Hi there! I am a 23 year old singer from NH. My problem lies mostly with my singing voice, but also my speaking voice as well. I have always had quite a high pitched speaking voice and sang in the tenor range most of my life with a clear, light tone. I developed a "new" technique of "lowering my larynx" to sing about 4-5 years back. It started as a most subtle sensation, I just felt as though I was opening up in the back. The tone was clear, resonant, and sounded quite good with a more baritone quality. This new tone "worked" and people really liked it, so I just ran with it. Over time it became more of a permanent way for me to sing. It sounded very different from my brighter high speaking voice, but singing in this manner was impressive and quite a beautiful sound. At this point I had just labeled myself as a baritone and thought it necessary to lower my larynx to sing. This new technique however quickly became very restricting and very far away from my natural speaking voice, but since people like it I kept it up. Over time this sensation of "opening up" in the back began to feel like the only possible way for me to sing, and required a ton more air and force then I had ever used before. My range was still quite big, being able to extend up to an A, but I felt the only way for me to sing high (or really in any part of my range) was in a very chesty forced way. However, no voice teacher that heard me found anything really wrong with the sound I was producing, and just told me I had to work on my breath support. The odd thing though is that my speaking voice never suffered, it remained bright, high and clear, I never really lost my voice ever, and I never experienced a hoarse or breathy voice.
I took a few months off after undergrad of my usual daily singing. When I returned to taking lessons things were different. Singing had/has become more difficult then it ever was before, to the point where I feel I can no longer sing well. The way I best describe it as feeling, is that my chest voice no longer works without a ton of force behind it, and that the only way for me to project my sound is with this "lowered larnyx" position. I feel like I have to come up with a new singing technique every day. Singing is extremely uncomfortable now, I feel like my only comfortable options for singing are falsetto, an extremely light tone, or this forced tone with the "lowered larynx position". I am so disheartened because I feel like my singing voice has just left me. My current teacher believes it's just me over analyzing things and that I don't practice enough to maintain the technique he's teaching me. In lessons I hate the tone I use, I feel like it is now just this overly darkened, chesty, forced operatic sound with unnatural vibrato. I'm almost at the point where I want to stop singing. What I believe is that I am a natural tenor with a very damaged voice from singing with this forced baritone sound for so long. I'm going to get scoped as soon as possible. If you have any thoughts on what could be wrong exactly I would love to hear from you.
Thank you! ~Josh