Signs of Voice Damage

Video Transcript

"JAMES MENY: Signs of excessive use of voice would be hoarseness after you've used it if you're starting to crack or break when you sing or talk those are excessive. No different than any other part of your body for some reason we think as human beings that are voices are invincible that-sort of like we gotta use them like building up leg muscles or something. You just keep working and working and they get stronger, vocal chords are not muscles. The muscles are on the outside of the vocal chords. Vocal chords are basically pieces of flesh they look like tendons they actually sort of whitish like tissue their about though the length, the width, the thickness of tissue. Pretty sensitive stuff down there and so if you're beating them to hell that they are not going to always recover from all the damage you do and especially if you do it over a long period of time. Think of it in terms of a professional athlete let's just take a professional football player the career length of a professional football player is limited to the amount of time that their body can sustain damage which is the equivalent of getting into a car accident every time they hit somebody else for long. Human beings are not meant to run up against each other at full speed and then smack into each other. And that's what you're doing to your vocal chords it's Seth Riggs who developed Speech Level Singing called it smacking up against the chords and that's what you're doing."