Straw therapy? Voice exercises using a simple straw will help alleviate a tired or fatigued voice. Straw therapy can be used for the singing or speaking voice before and after voice use.

You can incorporate these exercises into your routine vocal warm up and cooldowns, when recovering from a cold or respiratory illness or if you have vocal fatigue due to overuse, misuse or abuse of the voice. It is recommended that you do not shout or yell excessively, talk over loud noise for long periods or sing with a poor technique.

Generally, I recommend 3-5minutes as part of your vocal routine. You can do it on sounds, sirens, scales, as a prosody exercise (using speech pitch patterns) and on song melodies.

Find a good singing teacher or voice coach to help you understand how to use your voice safely and efficiently.

Here is voice scientist Dr. Ingo Titze of the National Center for Voice and Speech, demonstrating how to do the straw exercises.

Please see an ENT/Laryngologist consultant if problems persist or worsen.