Vocal Issues

[Gorgorostrich]

Howdy, folks.

Didn't feel like posting this anywhere else, so hoping someone here has experience with this - if not I can look around.

Lately I've been having vocal issues. It's funny because I took a few days off of it to do cool downs, and then today I worked the voice back to a point where I could do decent highs'n'lows and a fair amount of vibrato (mind, all pretty loud - my quieter vibrato is admittedly neglected and still very weak right now from whatever's ailing me), and then found that I still had the same problem I did earlier last week with harsh/rasping vocals.

Whenever I try to do harsh growls/rasps/screams, I'm getting a lot of scratching in the throat and coughing. I'm sure this is common, but in the past for me it's been almost the opposite - if my voice was too relaxed, it would sound kind of Tom Waits/Beefheart-ish. Now that general range is pretty impractical.

I want to know if anybody else who sings here has experienced this, and what should be done. If I stop singing and do more cool downs, will it fix the problem? If not, should I do something else to fix it?

Also, I have a few theories as to what might have caused it, and I'm wondering what's most likely:

A. I had a couple gigs the week (or maybe slightly more than a week, not totally certain) before I noticed the problem, and these both involved some primal screaming (all mic-less, but it's acoustic mostly so I wasn't competing with a stack or anything) that I suspect could have messed it up.

B. I have a bunch of mold here. Just regular mold. It's pretty bad, and I wonder if it could be releasing spores into the air that have infected my sinuses and throat or something. Can thrush be caused by mold, or is it a fundamentally different fungus with no relation that causes it?

C. Some other kind of infection - like bacteria, eye stuff, virus, whathaveyou.

D. Some mixture of the above.

Hope to hear ya thoughts. Cheers and whatsnot!

[MaleficSounds]

The only suggestion I can make on this is to make sure you are not doing your lows and harsh vocals from your throat. It will mess you up! It needs to come from your stomach. Its too easy to fall back from it coming from your throat so you have to mindful of it. Hope this is enlightening.

[ratanda]

Dude, mold is no joke. I got sick for a while til I figured out what it was. I thought I had a cold with coughing and scratchy throat that somehow occurred only at night and in the morning. If you rent tell the owner who has to remedy it.

At the least, get a dehumidifier. You can get a small one for $50, and a midsized one for about $80

[Gorgorostrich]

Ah, that's what's behind the morning/night stuff?

Well, the voice cleared up eventually. Looks like I'll be fixing two problems.

[ratanda]

If the mold is on your walls, clean it off with bleach and water.