Singing with a sore throat….. I’ll tell you something…. It really wasn’t too many years ago when the slightest inkling of a cold or sore throat would keep me from playing live. It didn’t happen too often but it did sometimes. I can remember having night on stage where I ‘m still not exactly sure how I was able to squeak the notes out. However there were times I’ve had enough “notice” to cancel a show and other times that I didn’t and the show had to go on.

For whatever the reason the years 2009-2010, and even into 2011, have been particularly bad years in terms of my general health and throat health specifically. Part of the reason may stem from my frequency of playing, or it just may be that there’s all kinds of bugs going around lately. In any case the last couple of years I’ve been playing most weekends and have found that most of the time when I’m approaching the microphone lately, I’m feeling a little uneasy and unconfident about how I may sound that particular evening. However, I’m not in a position to cancel every weekend so somewhere along the way I decided I would just make the best of it and do my best, whether I would be singing with a sore throat or not.

To be honest with you all, I believe that I can hear the difference between what I consider to be my personal strongest voice, and the singing I’ve been doing as of late, although most of it may be the difference in feeling between the two ends of the spectrum. The truth is that I still have plenty of people come up to me and tell me what an “amazing job” I’m doing or whatever. Regardless of what I think of myself ( I tend to be my harshest critic), I do have to take what the audience says to heart at least a little bit. They have no idea that I’m singing with a sore throat. They just think it sounds good. I’ve spent a bit of time deliberating on this matter and have come up with what I believe to be the soulution to the problem of singing with a sore throat. It seems to be working for me at least.

The single most important tool in your tool box of singing techniques when you’re feeling this way is the ability to tap the power of your head voice and your mixed voice. I talk about the power of these wo voices all throughout my website and do so for a reason. It’s fairly well known that head voice and mixed voice will help you hit higher register notes while removing strain in your throat. When it comes down to singing with a sore throat, this is exactly what you need. Less strain. I learned the basics of using my head voice by purchasing the Singing Success program by Brett Manning. I sincerely urge you to check it out. Brett teaches you that you can sing in a more quiet and relaxed type of manner, while hitting higher notes, and removing the strain. This has been HUGE for me in terms of continuing to go on stage every week. I’m not saying that I think I sing like a bird every week, but there have been plenty of weeks in the last couple of years where I’ve wondered how the night was going to go, and it ended up being just fine, better than fine much of the time. Even more, I’m getting better and better at singing in this condition each time I do it.

I have found with Brett’s course however that while he easily illustrates how easy it is to sing high notes and remove the strain. It’s still really been up to me to make it work for my application. I’ve had to “play with” my facial muscles while I sing, “play with” the muscles in my throat etc to learn each note of some songs and find the easiest way to hit each of those notes with less strain.

But generally I just relax use the quietest voice I can muster up, and go from there. Oddly enough this doesn’t seem to compromise power in the voice. At the end of the day, the power is really coming from your PA system anyways. It’s actually better because your vocal output is more even and controlled. You don’t need to sing louder to go higher. This is the single biggest answer to singing with a sore throat. Period.

Another thing that can be a factor when you’re singing live is your monitor system. For people who’ve never sang on stage in a club or larger settings, a monitor system is a system of smaller speakers on stage that the performers would use to “monitor” how they sound. They’re usually wedge shaped and are pointing back at the performer. This is used because the main sound system is pointed out to the audience so they can hear the performance. Of course you (the performer) may not be able to hear the mains at all from the stage when a band is playing behind you so the monitors are required to allow you (the performer) to hear adequately.

The problem is that over the course of an evening conditions change in a club. Generally more people come in over the course of an evening  and this affects the reverberation in the room, as well raising the temperature and maybe humidity in a room. All of these things add up to a changing environment, and can cause what once a really good sounding monitor system,  to become a system that you just can’t hear. If you’re singing with a sore throat this is your worst nightmare. If you can’t hear you’re just not going to be able to pull it off and you may even do further damage in trying to hear you voice.

Enter the wireless in ear monitor system. These little systems are just the best for rectifiying the problem of not being able to hear. I got turned on these systems a couple of years ago. I was playing in a band that needed the system to run click tracks for our backing tracks. Since we had the monitor I decided to try it out as it was originally intended, since it could serve both functions so easily. The improvement in my singing was instant. After about an hour of using this system all of the guys in the band commented that I had “never sounded better” and I’ve heard this same feeling echoed in forums all over the web.

The bottom line is this. An in ear monitor system pumps the sound of your voice right into your ear. When you can hear, you don’t have to push as hard. If you’re singing with a sore throat then you really want to sing in a very relaxed fashion. The in-ear monitor system helps you to hear in this case. Plain and simple.

I liked the idea so much that I’ve actually bout a couple of systems. The one I would recommend to somebody just starting out and on a limited budget would be the Nady system. You can buy them brand new for about $200 and they work well. They are a Nady system though so they’ve been known to be a tad noisy and some audiophiles out there in internet land say that they’re crap. My personal feeling is that they do what they’re intended to do, and that is to allow me to hear my voice more easily.

My other system is a Shure PSM200. It cost a fair bit more but you can definitely note the difference between the two. The Shure operates on a variety of channels that are user selectable, as well as being better sounding, quieter, user friendly, easy to hook up, better ear buds, etc. If you have the money I would definitely recommend this one. At this point I use my Nady only as a back up.

Both Systems have limiters built into them to protect your hearing. If you look on the web you can find info on how to mod the Nady to make it louder. I have done this mod. I ended up frying my limiter circuit on the Nady and would not recommend that you make any changes because your warranty will obviously be voided when you change the factory settings. I’ve since replaced the unit however because I do think it’s worth every cent.

In any case, either of these two systems will help you when singing with a sore throat is your only option.

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