Why Does My Voice Get Tired When I Sing?

By Chase Guyton | The Artist Path

If a singer sits down in front of me and says, “My voice gets tired when I sing,” my first thought isn't:

You're singing wrong.

Actually, before I even have you sing, I want to know what your day looks like.

Do you have a routine? How long are your sets? How often are you performing? Are you rehearsing on the same days you're performing? How much are you talking during the day?

And then I want to know something that I think gets overlooked a lot:

Where do the songs you're singing actually live within your range?

Because that can tell me a lot.

If you're spending an entire set singing in a particularly demanding part of your voice, that's very different from singing the same amount of time in a comfortable part of your range.

So before we decide that something is wrong with your technique, I want to understand what you're asking your voice to do.

Your Voice Has a Life Before You Start Singing

I also want to know about the rest of your day.

How much water are you drinking? What does your diet look like? Are you sleeping? Have you been sick? Are your allergies bothering you? And what are you doing for a living?

That last question is important because singing isn't necessarily the only thing creating vocal load.

I've worked with teachers, pastors, speakers and people whose jobs simply require them to talk all day. Even someone taking orders in a restaurant or working a drive-thru can be using their voice constantly.

How your speaking voice is functioning matters.

If you've been talking for eight hours and then go sing for two hours, your voice didn't magically start its workday when you began your first song.

It's been working all day.

And sometimes that explains a lot.

Now Let Me Hear You Sing

Once I understand those foundational things, then I want to hear the voice.

I'm listening for certain textures.

Is there an excessive amount of breath in the tone? Is the voice overly squeezed or strident? Does it sound like the singer is having to work really hard to create the sound?

But I'm probably not going to have you sing one note and make a judgment from that.

I want to hear your voice move.

I use glides and sirens quite a bit because I want to hear what happens as you travel through your range.

Where does the voice want to break? Where does the coordination change? What happens around your bridges, or passaggi? Are there certain places where suddenly you're trying to muscle through?

That's where I can start learning a lot about how your voice is functioning.

Sometimes You Can Hit the Note—But You're Working Way Too Hard to Get There

This is something I see all the time.

A singer is moving from a chest-voice-dominant coordination toward a mix or head voice, but they really don't want to let go of that heavier coordination.

So they carry it up. And up. And up.

Eventually, they're basically muscling their way through the transition just to keep the sound they're used to making.

They may technically be singing the note.

But the question I care about is: What did it cost you to sing it?

Because if every high note requires you to throw more and more effort at the voice, eventually you're going to get tired.

When I hear that happening, I often do the opposite of what the singer has been doing.

Instead of continuing to work from chest voice upward, I'll establish a lighter head-voice coordination and come down through the range.

I want to know: Can you sing those exact same pitches coming from the other direction without all of that weight?

Very often, they can.

And now we've learned something.

The note wasn't necessarily the problem. The coordination we were using to get to the note was the problem.

I'm Listening to Your Voice, But I'm Watching Your Body

This is one of the reasons vocal coaching is so interesting to me.

I'm not just listening. I'm watching everything.

I'm looking at your neck. I'm looking for external muscles jumping in to help.

I'm watching your shoulders. Your jaw. Your posture. I'm watching how you breathe.

Sometimes I'm even watching your eyebrows. Seriously.

If every time we get to a high note your eyebrows furrow, your jaw changes, your shoulders come up and your entire body starts preparing for battle, I want to know what's happening.

That doesn't automatically mean any one of those movements is “wrong.” Singing requires movement.

But if the same physical reaction shows up every single time we encounter a difficult part of the voice, that's information.

Because here's the thing: Your voice isn't an isolated instrument.

It's connected to a body. It's connected to a brain. It's part of an entire system.

And I have to coach the entire person standing in front of me.

Tension-Free Singing Is a Myth

I hear people talk about wanting to sing with “no tension.” I understand what they mean. But I don't love the phrase.

Your body has to do something to sing.

Your vocal folds require coordinated muscular activity. Pitch changes require muscular activity. Breathing requires muscular activity. Your vocal tract is constantly changing shape.

So the goal isn't to somehow sing while nothing in your body is working.

The goal is to develop a relationship with the work.

What is healthy, necessary muscular activity—and what is unnecessary effort that's making this harder than it needs to be?

That's a much more useful question. And it's something you learn over time.

Sometimes the Best Thing We Can Do Is Back Off

If someone is muscling through their range, one of the first things I'll often do is simply bring the volume down.

Not forever. We're not saying you can't sing loudly.

We're trying to find out what happens when we remove one of the variables that's encouraging you to push.

I may also change the vowel.

For example, I might have someone work through a narrower vowel like “oo” before gradually moving back toward the vowel they actually need to sing.

Again, “oo” isn't magic.

We're creating a different environment for the voice and seeing what it teaches us.

That's how I think about a lot of vocal exercises. They're experiments.

We're trying something, observing what changes, keeping what works and eventually applying it back to the song.

Why I Use Straws and Other Semi-Occluded Exercises

I use semi-occluded vocal tract exercises—or SOVTs—a lot.

That might mean phonating through a straw. Sometimes I'll have a singer phonate through a straw with the end submerged in water.

The partial occlusion changes the pressure and acoustic conditions in the vocal tract, and there's legitimate voice-science research behind why these exercises can be useful.

But here's what I don't want someone to take away from this article: “Chase says I need to sing through a straw and my voice will be fixed.”

No.

The straw is a tool.

I want to know what your voice learns while you're using it.

Does the voice suddenly feel easier? Does your airflow change? Does the amount of effort change? Can we take that coordination out of the straw and eventually put it into your singing?

That's what matters.

What If My Voice Is Too Breathy?

Sometimes we're dealing with almost the opposite problem.

If someone is singing with an excessively breathy coordination, I may use sounds that encourage clearer vocal-fold adduction.

I might use something like: “guh, guh, guh” or “buh, buh, buh.”

I might use short staccato notes.

I'm giving the singer another coordinative experience.

And then we're listening.

What changed? Did the tone become clearer? Did singing become easier? Did it become too compressed?

Great. That's information too.

We're looking for balance.

I Don't Coach Every Singer the Same Way

This may be one of the most important things I can say about vocal coaching: There is no one-size-fits-all method.

I may have a physiological goal in mind, but how I get there depends entirely on the person standing in front of me.

Some people are experiential learners.

With them, I'm probably going to get them making sounds immediately. I may even give them an exaggerated example because I want them to clearly hear the contrast between two different ways of producing something.

We're not mimicking because I want them to sound like me.

We're mimicking temporarily so we can identify what works, eliminate what doesn't, and eventually find their sound.

Other students don't need me to demonstrate anything.

Explain the mechanism to them and they're like: “Oh. I get it.”

And then I have my really abstract thinkers.

I'll ask: “What did that feel like?”

And they'll tell me something like, “It felt like the sound went up and over the back of my head and then floated out in front of me.”

An anatomist may not be particularly impressed by that description.

I don't care.

If we both know what that means and that language allows the singer to reliably reproduce a useful coordination, now we have a vocabulary.

I'm coaching the person in front of me. I'm not coaching a blanket theory or method.

Is It Normal for Your Voice to Get Tired?

Yes. But this deserves some nuance.

I tend to think about ordinary tiredness a little differently from the kind of persistent vocal fatigue that concerns me.

If you're a professional singer who just performed a demanding show, your instrument has done physical work.

I don't automatically panic because your voice feels like it worked.

I think professional singers need to be treated, in many ways, like performance athletes.

There is load. There is conditioning. There is recovery. And there are limits.

That also means I may think differently about a professional singer performing several nights a week than I do about someone who rarely sings and suddenly experiences significant vocal difficulty after relatively little use.

Neither person's experience is unimportant. The context is simply different.

When I Stop Coaching and Tell You to See a Doctor

This is an incredibly important part of being a responsible vocal coach.

There are things I can hear. There are things I can observe. There are coordinations I can help you explore.

But I cannot look at your vocal folds.

If I'm hearing parts of someone's normally reliable range repeatedly cutting out, significant or persistent changes in the character of the voice, recurring hoarseness, substantial loss of function—or if a singer is experiencing pain or other concerning symptoms—there comes a point where I'm not interested in guessing.

I want someone to look.

That's when we need an ENT, ideally a laryngologist or another medical professional who specializes in the voice. Voice-specialized speech-language pathologists can also be incredibly important members of that team.

A vocal coach should never try to listen to a voice and tell you: “You have nodules.” Or: “That's definitely a polyp.”

Those are medical diagnoses.

If something concerns me, my job isn't to prove that I know what's wrong.

My job is to recognize when what I'm hearing is outside the lane of coaching and help you find someone qualified to evaluate it.

Your Voice Is a Biological Wonder

This is what I really want you to take away from all of this.

Your voice is a biological wonder.

It is an incredibly resilient, adaptable instrument living inside an equally complicated human being.

And there are so many things that can affect how it feels from one day to another.

Maybe you didn't sleep well. Maybe you've been talking all day. Maybe you're dealing with seasonal allergies. Maybe something in your environment is irritating you. Maybe yesterday's show was demanding. Maybe you're carrying stress. Or maybe there really is something happening in your vocal coordination that deserves our attention.

The point is: Don't immediately assume that an off day means you're broken.

And please don't assume that an off week means you should give up.

Get curious.

Don't Become Afraid of Your Voice

I think fear is one of the most difficult things a singer can develop around their instrument.

You feel something unfamiliar. Then you start anticipating it.

Now you're approaching the high note thinking: Here it comes.

You hesitate. Your breathing changes. Your body prepares. Maybe you brace.

And suddenly we're no longer only dealing with whatever started the problem. We're also dealing with your anticipation of the problem.

That's why I want singers to develop a relationship with their bodies.

Learn your voice.

Learn what a demanding day feels like. Learn what normal recovery feels like. Learn what happens when you haven't slept. Learn how your speaking voice affects your singing voice. Learn what productive muscular work feels like.

And learn the sensations and changes that tell you: Something isn't right. I need some help with this.

That relationship takes time. But it's incredibly valuable.

Singing Is Part of Being Human

We live in a culture where we're constantly shown singing as something to be judged.

Someone stands on a stage. They sing. And somebody tells them whether they're good enough.

I think that can distort the way we think about our voices.

Because singing is also just an extension of being human.

Your voice doesn't have to earn the right to exist because someone gave it a score.

So if you're reading this because your voice is tired, struggling or simply feels different than it normally does, don't be afraid to find out why.

Maybe you need rest. Maybe you need to change your workload. Maybe you need to rethink a coordination. Maybe you need a vocal coach. And sometimes you need a medical voice professional.

But whatever the answer is, there are people who can walk through that process with you.

Celebrate your voice as an extension of who you are.

Learn it. Listen to it. Take care of it.

And when something changes, don't immediately become afraid of it.

Become curious.

Because some of the moments that initially feel like setbacks can become the moments when we understand our instrument better than we ever have before.

And understanding creates freedom.

Want Help Understanding Your Voice?

At The Artist Path, we work with singers at every level—from people discovering their voices for the first time to working professional artists—to understand what's happening in their individual instrument and develop healthier, more efficient and more adaptable vocal strategies.

If your voice repeatedly becomes tired during rehearsals, performances or recording sessions, vocal coaching may help you understand why instead of simply giving you another exercise to practice.

Start Your Path → Vocal Coaching

Educational note: This article is for educational purposes and isn't intended to diagnose or treat a medical condition. Persistent hoarseness, pain, sudden or significant changes in your voice, recurring voice loss, or other concerning symptoms should be evaluated by an appropriate medical voice professional.