I’ve been away from the habit of delivering long orations, so today in my first class returning from a long break, I suffered from wobbly knees, and worst of all, I only made it halfway through lecture before my voice started to rasp and fade. Uh-oh. I have many more hours of talking ahead of me.
After class, I ran out and bought some chamomile tea, and also some honey lemon ginseng tea. I think I’ll bring a cup to my classes so I can lube up partway through. Does anyone have recommendations for habits/chemical reagents that I should use to strengthen my voice and to help me get through hour long lectures on very dry topics?
There was a well known ancient Greek orator whose name I forget who said to go to the beach and talk above the roaring surf with pebbles in your mouth. (Probably not Cocoa Pebbles)
Hot lemonade (as hot as you can drink it) sweetened with a bit of honey is excellent for dry, scratchy, throats.
Fresh ginger tea is also good, but dried ginger seems to lose its medicinal properties. Fresh ginger tastes better too, spicy and lemony.
i researched this at one point. Singing instructors say you have to stay well hydrated, that the topical solutions (e.g., tea, mist) don’t work as well. That said, things are so dry in the winter, maybe a humidifier at night?
oh, and it’s topical but Neti Pots. Neti Pots solve everything (almost), and they are the one traditional technique that is endorsed by scientists. bonus: will also lower your chances of catching bugs from your students.
Neti pots can be dangerous if the water is contaminated. I usually just get the spray saline stuff you can find in the allergies/colds part of the pharmacy section of a supermarket.
I was gonna suggest joining the choir or finding a vocal coach on campus. Channel your inner Bruce Dickinson.
I wish the was a digital thingy you could program to speak your lecture, with the option of using the voice of Richard Attenborough or Brian Blessed.
Then you only need to jump in with answers to questions and additional comments.
@Hemidactylus – you are correct. I should have mentioned to boil the water first. Thanks.
@6 birgerjohansson or, Gilbert Gottfried
Use a PA. Something like this. https://www.amazon.com/800W-Portable-Bluetooth-Speaker-Built/dp/B07XZFNZ5D
After decades of lecturing, I reckon PZ is well inured to its rigours and familiar with its challenges.
I noticed a tone of confidence after a recent video, about warming up.
Come game day, there goes that optimism. :|
I reckon doing additional work to ‘build up’ is not the go.
Just lecturing is itself work, so adding to that load is a bit silly.
No spring chicken, he.
(He knows all this, of course)
Can I recommend the Lax Vox method?
It’s used to treat issues with the voice, but is also popular with speakers and singers who want to warm up their voice before they start. The back pressure caused by the bubbles massages the vocal folds, and it helps train your body to regulate the air flow from your belly when using your voice.
My wife teaches in lengthy classes and suffered vocal issues for a prolonged time, this helped her recover and regain. I use it for singing warmup, as do many singers. In experience a noticeable improvement in the voice, both sound and feel.
There are many videos online with different exercises, as per need. It pays to follow the instructions closely though. Just bubbling into any odd milkshake doesn’t cut it.
I experience… Where’s the edit button when you need one.
And it’s not the back pressure from the bubbles but from the water against the exhaling, of course. The depth of the straw / tube regulates the pressure.
PZ, I am sorry to mention something that will be of little practical use to you, but one of the quickest remedies I’ve ever found for hoarseness is gargling bourbon.
Let it linger on the back of your throat for a long time as you breathe out, and your throat rapidly becomes completely anesthetized.
Sorry, but, don’t swallow the bourbon! (That cures other things, not the throat.)
However, this seems rather impractical to do during class, so I’m afraid it’s not of great use to you for me to have brought it up. Just store the info away for some other occasion.
Exoskeleton!
Maybe Elon is working on one!
They do have wireless mics in the classroom I presume? Or you could get them to set it up for you.
I suffer from a repetitive cough which induces asthma attacks. I use a Swiss herbal candy called Ricola. The herbs in it ease the irritation which causes the coughing. you can dissolve tthem in you mouth for an hour or so and they give several hours relief. You have to get the Original Recipe. The other varieties don’t seem to work as well.
Voice actors have talked about a tea called throat coat.
hillaryrettig1 @7
Neti pots just seem too involved for me. I basically squirt pressurized saline up my nose on occasion. Is there much difference between a squirt bottle of saline and a neti pot? The squirt bottle seems more convenient.
A friend with asthma turned me on to this hack. I do use a swab of isopropyl on the tip afterward and discard the bottle if I hadn’t used it for a while. And I’m probably taking a risk on the contamination of the saline.
I’m scared of getting shower water up my nose because the chance of deadly nasties in municipal water.
I watched some oddball video about ways to stimulate your vagus nerve, for whatever ungodly reason, but one suggestion was…humming. That might be a way to soothe and exercise your voice.
Duckbilled Platypus leaned into the vocal coach stuff. That might have been something to consider proactively before returning. It’s not just for singing.
garydargan‘s use of Ricola reminds me of those commercials. I just got hit with the flu last week. The vaccine failed me. Tamiflu didn’t though! Also I enjoyed cough drops (honey-lemon) for the first time in years.
As for wobbly knees, I imagine you’re doing some physical therapy still. Maybe look into daily low impact ways to strengthen and stretch your quads, glutes, ankles, and hips. And stick to it. The flu threw me off my routine so I gotta get back to my crazy stuff.
I read for a local radio station that caters to the blind and print handicapped (WRBH 88.3 FM in New Orleans) for a solid hour a week which is rough on my voice. One thing that helps me is hot water with a few drops of lemon essential oil in it. I also make a spray for my throat that contains water and a drop or two of peppermint oil and eucalyptus oil. As others have also noted, hydrate, hydrate, hydrate.
I never had much problem with my voice when I was lecturing—but I rarely got colds and the winter air here is humid, not dry (we run a dehumidifier to get our house from 74% relative humidity down to 50%). I nearly always brought a large cup or thermos of tea with me to lecture (In those days, it was mostly Earl Grey, Lapsang Souchong, or Gen-mai Cha, depending on my mood). For labs, I had a thermos and would step out of the lab to drink some tea every hour or two.
In retirement, I’ve taken up acting as a hobby, and I generally carry a water bottle and honey-lemon cough drops with me to keep my mouth moist during rehearsals. I also drink from my water bottle backstage between scenes during the run of the show.
@birgerjohannson #6:
“Darwin’s ALIVE!“
If your vocal chords tire quickly, or sooner than they used to, before using any homegrown recipes I’d get an ENT to put the camera down and actually have a look at them.
@19 Hemidactylis
Not to get too graphic, but the neti pot gives a better flush both in terms of volume and also because the water goes in one nostril, travels through the sinus or whatever, and back out the other, taking everything in its path. (Versus the squeeze bottles, where the water is going in and out the same nostril, if I’m correct.) But your concerns about getting a bug are founded, if remote. A handful of people got, wait for it, brain eating amoeba. :-0 Just a few cases, but enough to ensure that I always boil the water first, and spray the unit with alcohol every so often.
Here’s an article, which entertainingly calls it “nasal douching.” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1879729615001003
Used to teach an evening class one quarter a year – three hours of lecturing. Had to start conditioning my voice a couple weeks before, which is a little late for you now. During class, kept a big water bottle and sipped constantly. Also lots of experience with a netipot during a toxic mold episode. Toxicologists told me to skip that and just use a rubber squirt bulb from the baby department. Worked great.
For myself, in cold and sore throat weather, I reach for Stash brand Licorice Spice Tea. I can’t stand the stuff when I am not sick but it does a heck of a number on a sore throat.
As Ariaflame mentioned, Throat Coat by Traditional Medicinals is very helpful.
I sang with a military spouses’ choral group in Ohio, and most of us drank it before performances.
I also kept a box of the tea bags in my desk when I taught in Texas.
throat lozenges that have glycerin as an ingredient work really well