Your performance starts long before you step on stage.
In this episode of Vocal Tips in 10, Amber Cathey shares the key habits that help singers show up energized, confident, and vocally ready for a performance.
Learn how sleep, hydration, and smart food choices impact your voice, how to pace your vocal energy throughout the day, and how to use soundcheck to dial in your setup before the show.
If you want to feel stronger, steadier, and more in control on stage, these simple pre-show strategies make all the difference.
00:00 Introduction to Vocal Performance Preparation
02:38 Nutrition Before Performance
07:27 Warming Up and Cooling Down
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Hello friends and welcome to Vocal Tips in 10. I'm Amber and I work with a lot of singers who tour a lot of the year. Right now, many singers are in the midst of prepping for tours that kick off in the spring. I also work with a number of singers that are gigging while they juggle full-time day jobs and everything in between. And the question I get a lot from the singers that I work with, from singers in Vocal Pro,
from those of you sending me DMs and messages and emails is how to really prep for that performance. How do you prep to make the performance as good as possible? And I get questions like, should I eat? What should I eat? When should I warm up? How long should I warm up? What do I need to do at sound check, all of these questions. So if you have been wondering any of these things, that's what we're gonna get into today.
Certainly there are things you can do well in advance, always taking care of your voice, always working on your technique and your artistry. So you are ready to go and sound and feel your best whenever a gig or an opportunity comes up. That is ideal. But what I wanna talk about today is just how to prepare the day of a performance.
Two things I wanna say right off the bat. You are going to feel so much better and sound so much better if you can prioritize sleep before your performance and if you can prioritize hydration before your performance. We need sleep if your body is tired, guys, your instrument is tired. If your body feels refreshed and well rested, so does your voice.
And obviously being well rested, being full of energy and ready to go because you got some good sleep doesn't just make your voice better, but it makes your whole performance better, your whole vibe better And then when it comes to hydration, nothing we eat or drink touches our vocal folds. What has to happen is we are internally hydrated systemically.
which means we need to eat and drink, have it be digested by the body, and then it's going to go through our system and hydrate us on a cellular level. So that means if you've got a big show Friday night, start prioritizing your hydration on Thursday. For sure by Friday morning, but I really like people to be doing it at least the day before. We're not chug-a-lugging water. We are sipping regularly
throughout the day well in advance of our performance so we don't feel like we have to do this mad dash, know, chugging water right before, which isn't helping us. All it's doing is giving us a gurgly sloshy belly, which does not feel good. So sleep and hydration, we wanna do those in advance. But let's talk about day of the show.
prior to the performance.
so one of the biggest questions I get is, should I eat before? Or people will say, I don't really feel great if I don't eat before, but then I feel kind of sick after, or I don't have energy, or if I do eat, then I feel kind of weighed down. So what do I do? So first and foremost, you listen to your body. Everybody's gonna be different. So what you need to eat and drink to fuel your body before a performance might be different.
than me, but here's a general rule of thumb. Really heavy foods, fried foods, heavy foods, shortly before you perform, it's not ideal because there they are in our stomach and our diaphragm is constantly pushing down on that area as we are working and singing, working far more athletically than the average bear. So all of that stuff, to be really scientifically correct, gets smushed and sloshed around, which many times makes us not feel great.
Also, if you have a really full belly, it can feel uncomfortable when your diaphragm goes to drop down as it should so your lungs can expand, your ribs can expand and fill with air to fuel your singing. I also am not a fan of people skipping eating until after because one, I've been there done that back in the day and I am halfway through the show and I'm feeling weak.
and not great, and that's when I'm like, gosh, I wish I would have eaten something. And then afterwards, I'm so starved. I just want to scarf everything down, and then I'm so exhausted, I want to go to bed, and that really can up your chances of reflux and things like that. So ideally, I like to eat and tell my artists to eat if they can, depending on what feels good for you, several hours before you're going to be singing, and eat things that make you feel good, but don't feel really heavy. So things like,
chicken breast and rice and fruit and some veggies, salmon, a grilled chicken sandwich, know, any of those kind of things that aren't really spicy, aren't really heavy, but are gonna fuel your body to make you feel good, so that you can feel your best when you go out and perform.
And also, how many of you have like chug-a-lugged a big bubbly drink? If you know me, you know I love a Diet Coke. I know it's not a health food. I have one every day. It's a highlight of my day. I'm not gonna lie. But!
I don't want to go drink a big bubbly diet coke, then get up to the mic. Because how many of you have gone to sing and you burp? I hear it in voice lessons and coaching all the time. And singers are like, my gosh, I'm so sorry, especially if there's somebody that's fairly newly working with me. And I'm always like, hey, it's part of it. Ideally don't drink a bunch of bubbly stuff that can bubble up when you are on a microphone.
The next thing I want to talk about is soundcheck. Soundcheck is huge. And the thing I talk about a lot is vocal budgeting. And that means really deciding how you're going to use your vocal energy. And that's especially important the day of a performance, But when we don't want to budget, when we don't want to conserve our voice is soundcheck. Soundcheck is the time.
that they are setting the levels for you, so what you're gonna hear when you're performing, and ideally for the audience, what they're gonna hear.
You wanna sing full out during your sound check exactly how you're gonna sing in your performance so that the sound person can hear that and adjust levels accordingly. You wanna let them hear your highest highs, your loudest louds your lowest lows, your most quiet, gentle sounds, and then everything in between. You want to fully sing out and let them hear all the different dynamic levels that you're gonna be using.
in a sound check so that hopefully you can get the best sound in your ears and the audience can get the best sound. That is not the time to conserve vocal energy. When you do want to conserve vocal energy is if you are having, let's say, a little check-in with your background vocalists right before the show. I just had an artist in this situation the other day. They had background vocalists that were flying in just for the show. They had to practice the day of.
She was doing a rehearsal with the band that morning. Then she had a sound check late afternoon. Then after that, she was going to meet with her BGVs to sing through it, make sure everything felt great, And then go sing an hour set. so she reached out to me and said, okay, when do I warm up? What do I do? So my advice to her was when you are practicing with the band, you do a little warm up before then, you do not need to sing full out a hundred percent.
be amplified, sing enough that they can hear you so you guys know the groove, the vibe, the set list, whatever you are working on is locked in and feels solid. You don't need to belt your face off. That's not your time to shine unless it's something where you wanna make sure it works. But otherwise you do not need to go full out in that. Then as much as you can, rest after that. Give yourself a break. If you can, right, go move your body, go on a walk.
stretch, do some yoga, get a little massage, release some tension. Your body is your instrument. So pay attention to your body as well. Pay attention to your mental health. Then when she goes in for the sound check, that is the time, like I said, to sing fully out. Do a little mini warmup before that. Do a little mini cool down after that.
When she's singing with BGVs, she can mark a lot of it. That just means she doesn't have to sing full out as she's making sure they know the parts. Then when they're going to look at blend and make sure that everything feels good, she wants to sing full out a little bit then to make sure everybody's got the sound that they're looking for. After that, rest, then a little warm up before the show and good to go. After the show, cool down. I know that's not pre-performance prep, but...
cooling down after, just taking a minute to do some straw and water, to do some slides on an SOVT. ⁓
It's the equivalent of wiping your instrument down, putting it away in its case, or stretching after a physical workout. It's both of those things. So the next day you feel better and your instrument's ready to go.
So we talked a lot about performance prep in this short time. We talked about should you eat, should you not eat? I say eat, but not right before, not heavy foods. Listen to your body. We talked about hydrating. We talked about sleep.
We talked about vocal budgeting. We talked about the great importance of singing fully in your soundcheck. And then I mentioned that importance of warming up, cooling down before you're gonna use your voice athletically, giving yourself breaks in the in-between time so that when it's time for your performance, you feel your absolute best.
paying attention to some of this performance prep stuff is the difference between feeling really confident and going out and delivering your best night after night, or feeling kind of iffy, unsure, you're already tired and you go in like fingers crossed. That's not a great feeling. Speaking of a warmup, I have a sing-along audio track that is a great warmup in five minutes.
We're talking quality, not quantity, As well as one of my favorite belting exercises, that's down in the show notes. Thank you for being here and see you in the next episode. Bye.
