You’ve just woken up after a wonderfully restful sleep. You sit up, stretch and exclaim, “good morning world”. Uh oh. Morning voice - deep, raspy and dry feeling - for some it’s just another reason to avoid other humans first thing in the morning; for others, it is something they wish they could maintain throughout the day. But why does this happen? How can we stop it (or keep it going)?
Most singers will tell you that they don't want to do any singing before midday because their voice is deeper, loses tone, has less range and just feels horrible. It is a phenomenon that most of us have experienced, yet I can’t find any studies on it. Probably because it doesn’t cause most of us any problems unless you are a singer with a dreaded early morning audition. However, there are some theories in the vocal coach and medical world, almost certainly offer us an explanation.
Our voices make pitch at the vocal cords. When we think of cords, we often think of pieces of string, but they are two pieces of tissue made up of muscle and ligament with a soft outer shell. Considering they can make a massive noise, they are tiny, depending on the person they are from 1.25cm in length to 2.5cm. The size of your vocal cords defines how high or low your voice is. Smaller vocal cords produce voices with a higher average pitch, whereas bigger vocal cords produce voices with a lower average pitch. So the first thing we need to consider is, are our vocal cords bigger in the morning? The answer could be yes.
During sleep, the tissues in our throat collect fluid; in fact, the tissues in our face do as well; it’s what causes our eyes to look puffy when we first wake up. I find I have puffy eyes and a low voice if I have gone to bed particularly tired and have slept deeply. This seems to be a result of not moving in your sleep. I know some singers who will even sleep propped up before a morning performance to stop fluid collecting. As long as I am in a good sleep pattern and haven’t reached the stage where I am exhausted, I don’t wake up with such a deep voice. Of course, anything that causes the vocal cords to swell will make the vocal cords bigger, less able to vibrate evenly and the voice lower, whether with illness or allergies. A common cause of this is acid reflux, where your stomach acid backs up into your oesophagus. If you have ever woken up with a burning sensation in your throat, you’ve probably had this and it is a surprisingly common thing to deal with. Our vocal cords don’t really like acid on them. Some people are more prone to this than others, but an unhealthy or acidic diet could be the culprit. Late-night eating, drinking alcohol or coffee can also make this flare-up.
The inability to drain fluids while we are lying down could also contribute to another symptom of morning voice. Often, our voices feel and sound a little hoarse, making us perceive our voice as lower. This could be down to thickened excess mucus that has settled on the vocal cords overnight. When we produce a clean, crisp sound, our vocal cords come together entirely and vibrate in regular waves. Mucus on the vocal cords can stop them from coming together fully and cause them to vibrate irregularly. When the vocal cords don’t come together fully, it gives the voice a breathy tone (another symptom of morning voice), and when they vibrate irregularly, we hear that as distortion - a hoarse voice. However, this can easily be cured. Our vocal cords need hydration to make sure they are flexible enough to vibrate. Keeping hydrated also thins the mucus, allowing it to move away from the vocal cords more easily. Keeping fully hydrated will not just help with morning voice, but helps keep your voice stay healthy in general. Unfortunately, coffee is not the best idea as it dehydrates the body – especially your vocal cords. However, if you are like me, you may have to balance the benefits of caffeine-induced brain functionality with hydration. A hot, caffeine-free drink often does the trick as the steam from the tea travels to vocal cords, lubricating them and loosening the mucus. Standing in a nice hot shower will help it drain, and you also get the steam benefits. Of course, using a steamer or nebuliser can also give you a kick start.
Dehydration may also be doing something else interesting (and less gross) to your vocal cords. There is another factor in how high your voice can go. Some people with bigger vocal cords might be able to sing higher than some people with smaller vocal cords. Vocal cords are pretty incredible little things. They are strong enough to bang together hundreds of times a second yet flexible enough to vibrate and stretch. We change the pitch by tightening and relaxing the vocal cords, and the more flexible your vocal cords are, the greater the range you will be able to achieve. If we have become dehydrated in the night, it can cause them to become less flexible until they are warmed up and fully hydrated again. There are plenty of things that can cause this dehydration, drinking alcohol, too much salt in the diet or a lack of potassium. However, we don’t need our entire body to be dehydrated for our vocal cords to be. If you sleep with your mouth open, it could cause them to dry out overnight. I know some singers who tape their mouths shut at night. However, if you are going to do this look into the options of how to do this safely or look into a snore belt - a specialise brace that holds your mouth shut gently but also allows you to breathe through your mouth if you really need to. It is also essential to make sure the room you are sleeping in is not too dry, hot or cold. Air conditioning and central heating can really dry out your voice. If you sleep in a place like this, running a humidifier can be a voice saver.
It is also important to note that many people perceive warmer sounding voices as lower and more direct sounding voices higher. They may be the same pitch, but the tone differs. To change our voice’s tone, we need to change the size of our vocal tract. You can do this artificially by making a yawning dopey bear sound like this - woo woo. This helps us lower our voice box, therefore elongating the space between our vocal cords and our mouth to create more space. So, the extra warmth added to our tone could be down to the muscles in our neck, our tongue and jaw relaxing while we sleep, allowing our vocal tract to elongate and thus creating a warmer tone. It could just be the result of an excellent restful night’s sleep.
Most of us will wake up with morning voice at some point. Let’s recap how we can lessen its effects: good sleep pattern and general health; hydration; making sure our diet has plenty of potassium and not too much salt; making sure we don’t eat or drink too late, avoiding alcohol and caffeine and acid foods; making sure we sleep in a humidified room at a comfortable temperature; keeping on top of allergies (damp in a room can cause this to flare-up); and if you are a little more extreme prop yourself up or even buy a snore belt.
If you wake up a little hoarse, it should return to normal within an hour of speaking as long as you aren’t ill. To help it on its way, I recommend hydrating with room temperature water or caffeine-free teas. Vocalzone does a great range of teas for singers (not sponsored. I just think they are great and will put a link below). Have a hot shower and warm up your voice slowly. If you have a big meeting or audition in the morning, make sure you give yourself an extra hour in the morning to allow for your voice to warm up thoroughly. If you feel particularly dehydrated, steaming or using a nebuliser should get you on your way.
