: Trombone to Voice I'm both a trombonist in a couple bands and a bass vocalist in an acappella group. I find that when I play trombone for an extended period of time, then switch to singing, I can't access the bottom major

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My guess- as a singer and a didgeridoo player- is that there is probably nothing you can do about it. The vocal chords vibrate in sympathy with tones you play on instruments, and get fatigued as though you were singing. All you can do is plan accordingly.

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I'm not a singer etc - but I got interested in a special technique of very
low pitch singing and have done quite a lot of voice exercises lately.

So my first thought would be that playing your instrument strains
your muscles in one way or another - and my experience is that
doing growling ("vocal fry") for a while restores low notes in
your voice (possibly by relaxing the many muscles involved).

So I'd try to take a comparatively low note - in your tired
and limited voice - and then do the opposite to tensing or
trying to produce a full volume sound - relax the cords
more and more, and you'll fall into a growl (an American
will call it "vocal fry").
Then growl in a gentle way - like a purring cat (feline purring
is an exact equivalent of this sound). This "turns on"
your false cords right above the real ones and somehow
relaxes the whole machinery and makes low voice notes again
possible - at least in my experience.

// The special technique I mentioned is called "subharmonic
singing" - that is when your cords sustain a note one
octave above the sound your listeners hear, due to the
mechanism of false cords, which , when properly added
to the base sound, oscillate at 1/2 frequency.

So every one of us has one more register below his bass
register of about one octave in size.//