Vocal Aging Quotes

I mean, my voice has gotten a little deeper sounding as I've gotten older, I think. I noticed that.

As you get older, your voice changes, as well. Your voice should be able to last as long as you last.

It's not that I always had this impeccable voice. Some 15-18 years ago, I started noticing that I could not reach higher octaves.

I remember Pavarotti telling me, 'Oh, Neil, after seventy, the voice is going to go.' But I've been lucky. You almost have to learn how to sing all over again. You use your diaphragm more. You have to choose the notes and pace yourself.

Maybe I won't have as much energy. And maybe the highs in my voice won't be what they used to be. But exercise is helping me pace myself.

It [my vocal] didn't sound like what I wanted to hear; the vibrato isn't what I liked anymore. So I got myself to an ear, nose and throat guy who does a lot of work with singers, and I was hoping there was a big wart on my vocal cords or something and they could scrape it off and I could have the voice I wanted. But he said, "No, for 71, that's your voice."

The voice muscle doesn't last forever. I have a lot of friends who are classical and opera singers. My friend Beverly Sills stopped singing in her 50s, so I'm careful with mine. But I'll keep going as long as it lets me.

When I was younger, I did what I now call 'extreme singing.' I could do this thing where I would sing really high. I can't really do that anymore, at my age. My voice has shifted. It's changed.

I like to keep my voice going. I don't want it to lose its chops. You know, as you age, it's easier for you to lose it.

You know, your voice can only last for so long. It's a muscle and when you get older it sort of fades away.

That sound in tune to you?.. Sounds sharp to me. Sounds like I'm playing sharp all the time. My singing teacher told us you should do that. Maybe I got it from her. She said singers when they grow old have a tendency to go flat. So if you sing sharp as a young person, as you get older and go flat, you'll be in tune. In other words, it's never thought good to be flat. It means you can't get to the tone.

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.

You would have thought that as you got older the voice would tend to deteriorate in some ways, but I always look at somebody like Tony Bennett, who is my senior, and still can hit those high notes and still can belt it out as good as he ever did. So it must be something about the voice that's unlike the rest of the muscles in your body.