Good Vocal Warm Ups

#4: How do I warm up my voice? – 5 Warm-Up Tips In today’s BLOG article, you’ll learn why a warm-up is so important for your voice and what it involves. I’ll give you 5 warm-up tips and show you mistakes to avoid. In today’s join-in podcast, I invite you to do a short warm-up with me, you can find it below this article and join right in! What is meant by vocal warm-up? The goal of a Vocal Warm-Up is always to prepare your body, your voice and yourself for the following vocal exercise program. Even if you don’t do any vocal exercises, it is always useful to warm up your voice before singing. Your voice is made up of an interplay of different muscle groups and just as you warm up before exercise to avoid injury, we want to warm up the body and our vocal folds (which are also muscles). We want to stimulate the blood flow in the muscles involved so that the full potential of your voice can show itself, but also get into the right “mood”. A vocal warm-up of max. 10min is ideal. 1. your body your instrument To sing we need a lively, alert, relaxed and joyfully erect body. We want to avoid too little tension due to tiredness or inertia or too much tension due to stress, tension and being “scratched up”. Therefore, a few stretches, Pilates stretches, yoga exercises or QuiGong exercises are wonderful to get into the body. You can also put on your favorite music and dance yourself supplely awake a bit. Stretching, reaching and stretching is also wonderful. A popular exercise is to imagine yourself picking apples that are hanging high above you on a tree. Shaking your body out in a bobbing motion helps to release tension and create looseness. 2. build up a good stance There is such a thing as the ideal stance for singing, which forms the basis of all your further effective vocal work. We build it up starting from the feet: Consciously connect your feet to your ground, ground yourself and imagine yourself putting down roots. While the feet give us stability and firm footing, our knees are allowed to be permeable, flexible and loose to support the upper body in the upright position. The pelvis is neutrally centered, make sure that there is no hollow back. The abdomen is relaxed, the solar plexus is open and soft, the chest is lifted. The idea of an invisible thread at the top of your head, on which you are suspended like a marionette, helps you to be fully erect. Make sure your shoulders and neck are relaxed. 3. bring the breath into flow With an exhale on ffff, you can let all your air flow out, pause briefly in the state, and then release so that the air flows deeply back into you all by itself. Pay attention to your abdominal muscles moving inward on the exhale and releasing completely on the inhale. Short impulse exhalations on F-S-Sch are also popular exercises for practicing the “release function”, i.e. the quick release of the abdominal muscles after the exhalation impulse…Make sure that you relax and release the tense abdominal muscles as directly as possible after each exhaled impulse. Finally, yawn with pleasure a few times. 4. wake up the voice Humming mmm in a relaxed tone is a good way to wake up your voice. Imagine that there is a big golden ball in your mouth, so you have a lot of inner space. Now you can chew on mmmm with pleasure (without your teeth touching), as if you were chewing your favorite gum, expressing your pleasure with hmmm…up and down, always in a relaxed tone, from soft to louder. 5. sirens in different forms My personal favorite warm-up exercises are sirens. You start e.g. with nnn/ ng/ u/ /lips flutter/ tongues R in relaxed pitch from top to bottom with your voice gliding like a siren. Step by step you can extend your range upwards. I can especially recommend lip fluttering, because it not only helps you practice optimal breath control, but also strengthens your inner laryngeal muscles and helps you achieve looseness. Sometimes lip fluttering doesn’t work right away for beginners, but from experience I can say that with a little practice every one of my students has already learned it! So now I invite you to try the suggested exercises directly with me, scroll down and dot you will find an audio mp3 to play! My name is Canan Uzerli and my passion is to help girls&women find their voice and develop their vocal potential. I teach in my room for singing in Hamburg and via Skype/Facetime. You will arrive late at the club, not much time left before the performance. A detailed voice warm-up is thus eaten. Now it’s time for the express version. For the following six exercises you need about fifteen minutes of time and are well warmed up afterwards. It is very important that you feel good vocally, that the exercises are pleasant and that you can get rid of all stress and tension. ? ? Enjoy reading our six practice exercises, the tutorial video on YouTube can be found at this link and at the end of this article. ? Small note: Each exercise is repeated three times.

1. warmup for the lips

Let’s start with a classic, the lip rolls or in German: the lip flutter. You snort like a horse in endless mode and with tones. Try to keep your mouth and jaw completely relaxed so that your teeth start to vibrate. If that works, you sing tied a chord up and back again. So the following notes of the scale: 1 – 3 – 5 – 8 – 5 – 3 – 1 Or for non-harmony people for example on C: C – E – G – C – G – E – C Try to sing the sequence of notes in different positions or/and try other four to five notes. The vibrations soften the lips, wake up the breath, and the exercise helps you come down and let the stress of being late fall away from you.

2. warm-up for the larynx and vocal cords

Hum a voiced S. Put your fingers to your larynx and feel the vibration. The looser you are, the more vibration you can feel. Find the point in your throat where the sounds create the most vibration. Your lips are slightly open. Repeat the sequence of tones from exercise 1 or a long, slow gliding tone from the root to the octave and back. Stay completely relaxed in the throat. Try different positions here as well.

3. warm-up for the chest and diaphragm

Breathe loosely into your belly and do not tense your abdominal muscles. Place your hands on your abdomen at the level of your rib arches. Pant a few times in a row like a dog. Now you can feel how your diaphragm, which separates the abdominal cavity from the chest cavity, springs. Then sing short melodies (perhaps the sequence of notes from the first two exercises again) on vowels, with the sounds coming directly from your belly. Start with an A and then try the other vowels. With the sound of the vowels, you can feel yourself singing from your diaphragm, because breathing and sound should not come from your throat. At the same time, you can feel your chest begin to vibrate as you sing.

4. open voice

Start with a soundless yawn. Then yawn on a sound. Feel how much space there is in your mouth and throat. Keep your mouth in yawn position and sing a tied line on the first five notes of “All My Ducklings”. So the following notes of the scale: 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 4 – 3 – 2 – 1 Yawn the notes. The extreme looseness in your mouth and throat will help you to further utilize your range, that is, the range of your voice. Also, this exercise relaxes your vocal cords.

5. short tone impulses

Make short sound impulses on the sound “Ha”. Keep in mind that the space in your throat increases with each tone impulse and decreases again during the pauses when your vocal cords are loose against each other. Sing the exercise on the sequence of notes from exercise 4. Try slow and fast has in chains, i.e. directly one after the other. Again, place your hands on your belly and feel the control as the air stops between each has. Feel the pulses like trampoline jumps in your diaphragm. This exercise will help regulate your air and you will learn to pace the flow of your breath.

6. come down before the show

Take a deep breath, open your mouth slightly and let the air out very slowly on an unvoiced S. Try to keep the air inside you as long as possible. The more you repeat this exercise, the longer you can do it.

Video Tutorial

In the following video Flavio shows you the six exercises in practice. Enjoy the video. By loading the video you accept YouTube’s privacy policy. Learn more Load video Always unlock YouTube

How do you warm up your voice before the gig? Do you have any exercises or tips? We look forward to your comments!

As the electric guitarist in an alternative rock band, Dominic has played in a number of clubs in German-speaking countries (very few of which he had to close afterwards). He still performs regularly on stage with his unplugged band. Good Vocal Warm Ups.