How To Keep Your Festival Voice!
Why you lose your voice
If you constantly lose your voice even though you're not yelling or doing anything outrageous, you probably have MUSCLE TENSION DYSPHONIA.
Yup, you have a thing you didn't know you can have.
Essentially, it means your vocal chords aren't working right for some reason or another. There's many reasons why it may have developed - maybe from yelling in the past, or getting some sickness, or holding stress in your voice, or any of many other reasons. Either way, you did something unknowingly to train your vocal chords to operate inefficiently and now they wear down easily, causing strain and eventually you can't talk.
In my case, I speak from lower down, kind of in my throat, instead of my mouth. The lower larynx isn't meant to handle that, so it gets strained easily. It's a motor skill I've developed over time, so it needs training to work normally again. But Muscle Tension Dysphonia can manifest in different ways, so you may not have that exact problem, but something likely similar.
Google 'Muscle Tension Dysphonia' and you'll get tons on it.
My Festival Rules for Keeping my Voice
- No Smoking AT ALL! If you must, then use a vaping tool, but don't let any fire near your throat.
- NO all nighters! You need to rest it. Get at least 4 hours of sleep per night.
- Always keep the voice lubricated - water, lozenges, throat sprays... avoid anything that dries it out. Drink water in ongoing sips rather than infrequent big gulps. (Camel back is good for this)
- Keep some throat supplies - lozenges, spray, balm - with you at all times.
- Set up a 'throat station' at camp for the other supplies so you always know where it is.
- Constantly care for your voice every time you go back to camp.
- Do voice exercises constantly - from 1 week before the festival, then at camp every time you go back.
Voice Exercises
This is my #1 tip for keeping your voice.
SOVT Straw Exercises, or 'Straw Phonation', basically is blowing air through a straw to create back pressure on your vocal chords, causing them to flap normally and moving your voice from the throat or chest up to the back of the mouth, where you should be talking from.
Many examples can be found on YouTube.
There are many variations of this exercise, and lots of videos - I suggest picking one or two to not get overwhelmed. I do the one in this video, but in water.
Keep a water bottle with straw at camp somewhere easily accessible so you know where it is, and do it for 5 minutes or so every time you're at camp.
Online people will suggest different diameters of straws, but the one that works best for me is from kids juice boxes. A standard straw is too big and doesn't create enough pressure, and a small one like a coffee stirring straw is too narrow. This is the one suggested to me by the speech pathologist I went to.
Supplies for Throat Care
This is what I bring with me to use. It won't fix the problem, but these are my band-aid solutions to mitigate the strain on my throat. You don't need to do all of them, but all of them are options that have helped me and I usually have with me.
Lozenges - have a lot of them, and keep some with you (I use a festival belt because backpacks tend to get put down for long periods of time). Try to always have one to keep the saliva going.
Electrolytes - The more hydrated you are, the less your throat dries out. Do this daily.
Throat Coat Tea - Great for when you get back to camp, or before going to bed.
Saline Solution - Squirt it up your nose and then blow with kleenex to get dust out of there! Keeps the inside moist.
Neti Pot - Same as above, keeps everything in there moist and gets dust out. I set it up ahead of time and put it somewhere accessible (throat care station) to use regularly.
Salt Water Gargle - I prep this before the festival - a 500mL bottle already ready to go with salt dissolved. I do it a couple times a day.
Throat Spray - This is a great one to bring with you as it's small and fits easily into a backpack, pocket, or festival belt. I use it lots, and always bring 2 bottles - one for camp and one for festival belt. My fav one is Echinaforce, available at many health food stores.
Nin Jiom - You can buy it for cheap in Chinatown, but now regular drug stores often carry it. It's very soothing, so I often use it after other remedies that don't taste as good like the salt water gargle. I like this one.
Dust Mask - Depending on the site you're at, but What If gets very dusty. Keep that dust out of there!
Ear Plugs - Make sure to get musician ear plugs. Always have them in when at stages so you don't try to talk above the music. With ear plugs in, you talk at a normal voice instead of shouting. If you're an extreme case, ie, lose your voice after 1 day, keep 1 ear plug in when not at the stages. This will help you talk at a normal volume. It's a bit annoying in non-loud places, but makes a big difference. I always make sure it's easy to access my ear plugs and not lose them, so I put the case on a carabiner on my festival belt.
CBD Balm - Another one that I always keep on me. Use it like a deodorant stick and rub it on your throat. Even though it's topical, it helps keep my voice 'loose' and moist. I recommend the one by 'Wildflower' because it has menthol in it and I find that helps as well.
Some random tips...
A few other useful thoughts...
- If you're starting to lose it, try to avoid loud environments. Spend more time in chill spaces or areas without music or lots of people. 1 on 1 conversations help you stay part of the event but not compete with louder volumes.
- Whispering actually strains it more. It's better to talk normally for a bit, then take a voice break, rather than whisper.
- Avoid anything acidic. For a while I was trying lemon juice, but acidity just dries it up more.
- KNOW YOURSELF! Set yourself up for success. Festivals are an environment where we tend to not want to 'adult', so what can you set up to make it easy for yourself? I make my 'station' on day 1 so it's all in one place. I prep my salt water at home rather than mixing it on site. I use my festival belt for lozenges so it's always with me so I don't need to go find my backpack. Do what works for you, and try to anticipate what your 'festival self' will do and not do, and hack it!
PSYCHEDELICS:
OK we're in pseudoscience here... but...
A few years back I did an ayahuasca ceremony, and the best way to describe this is that 'it' (ie, ayahuasca), broke up a lump in my throat and then told me to spit it out. I did so, and immediately I felt how different my breathing was. It felt like it was 100% open for the first time. So the next year I intentionally booked a ceremony before festivals, and same thing. I realized it probably wasn't realistic to go find a shaman every time I got a hoarse voice, but I reasoned that if one plant medicine helps, why not another? So at festivals I started taking mushrooms and 'asking' them to help my voice. They did. I kept getting like phlegm balls come loose and kept spitting them out. It helped a lot.
I'll leave it to you to decide if it's real, but I'm very convinced it did. It's worked ever since. Mushrooms care about me... however, LSD, as far as I can tell, doesn't give a crap! So I switched. Try it out and see if it works for you. I get it if your whole camp is doing lucy and you want to join them, but in that case my suggestion is to split half shrooms/lucy so you can still ask for help.
Get Creative!
Some ideas for if you do start losing your voice!
My fav one is using a voice amplifier.
They marketed towards teachers who use their voice a lot and have a hard time filling the space. It's a cordless mic with a little speak that I strap across my chest like Rambo. With it, I can talk softly and still be the loudest person around, and you can use it to have fun, like mock interviewing people.
I have two of them, so that when one dies (usually about 4 hours) I can switch to the other.
Just make sure you have a way to recharge them.
It's sometimes a bit annoying to have extra 'stuff' dangling on you, but it's well worth it.
At some point at the stages I found that people couldn't hear the speaker because it was at my chest or around my belt rather than my mouth where they expect voice to come from... so I got an idea... I took a hand puppet, cut some holes in it, and slid the speaker into it, so people could talk to the puppet. I had a lot of fun with it!
See image on left... speaker is slid inside, with holes I cut for sound to come through.
Another time, I took a sharpie and put a big X on my throat. That way people understood right away, and I didn't need to waste my voice explaining my lost voice, and therefore further lose my voice. People get it.
Another option is to bring a small whiteboard and whiteboard marker. I was still able to join conversations by drawing or spelling. You can do the same with with an app on your phone.
And one final one... when I really couldn't talk, I used a bird caller like this. You put it on your tongue, and when you blow, you can make all kinds of different sounds. You can make a lot of emotion and reactions using it.... it can be quite fun.
THAT'S IT... GOOD LUCK!!!