Why we warm up at 4,600 feet with dry air
Okay, so I've mentioned the dry air thing before, but I want to actually explain the why behind it, because I think when you understand why something works you actually do it, instead of skipping it because it feels like stalling.
Here's the deal with American Fork, and really the whole valley. We sit around 4,600 feet. Air's thinner up here, and it's dry, genuinely dry, not just "I should drink more water" dry but the kind of dry that pulls moisture out of everything it touches. Your throat included.
Your vocal folds need to be wet to work right. They're two little bands of tissue that come together and vibrate, and if they're dry they don't glide against each other, they kind of catch. That's part of why your voice feels rough some mornings up here, especially in winter when the furnace is running and sucking out whatever humidity was left. It's not that you're a bad singer on those days. It's the elevation and the air doing what elevation and dry air do.
What this means practically
A few things you can actually do, starting tonight if you want.
Water, but earlier than you think. Drinking a glass of water right before you sing doesn't hydrate your vocal folds, that's not really how it works, the water doesn't go straight there. What helps is being hydrated generally, hours before. So if you know you've got choir on Tuesday night, that's a Tuesday-all-day thing, not a Tuesday-at-6:45 thing.
Humidify your bedroom if you can. I run a little humidifier in mine most of the year. Cheap one, from a DI run originally, the kind with the wick filter you have to clean out or it gets gross. You wake up with a less scratchy throat. This one's optional, obviously, not everybody's going to go buy a humidifier for a community choir class, but if you've got one sitting in a closet, this is the season to pull it out.
Steam, not just water. A hot shower before rehearsal does more for your voice than a water bottle will. Ten minutes of steam actually gets moisture onto the folds directly. I'm not saying shower before every rehearsal, but if your voice feels like sandpaper, that's a better fix than chugging water and hoping.
Don't skip the hum. Which brings us back around to the actual warm-up we do every week. The humming isn't me stalling before we get to the real singing. It IS the real singing, just at low volume and low stakes, and it's doing actual physical work, getting blood flow and moisture moving through tissue that's been sitting dry all day, especially if you've been talking a lot or not talking much at all.
A caution, plainly
If your voice is regularly hoarse, not just tired but hoarse, for more than a couple weeks, that's worth a doctor visit, not just more humming. Dry air is a real factor but it's not the explanation for everything. I'd rather you check with someone than assume it's the elevation being difficult again.
Opinion time
I'll say the thing I believe here plainly: warm-ups aren't optional and they aren't stalling. I know some of you are ready to just start singing the piece, and I get that, I really do. But your voice is a muscle working against genuinely bad conditions up here, and five minutes of humming saves you a hoarse Tuesday. That's not a nice-to-have. That's the whole reason we start every single week the same way.
Here's a small confession though. My spouse asked me once, pretty gently, to stop correcting the radio host's pronunciation of composer names during breakfast. I said okay. I lasted maybe two days. I bring this up because I know how it sounds when I get going on the physiology of vocal folds at 4,600 feet, like I'm the guy at breakfast who can't let something go. I probably am that guy. But this one I actually think matters, and I'd rather explain it once here than have you wonder for months why your throat feels different in January than it did in July.
Okay, technically, I should also say, this affects some people more than others. If you grew up here, your body's had years to adjust some. If you moved from somewhere humid, like a lot of us have, it can hit harder the first winter or two. I've heard from more than one person that their first Utah winter felt like a chronic sore throat that never fully explained itself. It was probably this.
Before next time
Try drinking water steadily through the day before our next rehearsal, not right beforehand, and notice if your voice feels any different by the time we warm up. I'm curious what you notice, even if it's nothing.