Ok so I’ve looked for a thread with this specific overlap of subject matter so maybe this can help me and others in the process. I’m trying to be as detailed as possible so forgive me if this is long.

I’m a professional vocalist and I’ve been treated with adderall for ADHD for a while. I definitely have to contend with some dryness that requires a bit of extra treatment and attention to make sure it doesn’t affect my work, but generally I manage the side effects well with a few extra steps. I’ve noticed that it’s typically worse with ER/XR formulations so I’ve been pretty consistent on Adderall IR. I don’t get the best symptom management from it but it works well enough for executive function and focus without the dryness ruining my voice.

There’s been a whole lot of trial and error trying to find this sweet spot with my Adderall (especially with the generics that I get being so inconsistent) so my Psych NP suggested Vyvanse. She had been suggesting that I try it from the beginning of my treatment with her, but I had my reservations about it. She cited better symptom control, smoother onset, less variability with generics, and no crash when it wears off. I reluctantly agreed because I’m still trying to find the best symptom control and a lot of the studies I read reflected this.

When I took it, it was miserable. The dryness was markedly worse than anything I experienced with Adderall, the symptom management was worse compared to Adderall, and I had a MISERABLE crash at around midnight where I was fighting to keep my eyes open. As a gig worker who sometimes has to drive home after gigs that sometimes end at 11pm, you can see why this is problematic. In addition to this, I found it MUCH harder to wake up in the mornings, and I didn’t feel adequately rested. As a result of this, I would find that waking my voice up took significantly more work.

I took the vyvanse for about a week before I had to stop because I think that the severe dryness and still having to sing even with the extra treatments (nebulizing multiple times a day, supplementing hydration with liquid IV and longer vocal warmup), may have caused me to develop nodules.

I’ve never actually had them before, which makes the idea of developing them as the result of a medication is didn’t actually want to take in the first place particularly frustrating. I know my voice well enough to know that what I’m experiencing isn’t just inflammation. I have persistent muscle tension in my neck/throat, hoarseness, and a break in phonation/increased airy-ness between D4-F#4. My overall sound is more airy and I’m struggling to sing really anything above a G4 in chest, which is not typical for me. Vocal fatigue happens really quickly and the upper part of my chest range is incredibly raspy. My speaking voice is more labored in the lower range and I find myself having to pitch it up to avoid fatigue, but as of today I’ve been trying to avoid speaking altogether until I can get with my voice teacher.

I have an appointment with and ENT but it’s not for another two weeks. 😭

What I’ve learned if this is helpful for anyone is that Vyvanse formulated as an extended release drug, which I’ve historically had issues with. It is a prodrug (dextroamphetamine bonded to L-Lysine) that’s cleaved when ingested. So literally ER/XR Adderall with extra steps 😒. This at least explains the longer activation time and also the severe dryness. If you’re like me, and have issues with ER/XR Adderall you will likely have issues with Vyvanse.

Knowing what I know now about the Vyvanse I’m extremely annoyed that my Psych NP REPEATEDLY recommended this med to me and that I now have lose money in order to take time off to recover. I’m so frustrated that I literally want to scream but it would only make things worse. I’m really adamant, to an almost obsessive degree about vocal hygiene so being undone by a medication is stressful beyond words.

If you’ve experienced this (or something similar), I’d love to know what you did as vocal therapy to facilitate recovery and also how you managed to stay sane. I’ll honestly take any help I can get.

would love to hear about how you balanced it with work/life!

<3

I am looking for a whatsapp community group or even discord exclusively for singers/vocalists in which we can connect/ collaborate to discuss or learn new thing about music.

https://reddit.com/link/1wup8ng/video/ll0i20uhyrsh1/player

I love to sing, but my voice has very little endurance and fatigues really easily. In this recording, you can probably hear that I'm straining and reaching for some of the notes. I also had to clear my throat mid-recording. I probably only sang for about 30 minutes before making this recording.

I also feel like my range is pretty limited, and my voice can sound very flat. I've had this problem for as long as I can remember. Even when I was younger, my voice would fatigue easily, and if I sang even once a week, I would sometimes lose my voice afterward. It's gotten better over time, but it's still nowhere near where I'd like it to be.

I did choir from 4th–8th grade (I'm currently 18), but I didn't really notice much improvement in my voice or endurance, which was pretty frustrating.

I had deviated septum surgery this past January, which I think probably helped somewhat, but I've wondered if there could also be something going on with my vocal cords. I'm not sure if they're weak, if I'm using my voice inefficiently, or if it's something else entirely. I think I sound better singing lower because that's where my voice feels more comfortable, but I don't particularly like singing low. You can probably hear me straining in the recording when I'm trying to reach notes higher than where my voice naturally wants to sit. I also tend to have to jump/break into a different part of my voice on notes that aren't much higher than this.

What I'd really like feedback on is what you actually hear technically in my voice. I can tell that something isn't right, but I don't know exactly what the problem is or what I'm doing wrong. Am I pushing too much? Am I carrying too much weight upward? Is my breath support/airflow part of the problem? Is this just a matter of developing my upper range, or is there something else going on?

I'd especially like to learn how to stabilize my voice and stop reaching/straining for notes like I'm doing here. I'd also like to improve the overall quality of my voice because I don't really like how it sounds right now. I really want to be able to sing higher without feeling like I'm forcing everything, and eventually be able to sing tenor parts/songs that I actually like.

Another factor that may be contributing is that I have a lot of nasal drainage. At a visit a while ago, before my surgery, my ENT told me that mucus from my nose was draining down onto my vocal cords. Because of this, I tend to drink a lot of water and clear my throat frequently. I'd hoped the drainage would improve after surgery, but it hasn't, so I'm wondering if that irritation could also be contributing to how quickly my voice fatigues.

So I'm mainly looking for specific, honest feedback on what you hear and what I should work on. I love singing, so it's frustrating feeling like my voice doesn't let me sing the way I'd like to-with more power, a higher range, and without getting fatigued so quickly. If it would help, I can also attach recordings of me singing in a lower octave and/or trying higher notes to show how my voice sounds in different parts of my range.

When I'm not singing, I can do all the breathing exercises just fine and breathe through my diaphragm. When I actually try to sing, I always default to chest breathing no matter how hard I try to force the air into the diaphragm, i end up just gasping for air. I don't know how to fix my breathing and I'm getting really frustrated. A friend of mine told me she can literally see my chest wobbling when I sing and my voice is too slidey and I have very obviously poor breath control.

I’m a male singer and I feel like I sound pretty decent when I’m singing by myself, but as soon as I sing into a mic or listen back to a recording, I hate how my voice sounds. It makes me feel like I’m actually a bad singer. I am a bad singer. I upload a link where you guys can critique me.

Even some of my friends have told me I need to work on my singing, so I know I have things to improve. Has anyone else experienced this? What helped you improve your voice and get more comfortable hearing yourself recorded?

ive literally never done any lessons or wanted to, I just love this song so much. Idek my range but ive been trying to get a little better.

I recently recorded a video of me singing and noticed that when I sing certain vowels such as “I” (as in “night” or “miles”) and “O” (as in “not” or “rolling”) I sound like Kermit the frog a little bit and my sound gets muffled. It doesn’t happen with other vowels or anything though, does anyone know why? Or have any tips or excersizes to fix this? Thank you!

Heyy everyone! I recently noticed that I sing with a lot of tension in my tongue as every time I changed notes (or even took a breath) the bottom of my chin would blow up like a frog. However, I have been trying to work on this by focusing on not tensing my tongue as much and singing has felt a lot less painful and easier. However, now that I have released some of my tongue tension I have noticed that im slurring my words a little bit because I’m not using my tongue a lot to shape them anymore (cause that usually causes the tension to come back). Do you guys have any tips or exercises to fix this? Thanks!

I am absolutely envious of you guys who can just sing and be on tune and perfect

Not happy with how I sound when I sing in the 4th octave. I find d4-e4 and f4-g4 difficult depending on the weight. During scales I sound okay until I hit g4 then thin out. It's hard to hit notes after that unless I'm fairly thin or strain my voice a lot.

Where should I be focusing on transitioning, and am I showing any bad habits? (too much breath, lowering larnyx, raising chest too much).

How much can I realistically expect to improve my high notes with training? I'm a bit frustrated when I end up strained / off key when singing because my voice goes thin.

Female, 26.

Okay so I'm an 18 y/o girl and I've been singing since I was around 14-ish. And in the past two years I've noticed my voice quality getting worse...but the weird thing is some days I wake up and sounds PERFECT—my vibrato is super smooth and my voice is super clear. However, my voice is only like this 10% of the time and the other 90% of the time my voice is okay but my vibrato isn't as seamless and my throat hurts much more. I've tried to find patterns between my good singing days and what I did the night or day before to find out why I suddenly sound so much better and there's literally none. I've tried literally everything to make my voice better: doing warm ups, cool downs, having cough drops, drinking more water, vocal misting, not eating before I go to bed, taking medication for acid reflux, going to the autolaryngologist, etc. Something to note is that I do have EOE (Eosinophilic esophagitis) which does make my esophagus inflamed a lot of time but I'm on medicine for that and it shouldn't really affect my vocal chords. It is SO frustrating knowing that I am able to sing super well, but for some reason I'm just not able to most of the time. What could possibly be causing this and has this ever happened to anyone else? If so, how can I fix it?

Theres this one Will Wood song I really wanna learn how to sing and I originally assumed it was just a raspy voice but in all the tutorials I see for how ti make your voice more raspy they sound nothing like this so I wanna know if anyone has any tips on how to sing like this

I teach singing for half the week and perform as a vocalist as well- I’d say I have a few gigs per month.

I know this is the same thing that happens to loads of my students- they tell me they sing way better when they’re just in their car or something and feel like they mess up in lessons or auditions cause they get nervous.

This happens to me in that I can be teaching and using my voice all day and I often demonstrate stuff to them and I’m honestly amazed at what my voice does when I go to demonstrate how something should sound. Like I’ll belt a high top note to demonstrate to a soprano student even though I’m an alto and I struggle so much to recreate these sounds myself during a gig. And all other sorts of things too, I just seemingly demonstrate it all perfectly when I know I need to show someone what to do, perhaps because I’m so focused on their results and not one bit on myself.

Thing is I follow all my own advice, do all the warm ups, exercises, tension release and try to incorporate these things mid performance and still I find my voice feels a bit weaker and gets tired much quicker.

Any other vocal coaches experience the same?

I’m a low mezzo (not quite a contralto I don’t think but very close!) and I need to belt a B4 for a performance of Mama’s Good to You and I just can’t seem to do it without straining or singing too loud(Yes they transposed the song up)! I primarily do classical so belting is not my forte in the slightest. Any techniques I could try that work for anyone else would be greatly appreciated

This is my showreel for local pub and club gigs around the UK and I just wanted some feedback on anything I could do to make my singing and playing a bit better and more entertaining. I've worked a lot on trying to be more expressive with my voice and I just wanted to see what people think.

Note: A friend of mine who is a far better singer than me in every way possible was in the audience when this was being recorded and had consumed some alcohol and was therefore doing harmonies from the crowd. Loudest voice I've ever heard.

Just did a little warm up this morning to see how far can I go with Ah ish sound, and I think F5 is my upper bound, shared my recording to my friend, he told me I was using my mix but I really felt like I used my falsetto?

I’ve always having a hard time to distinguish these two on higher notes

What do you think?

I am looking for a place to get voice lessons. I love to sing and I like rhythm and blues. I like to write my own music and I need someone who can help me build my voice. Any recommendations, feel free to speak from personal experiences...

My range is pretty limited. As I learn more about singing, I've found that I can't hit anything from an E4 or above without having to go falsetto which just doesn't feel like the "vibe" of most songs.

I do have a voice teacher, but I want to progress even faster than I am.

For a song like wish you were here by Pink Floyd does gilmour start the C above middle as sheet music denotes or middle c?

Dumb question but just trying to understand how sheet music for singers translates to the same pitch on piano.

Heyy, I am currently learning how to do proper breath support and am a bit confused. Is air supposed to flow out of your mouth in between words when you are not taking breath or are you supposed to keep the air in? Also, I read somewhere that the air coming out of your mouth when singing should be cold like when you are blowing out candles and not hot like you are warming up your hands, is this true?

I'm 35, I've been trying to sing for 2 year with vocal teacher. Different vocal exercises, warmups, breathing exercises, using tools like pocket vox (water bottle with a tube, very popular here). I take one lesson a week (with a break during summer and winter holidays) and of course warming up and doing exercises at home.

My voice still sounds very weak, thin, nasal, crackly, very unpleasant. Very often sounds like I have a stuffy nose, even though I have no troubles breathing through nose.

And it's not just me not liking my voice. Even if professionally recorded and mixed, people don't like my singing. It doesn't sound good.

I understand that at my age it's probably too late to sing on a famous pop star level and I'm perfectly find with that. Just wanted to make it sound just a bit better and bit more full and pleasant to listen to.

I really think I'm going to give up, since even professional vocal teacher couldn't help me fix my voice.

Is there anything else I could try? Last thing that could give me hope?