning in today.

I'd love if you got anything out of this. If you are curious about, you know, maybe I should check out some vocal coaching, please go to the link in the show notes. And schedule. There's a link there to schedule a call. It is a discovery session. It's complimentary. There's no charge for it. It's 30 minutes.

Go get yourself on my calendar and let's have a conversation about your voice. If you're just curious, you're just wondering, I don't know, you know, too old, too young, too busy, not enough money, not enough time, all that stuff. I just, I just throw all that stuff out because none of those are reasons why you should not be exploring your voice today.

Our voice. It, it's so much fun. It's not rocket science. So [00:29:00] on that note, keep calm and sing a song.