Vocal Maintenance on Tour

Congratulations! You have finally booked your dream gig of traveling the world as a performer. Whether it’s performing in a national tour production of your favorite musical or touring East Asia opening for your favorite artist with your closest bandmates, maintaining vocal health during tour is a unique challenge that can make or break your experience.

A personal anecdote…

I have been a vocal coach for close to 6 years at this point, and I have helped many students with vocal maintenance on tour, but it wasn't until I had a touring experience of my own that I realized how challenging it can be.

I’m currently on the national tour of Hadestown, where we spend on average 15-20 hours traveling on a bus or a plane every week. Because we travel all throughout the US, we have to navigate through different time zones, climates, altitudes, and venue acoustics while having suboptimal sleep schedules. On top of that, Hadestown is a show where every single cast member is either performing a vocally demanding principal role or understudying a vocally demanding principal role 8-10 shows a week, meaning all cast members are expected to maintain their voices to the best of their capabilities throughout the touring year, despite the myriad challenges of touring.

It is difficult, but it is not impossible to keep your voice healthy and sounding good all the time. Here are some essential tips I have found the most useful for my cast mates and me:

Warm up extensively before each show!

This should be a no-brainer. Runners stretch and warm up extensively before their 100m sprint in an Olympic arena. Violinists and pianists practice scales and arpeggios before performing a concerto at Carnegie Hall. Singers are no exception. Failure to warm up properly can cause excessive fatigue after the show or, in some cases, vocal injury.

Spend at least 5-15 minutes on SOVT exercises alone. These can be lip trills, humming, or straw exercises. Go through your entire range (including your extremities), but don’t overexert your voice when warming up. I would also recommend a physical warm-up that engages your lower body and muscles that help with breath support.

Understanding exactly what warm-ups you need before a show takes trial and error. Take note of how your voice feels during the show and adjust your warm-ups accordingly.

Warm down after each show!

This is an element not usually talked about in vocal maintenance. Especially with a packed performance schedule, warming down properly will reduce vocal fatigue after a show and prepare your voice for the shows to come. When a voice is overused, some of the muscles within the vocal mechanism get tight and cramped. That feeling of tightness might carry onto the next show or day, so exercises such as tongue and jaw massages, along with SOVT exercises, are great at deswelling the vocal cords and stretching the muscles in the larynx.

Nebulize and Steam

Controlling humidity, especially when you are traveling to places with a drier climate, is key to a healthy voice. When the humidity is low, the vocal cords end up being dry, and they lose flexibility. This may be reflected in the lack of high falsetto notes in your range, or that some songs that sit in your passaggio may feel more laborious.

When your voice feels dry, hydrate. Drinking water is always the best way to hydrate the voice, but it takes about 12-24 hours for the hydration to be reflected in your voice. Hence, a steamer or nebulizer can help with hydrating the voice in a pinch. No joke, some of my castmates keep their nebulizers backstage so they can nebulize their voices whenever they leave the stage in between scenes.

Emergen-C, Vitamin Supplements, and Diet

Another aspect of vocal health is body health, and it all comes down to strengthening the body’s immune system. When you are on tour, the irregular and insufficient sleep schedule, along with a strenuous rehearsal schedule, all work to weaken your immune system and increase the likelihood of you getting sick. Hence, supplements like Emergen-C and Vitamin pills may help in a pinch.

The best solution for body health is to eat healthily. Unfortunately, when you are on tour, you don’t usually have the space or equipment to cook your own food or have a wealth of healthy food options. I suggest buying a portable electric skillet, some Tupperware, and a cooling bag to give yourself the option to make healthy meals once in a while. You are what you eat!

High Altitudes: Oxygen Cans and Deeper Breaths

Many athletes go to Colorado to train for their sport. Why? When you are at a higher altitude, oxygen levels are generally lower. Athletes train at higher altitudes to induce hypoxic conditions—environments with less oxygen—forcing the body to adapt. These adaptations improve aerobic capacity and enhance endurance performance for athletes when they return to lower altitudes. 

What does that mean for us singers? If you tend to move a lot on stage, you will run out of breath much faster than usual. That might mean adding a few more breaths in between phrases or moving less. A general rule of thumb is to be more intentional with your breaths when you perform at higher altitudes. 

Oxygen cans can also help with replenishing oxygen levels in a pinch. In our production, we began providing oxygen cans backstage for use whenever we have a break in between scenes. This can alleviate symptoms of hyperventilation immediately and allow you to have more stamina when performing.

It’s all about trial and error!

As helpful as these tips can be, your willingness to experiment with different routines of vocal maintenance is key to a healthy voice during tour. As long as you are intentional with vocal maintenance, your voice will shine through even when you are performing in Denver, CO, with a relative humidity of 10%, running on 3 hours of sleep. Enjoy your tour!