How to warm up your voice
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes
We all know we should warm up our voices before we sing - but how many of us do it religiously, every time? What about warming up for speaking? Here are a few things to think about.
Why warm up?
Well, because just like any other part of our body, our voice involves muscles and ligaments that will thank you for having a stretch and a chance to warm up (literally) before being asked to do any vocal tasks that may be demanding. It’s just a good vocal hygiene practice to include some sort of warm up activity into your vocal routine.
How long for?
It doesn’t need to be long, especially if you’re healthy, hydrated and well-rested. Certainly, if you’re facing a day with heavy voice use - sung or spoken, you won’t want to start with an hour of scales and vocalises, you’ll just exhaust yourself.
I try and do about 5 minutes before I start teaching every day and I find that to be sufficient. If you’re in a place where you’re really developing your voice, or have specific issues that need care and time, then longer may be appropriate. Ask for guidance from your voice professional. And if you’re in a rush - 1 minute is far better than nothing! Vocal Process has a great app for this if you find guidance helpful.
What should I do?
What a warm-up actually is, varies. What it’s not is a series of random scales and exercises. Exercises are designed to help you work on a specific part of your voice, a specific technique, to address a tricky passage in your repertoire, or to build stamina, for example, and any good teacher can develop these alongside you to meet your needs.
Warm-ups are to prepare the body for singing or speaking. There are different parts of your voice to warm up, so by starting with a mindful moment to tune into your body and then taking these in turn you can be really efficient and target what needs attention.
Start with a good stretch!
In an ideal world, a vocal warm-up would involve:
body stretches (including head neck and shoulder stretches/release)
tongue and jaw stretches/release
a little bit of breath work
voice glides/sirens to smooth out the creaks and cracks and to gently stretch the vocal folds
an SOVT exercise to align and strengthen the system (see my blog post on SOVT exercises here)
a tongue twister or two to get the articulators moving (I prefer to make up a melody and sing them!)
The rest of the warm up depends on your vocal needs that day. The warm-up you’ll need for a session belting out rock hits is going to differ to what you’ll need for singing opera, which is where a good teacher comes in to help you with those choices.
Let me know what your favourite warm-ups are!
Laura x
