I have recently had a severe case of laryngitis and my voice right now is not in the same condition as it was before it. For some reason adding scream to the voice (like Freddie Mercury used to do live) is much easier, but my range has been cut short by about half and octave or so. Head voice also doesn't sound the same and is much harder to do WITHOUT the ac/dc-like scream. Notes above D5 are next to impossible for me right now. It seems that my voice lost precision. Overall my voice sounds grittier and I feel like there is lots of mucus in the throat. It makes gargling without water much easier, but really hard to sing with a clear tone. What should I do? Should I wait a little longer before singing? I also have a pretty severe case of cough right now, another outcome of the infection. May be that is affection my voice. Any suggestions and comments? Any magic cures?

Stan H.

You could try what I call the vomit combination. From just that you should know what this tastes like. What you want to do is make 1 cup of throat coat tea, and 1 cup of herba tussin tea, mix them together. Don't drink it yet. Boil 8 ounces of water, mix in 1 tablespoon of organic apple cider vinegar, 1 tablespoon of colloidal silver (or 1 xooma satchet), 1 tablespoon of liquid chlorophyll, 1 teaspoon of sea salt, 1 teaspoon of lemon juice, 2 tablespoons of honey, 3 capsules of licorice (or 20 drops of licorice extract), 2 capsules of marshmallow (or 20 drops of marshmallow extract), 4 slippery elm lozenges (broken up works the best, or wait for them to dissolve), and either 2 satchets of emergen-c, or 4 crushed up chewable vitamin c tablets (really 2000mg of vitamin c is what you want).

Now, use common sense, if you're alergic to any of that stuff don't do this, but basically I've done this on days I had to record and was feeling a little throaty, and its like instant throat clear. What I do is gargle a half a mouth full 5 or 6 times, then just drink the rest of it. I've never gotten sick from this, but I don't know how it'll work for you. That'd be my magic cure suggestion.

If that doesn't work, my suggestion would be to just increase your vitamin c intake, avoid doing any vocal excersises, do the vocal stress release system daily, and then just hum alot. If you still have laryngitis, i wouldn't recomend doing any of that, i'd just avoid talking and still take extra vitamin C.