‘Vocal Fitbit’ prevents burnout for Broadway singers

Vocal burnout in the performing arts isn’t rare. But nowhere are vocal demands greater, perhaps, than on Broadway. Singers there take on challenging roles, belting out show-stopping numbers eight or more times a week, and the heavy workload can take a toll.

The new research, which appears in the Journal of Voice, drew data from six student performers rehearsing for a production of Frank Wildhorn’s Wonderland, a theatrical spin on Lewis Carroll’s classic novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Students fastened the dosimeter device – equipped with an accelerometer sensor – to their necks to capture vocal fold vibration data while singing in rehearsals. The data helped researchers measure the baseline “vocal dose” required for lead and ensemble roles in the show and compare it with the actual vocal output from student performers.

Vocal health professionals typically rely on a singer’s self-assessment of vocal discomfort to assess the likelihood of injury, but more definitive measurements with this kind of “vocal Fitbit” can help establish a threshold of vocal use that is sustainable for singers, as well as illustrate the vocal range required for each specific role in a production.

For example, the study illustrated how the student-performers used more of their “chest voice,” – meaning the lower range that uses thicker vocal folds and produces belting-like tone qualities through the speak-singing approach typical of contemporary musical theatre. Today’s shows are more vocally and stylistically demanding than ever before, which can have an impact on a singer’s vocal anatomy over time, even potentially changing the underlying tissues.

While there are no hard-and-fast rules about how much singing is too much, this kind of data collection is paving the way for future research into the relationship between muscle fatigue and recovery time, and can empower performers to create healthy practices that minimise harm to the voice.

Here, leader of the study Ana Flavia Zuim, Associate Director of Vocal Performance at NYU Steinhardt and Rehearsal Pianist for Hamilton on Broadway, explains:

“This study does for the voice what a Fitbit does for the body. A Fitbit might tell you that you burned 400 calories at the gym, while the accelerometer machine I used for the study tells you how many vibrations your voice produces per day and at what intensity, volume – and which pitches – frequencies – were produced with greater frequency throughout the day.

“This gives us a visual of the “vocal imprint” for some of these roles on Broadway, so we can start to obtain an understanding of how “fit” a voice needs to be in order to endure roles of a certain calibre, particularly when a vocalist needs to perform eight shows a week. This is one of the very first studies of this nature, but once these dosimeter devices become more portable and compatible with phones, I expect we’ll see more studies like this one and more data to help us understand the impact of performance on vocal health.”