Last night at about 9:10pm I lost my voice. I have yet to locate it this morning.
I’ve learned that discretion is the better part of valor when it comes to rehearsing while under the weather. It happens to everyone, and it can feel good to make some music when you feel run down, but better to have your voice for a performance than blow it showing off at rehearsal.
Except, we were rehearsing “Better.” It’s nowhere near the highest or most-difficult vocal I’ve written for myself, but it has an obscene degree of difficulty for me when fronting the whole band. Lots of words. Lots of quick melodic jumps. And then there are the Bs – I have to hit three of them dead on during each chorus to support our new three part harmony – 12 in total. Due to where that note falls in my range, I tend to both be flat and push too hard. (Contradictory, I know).
Anyhow, last night by 9:10pm I had maybe noticed some chinks in my voice when I had no falsetto to switch to in “Dumbest Thing I Could Do,” but on the whole I thought I had been relatively cautious. Then came the final “Better” of the night. Verse one went fine, but in the chorus the Bs were murder. Verse two was raspy and kindof hot sounding, but the second chorus pushed my voice to the brink. I was barely getting on top of the Bs, and it was a Herculean effort to sustain them and keep them nice and sharp.
Afterwards, in the bridge, my voice was barely there, even with my face pressed right up against the microphone, absorbing tiny electric shocks. By the time we reached the third one I was kindof just emceeing the song. “Cause we were so!” I would bark, and then Gina and Jake would chime in harmoniously, “high!” Then, I would call “and I?” and they would respond like an elite military corps, “tried!”
By the time we crossed the finish line, my voice had completely disappeared. These things have been known to correct themselves overnight, but I awoke this morning with not even the barest squeak in my throat – and it even hurt to do that.
No talking for me today, or really over the weekend as a whole. Hopefully I get some semblance of it back by Tuesday for our spotlight at Studio Luloo.
Even if I do, I think I might stay away from “Better.”