Vocal Health 101
Te impending end of a school year inspires thoughts of summer relaxation and those comical Facebook memes depicting teachers holding on to the last weeks by their finger- nails. Te much-anticipated break also can be a good time to assess how one’s vocal cords are working and make a plan to work towards greater vocal health and efficiency. Te sum- mer months allow a time for recuperation and rejuvenation for not only the vocal mechanism, but also mental and physical health. In contem- plating restorative efforts towards vocal health, this article will consider 1) what the profession in general knows about music teacher vocal health (via current research), 2) common vocal disorders and their causes, 3) effective daily vocal exercises to prevent and remediate vocal problems and 4) relevant lifestyle practices that can enhance daily vocal production.
What does literature tell us?
Teaching has been identified as an occupa- tion with great risks to vocal health. Research suggests that as many as 58% of teachers have experienced a vocal disorder during their teaching careers. Moreover, and not surpris- ingly, vocal music teachers are among the most likely to develop and complain of vocal discom- fort. Among these teachers, most report that they miss at least one day of school each year due to vocal duress. Unfortunately, with more experience comes an increase in incidences of vocal distress (Tibeault, Merrill, Roy, Gray and Smith; 2004).
Empirical inquiry has also studied the relation- ship between vocal hygiene habits and music teacher vocal health (Hackworth, 2007). Teach- ers in an experimental study were presented with information on vocal anatomy, voice stressors and healthy vocal practices. Subjects were also presented with videos of healthy and unhealthy vocal folds and made aware of the basics of room acoustics and psychological and physical stress factors that affect vocal produc- tion. Results of this study suggest that teachers who are armed with healthy approaches to vocal production and employ them regularly reported improvement in daily vocal perfor- mance in their music classrooms.
Charles E. Norris
Additional study (Hackworth, 2009) has revealed that vocal music teachers do possess vague awareness of factors that enhance vocal health such as drinking water and healthy vocal modeling. Additional understanding was demonstrated in behaviors that detract from vocal health such as smoking, throat clear- ing and speaking over noisy classrooms. Said awareness seems to increase with experience. Although research suggests that teachers have rudimentary understanding of the tenets of vocal health and that instruction leading to healthier vocal production is effective and per- ceived as necessary, it is possible that a greater emphasis on vocal health—not merely vocal pedagogy—is needed in pre-service training for music teachers (Baker and Cohen, 2016).
What are common disorders in the vocal mechanism?
Vocal folds are muscles and respond to both deliberate and accidental actions just like other muscles in our bodies. When we twist or sprain an ankle, we experience pain, swelling and compromised mobility. Te vocal folds, some of the most fragile muscles in the human body, also respond to stress. McKinney (2013) identi- fies three broad categories of vocal disorder: 1) organic—having to do with genetic and phys- iological make-up of one’s body, 2) external— having to do with pollution and elements in the environment such as pollen, humidity, sec- ond-hand smoke and 3) functional—having to do with a person’s overuse or abuse of the vocal mechanism, such as yelling, harsh clearing of the throat, speaking at a less than optimal pitch level, smoking, excessive use of alcohol, dehy- dration and lack of sleep. Functional disorder is by far the greatest category related to vocal disorders and most readily corrected. Vocal dis- orders are manifested by a variety of symptoms, including loss of voice (laryngitis—swelling and drying of the vocal cords), nodules, polyps and cord bowing.
Gates, Forest and Obert (2013) provide clear descriptions of the aforementioned common symptoms of vocal distress. Vocal nodules are bumps on the vocal folds that form from exces-
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Choral
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