Phil Moufarrege said

Funny you mention that guy with the allergy Owen, because the past week I had completely lost my voice and intuitively worked out it was an allergy, I cut out the food and my voice has now returned back to normal again. Good thing too because I have a performance in 2 weeks and was worried I was not going to be able to practice for it.

Great to hear. what food was it?

would be nice to hear some video clips of the performance if you can!

I've never really had an allergy issue but I am starting to suspect there are way more variables in vocal health than I thought. I never really believed the whole "dairy kills your voice" blabber, but lately I feel like it might be worth just doing a few proper A-B tests on, just to check if it could be messing with my cord closure a bit.

And to give some food for thought, here is a guy who had a quite demanding repertoire to handle, and as you can hear on the early performances problems to execute (although always with technical awareness):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v.....h2rNd1YoKY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v.....TMiYyxl7CA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v.....OvCPJGjaiE

Age, 26, 41 and 51 respectively

You don´t need to destroy your voice because of demand, you just need to know what you are doing :). And although perfection is not possible, getting to the point of surgery is plain bizarre, sorry.

Felipe Carvalho said
@killer haha that would fit more Dave Grohl ;).

Aw man that reminded me of the best video of all time
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhdCslFcKFU

@killer haha that would fit more Dave Grohl ;).

Sometimes all it takes is one bad day to set you on a downwards spiral to vocal problems when under the demand of pro level singing. If you have a bad night where you didn't warm up correctly or maybe your voice just wasn't "there" and you can't cancel the night and you end up pushing for the notes that you can usually finesse your way into.

Well what happens is the next day your voice is harder to warm up because of the night before and all that pushing. But guess what, no rest for you because you have to go out and perform again! So tonight is even harder than the night before. And your voice is telling you to take a day off but you ignore it because you gotta do another show! After a week of that it becomes impossible to warm your voice up correctly because the cord closure now sucks balls.

vocal rest fixes lots of things however it's more a case of "I can't rest because I have to perform".

Is this Sam's situation? No idea, but what I just wrote is the situation many pros have to deal with. Even with good technique the voice still needs to be rested every now and then.

Felipe Carvalho said

hehe yeah, but Ive already seen comments relating it to some kind of distortion he did sometimes, or the otherway around, saying that it was all good and it was just due to workload (which as you mentioned, was not sooo heavy and would not justify surgery).

More aggressive singing rises the risk for damage, I dont think its possible to deny this. But, without good technique, aggressive or not you are really begging for it to happen and at a much greater risk (its out of your control).

Check the performances of Edu Falaschi on Rock in Rio 2011, in special Rebirth. This is a guy that used to make it look all easy and effortless too...

When it comes to the mid-high range, there are some traps you can set for yourself, like believing that transitioning registers early will save your voice, or that if you try to reduce effort you will be more economic. Both can lead to strain and increasing collision force.

The most "vanilla" thing you can do about that area thinking of health preservation is covered full voice, and you need quite some physical effort to do it.

I've seen the Edu performance. Turns out that was all due to acid reflux!!!

Phil also told me about a student that had some serious vocal issues and they found out it was due to him being allergic to some kind of soy in Cliff Bars...ridiculous stuff! You never know. I still need to learn about whether my diet is affecting me vocally.

It sounds interesting to me that transitioning early would be unhealthy - I guess only if you try to push the volume down there right?

It's funny, this brings back memories...I don't know how I got through this, but I went a full 4 years of singing before really becoming aware of what is wrong and right and the signs of damage or unhealthy technique etc...I had no sensitivity to it before. Had I sang more frequently I probably would have really hurt myself. And maybe I had issues along the way I never knew about.

So there's pretty much just speculation at this point. Could be almost anything. I did read somewhere that he idolized Mariah Carey. For all we know he goes home from a concert and tries to whistle voice her stuff all day.

More aggressive singing rises the risk for damage, I dont think its possible to deny this. But, without good technique, aggressive or not you are really begging for it to happen and at a much greater risk (its out of your control).

Check the performances of Edu Falaschi on Rock in Rio 2011, in special Rebirth. This is a guy that used to make it look all easy and effortless too...

When it comes to the mid-high range, there are some traps you can set for yourself, like believing that transitioning registers early will save your voice, or that if you try to reduce effort you will be more economic. Both can lead to strain and increasing collision force.

The most "vanilla" thing you can do about that area thinking of health preservation is covered full voice, and you need quite some physical effort to do it.

Felipe Carvalho said

You cant really evaluate technique without working directly with the singer.

He sang somewhat high. Any issue like poorly adjusted support, lack of forward placement or simply not having resources to protect his voice when things are not going fine could lead to trauma.

Not managing his vocal health well could also lead to it (not enough rest, hydration, etc). Most likely a combination of factors.

Its easy to, similar like people did with Adele, to come NOW and say "I knew it was going to happen"...

Well I think NO one saw this coming. Maybe it just goes to show how much the necessary care extends outside of simply sounding effortless.

There are some singers out there that I'm surprised HAVEN'T had publicized vocal issues (Bono is one example, also Dave Grohl kept strong for a LONNNG time) and this is kind of the reverse of that.

He sang somewhat high. Any issue like poorly adjusted support, lack of forward placement or simply not having resources to protect his voice when things are not going fine could lead to trauma.

Not managing his vocal health well could also lead to it (not enough rest, hydration, etc). Most likely a combination of factors.

Its easy to, similar like people did with Adele, to come NOW and say "I knew it was going to happen"...

Pretty surprising. This is probably the lightest voiced, most relaxed professional singer I've heard get vocal damage. Not only does his singing technique sound very easy and free (maybe slightly lacking strength or support?) but he also seems (just at first glance...I'm not a big fan really) like a relaxed kind of person that wouldn't overwork himself. Just doing quick research, his touring schedule and set lengths looked reasonable, no word on making a new album, etc...I'm just left scratching my head, you know?

I'm sure they'll probably give us more information later but do any of the coaches here have an initial hunch as to what might have caused it? I'm curious what kind of lesson can be learned here