Michael Gough Quotes

There's very little I can sing now. When I asked my first voice teacher, who was the best one, "When will I know when to stop singing?" he said, "Your voice will tell you." And it is very, very difficult to sing now.

I lost my voice for the first time. I was so bummed out, but it happens to every singer at some point in their career. I don't think most people understand, but I sing every night and sometimes we do five shows in a row, which is really bad for your voice.

The vocal cords are a muscle, and like any other muscle in the body, they can be strained. So you have to warm up.

There was a time, actually, when I hadn't been singing, and I'd lost a lot of my ability. My range had shrunk.

If I go three days without vocalizing, the voice is gone.

I blew my voice out and the doctor said, don't even talk for a week.

And my voice now is a struggle, it's a daily struggle to keep it up. Gravity has begun to fight the vocal cords the way it does with everybody. So I have a vocal therapist, and we record the sessions and I use them on tour every day.

When I was on the air a lot my throat and vocal chords got tired. If you don't vary your tones you can't get pretty tired of your own voice.

Well, I don't think a specific role can destroy your voice. What can destroy your voice is when you... make an error. Everybody can make an error. But then you need to realize what is your way.

I don't sing anything that hurts my voice.

You can't abuse your voice by yelling and screaming.

Crying is really bad for your vocal cords.

There is one thing I should say, and it's important: Young Broadway singers and anybody who is an orator of any kind - lawyers who have to speak in court or pastors or anyone who has a lot of stress on their vocal cords: You should do the maintenance. You should do whatever it takes to feel fresh and good.

Some artists just ruin their voices because they don't know any better.

But I'm pretty lucky with my voice. When I first started touring I went to see a woman to give me some coaching on how not to lose my voice. And she was just saying really your voice is a muscle so if you're using it all the time you should actually come back from tour with a stronger voice than you left with. And that's really how I find it.

When I come off stage, I just shut up. I try as best I can not to use my voice at all. You know I love to talk, but I try when I come off stage to have the minimum amount of vocal interaction because I need at least a good 10 hours to just recover from my form of extreme singing.

If your body is not in shape to sing [from the diaphragm] you will push and push but keep falling back on your throat to make the sound. This will ruin your voice.

The way the vocal folds work is that they can get inflamed and in pain, but actual tears in the folds are somewhat rare. I've never torn anything. Been too strained plenty of times.

I've been singing properly every day since I was about fifteen or sixteen, and I have never had any problems with my voice, ever. I've had a sore throat here and there, had a cold and sung through it, but that day it just went while I was onstage in Paris during a radio show. It was literally like someone had pulled a curtain over it.

I don't really strain my voice.

Screaming is bad for the voice, but it's good for the heart.

I have deliberately kept singing because I have to at my age. If I stopped for even a year my voice would slowly deteriorate until it's not there at all. That's a fact about getting to my age.

I have as many pictures of my vocal cords as I do of my children. I have a great ear, nose and throat doctor, and we look at them - if there's some redness, maybe I'll take a little time off.

You can't treat your voice badly and expect it to stay around.

I've had problems with my throat over the years, playing with loud bands for years, and I've had bruised vocal chords and nodules.