The first question we must answer is “What is exhaustion?”. Exhaustion is a state of emotional, mental, and physical exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress. It is important for a voice artist to care for his or her voice so that fatigue, strain and injury may be avoided, so that it may function at its optimum. The vocal folds vibrate against each other in order to produce sound. In order to vibrate properly and to work effectively, they need to be well lubricated with moisture. Today we will discuss how exhaustion affects our voices.

What causes exhaustion?

Prolonged periods of physical stress, sleep deprivation, emotional stress and intense overwork put together is a package that can cause exhaustion. To avoid vocal exhaustion you must warm up your voice before performances and rehearsals. Consider taking acting or stage voice classes to learn how to project your voice without injury. Know your vocal limits and stay within them (pitch, loudness and stamina). Rest your voice before and after vocally demanding days of extended rehearsals, performances, voice-over work. Plan your voice use and pace your voice, especially during times of increased vocal demands. Stop speaking before you get tired. If you feel tired, you may have already done too much. Plan your performance schedule carefully and avoid overbooking.

How does exhaustion affect your voice?

Apart from making you moody and irritable, exhaustion affects your mind and body very quickly. Although suffering from exhaustion isn’t likely to affect you badly straight away, there’s little evidence that lack of sleep causes any immediate physiological damage to the body, it definitely affects how you feel and the way your brain works, which is a problem when you are trying to learn and understand your voice over copy for a recording session. Days of getting less sleep than you should can have a similar effect to being slightly drunk. Speaking is a physical task that requires coordination of breathing with the use of several muscle groups.

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