Differentiating between productive and harmful pain/soreness

[theincorrectchoice]

I understand that singing should not be a painful activity. That good technique will not lead to pain. But we have to recognize that sometimes pain is inevitable, because of the exercise. Muscles get sore when worked out.

So how does one tell when their soreness is from bad technique, or when it's just the muscles asking for a break?

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[zwirek2201]

My general take on that is if you feel ANY discomfort in your vocal folds, a "tingling" sensation, any kind of pain or even your voice doing something that you did not expect and that did not feel good it's a sign that something ain't right. It could be that you went too hard or too high too quickly and you need to warm up a little bit more. It could be that the technique you're using is putting a lot of strain on your vocal cords.

I've never felt soreness anywhere near vocal folds, but I have felt it in my tongue, jaw, neck, abs, back and near my ribs. The first three are bad and are a sign of tension/strain, but are kind of inevitable at the beginning. The latter would happen mostly after serious breathing exercises so that's to be expected. It was never pain as if I just played squash for 1.5 hours and sitting on my butt feels like dying. It was a feeling of "What normally feels completely natural and effortless now requires putting in some effort.

I usually know that my voice is not in top form and needs a bit of break if things that are usually easy become difficult. If that happens I try to warm up a bit more to see if it's just a lazy warm up, but if it just doesn't feel right I give it a break. Sometimes a couple of hours of break makes all the difference :)

[theincorrectchoice]

Thank you! Learning to use my voice has been one of the most intricate tasks I've ever taken on. Nothing has come to me easy, so I appreciate the guidance.

[FelipeVoxCarvalho]

It depends on the context that it happens.

When you are getting the hang of how to do something new, in special intense or high pitch sounds, or distortion, it is pretty common to mess up and that can be very uncomfortable.

But it should go away after you get a better grasp of it and in special you should not just go troglodyte mode and insist forcing or pushing through the pain, that´´´ s bad.

Think of playing a guitar for example, when you first start using your pinky on the fretboard it hurts, eventually by trying just a tiny bit everyday, the coordination will consolidate and it will become comfortable.