This is for the benefit of a good friend of mine, who has a problem with this. Any useful advice here will be passed straight to her ^_^ Basically, she's pretty much the best singer in our year group. She's being doing it for a long time, is trained to an operatic standard, and has the most gorgeous tone. She's doing GCSE Music, like me, but has been on vocal rest for the past year due to developing vocal nodules around this time in 2007. Well...she was SUPPOSED to be on vocal rest, but here's the thing. She's a very loud, boisterous and excitable person. When she gets drunk, for instance, she has this tendency to make a lot of noise and strain her voice a lot. She also enjoys singing along to things loudly, and likes to show off her lovely voice (which I don't blame her for, she's got an absolutely wonderful voice). This is why her nodules have not been getting any better. She's singing in a band her and I have made with three of our friends, and we've been practising diligently for weeks. However, at the parents evening last night, our music teacher told her parents that she's absolutely forbidden to sing from now on. They *have* made an exception for the Battle of the Bands competition on thursday, but after that she MUST NOT do anything to strain her voice AT ALL for the next two or three months. I don't trust her to change her loud ways for two months, and she also has to record her GCSE Music performance at some point, which will be opera of some kind. Incidentally, she doesn't know I'm posting this, in fact she doesn't even now this forum exists I'm just really worried about her performance, whether we'll be allowed to do Battle of the Bands now that this has come about, and the future of her voice. We just had a visit from this vocal group today, and the soprano singer was saying to any female singers that you should *never* strain your voice under the age of 20, because your voice doesn't develop properly until 18/19, and you could do some permanent damage. Any advice on this nagging little problem? It pains me to see her so pissed off about this
I suggest talking to her about it. I understand wanting to have her perform, but continuining to put pressure on her throat could cause it to get much worse. Also, as a trained singer, she should probably know what strains her voice and what doesn't. If she keeps pushing it, she should think about getting more lessons to help prevent further injury. Like physio for your throat, if you will.
