Originally Posted by
antceleb12
What about Patti LaBelle? That woman has been belting her face off for year - constantly pushing the limits and giving phenomenal performances to this day.
I think its a matter of vocal technique and treatment. Depending on how well you treat your voice, combined with how you sing, one can either retain their range and quality or destroy it completely.
The vocal cords is a muscle - a very, very tiny piece of mechanism that is essentially two tiny, thin pieces of paper [[except thinner than paper). When we use our voice, those cords vibrate together. Excess force - shouting, over singing, screaming, etc. - can cause too much friction, resulting in hoarseness, vocal nodules or cysts, or more severe damage. Over an extended period of time, improper care and technique can cause one's vocal quality - range, color, strength, etc. - to diminish. Sometimes, with proper rest and training, the damage can be reversible or halted. Other times, it cannot.
Look at Aretha Franklin and Whitney Houston. Aretha had *THE* voice. Her strength and power were like no one else's. Today, it is almost painful to listen to her. Her range is gone and her tone is no longer as clear and strong as it once was.
Whitney Houston, we all know, abused drugs and cigarettes for years. While that definitely did damage to her voice, I believe the MAIN cause for her vocal demise was her technique. She toured with 'The Bodyguard' for TWO years - a daunting task for most singers. On top of that, all of her material on her tour was limit-pushing - she was belting non-stop, over singing, and pushing through hoarseness. At one point, she developed vocal nodules, but continued with the tour. Singing over nodules is extremely damaging and unhealthy. In general, her technique was not the greatest. Her famous jaw warble was a result of jaw tension. She also had throat tension, over sang [[used her belt too often when she should have used her head voice), and did not rest or take the proper care that her voice.
However, what can also happen is adverse health problems can affect the voice. Linda Ronstadt, for example, can never sing again due to her Parkinson's. Medications and surgeries can also be damaging to the vocal
However, each person and each person's voice is different, and there's no way of us actually knowing what happened, unless we are an ENT that can examine the vocal cords specifically.
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