I’m sure you have heard warming up your body before a workout – well the same goes for your vocal chords. What happens if you skip warm ups? You risk damage to your voice.
Check out these five great warm ups for singers.
Speak the scales
Starting off is simple… With your speaking voice, speak the words: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6… as if you were conversing with someone.
repeat again but this time going up the scale in half steps, still using your speaking voice but at different pinches ascending up. Be sure to stay within a comfortable singing range.
The purpose of this exercise is to teach you singing with sounding like you are using too much breath. It also helps you focus on the resonation within your mouth, throat and chest.
Humming Scales.
This exercise allows you to feel vibrations in your throat as well as the vibrations in your face and mouth.
At the low register of your range, produce a humming sound and notice the tone resonating at the front part of your throat. With your scales, hum each note. This also works for humming simple songs.
The purpose of this exercise is to teach you control of your vocals as well as note placement. Once you have done this for a short while you are ready to progress to the next warm up.
Yawning tone warm up.
With one continuous long yawn, bring your pitch comfortably to the top of your singing range.
Reach the highest note you can comfortably, then bring it back down the scale to your lowest note that’s comfortable. Do this without your voice breaking.
Remember to use a yawning effect, but keeping pitch.
This improves your range because it makes you transition properly between all the notes in the scale.
Vowel exercises
You may have already heard of this warm up before. Using the vowel sounds: A, E, I, O, U Sing from the bottom of the scale, holding each vowel for a short moment each while singing the entire set.
Articulate each sound as you sing your vowel sounds up and then back down your scale. Do this for around a minute.
This will train you to maintain a smooth continuous tone.
Articulation.
Although a more advanced exercise, Articulation is extremely important for vocalists. At the end of the day, your audience can’t fully appreciate your songs if they can’t understand the words.
Do you remember that tongue-twisting phrase: “She sells seashells on the sea shore”? Well its time to incorporate the vowel sounding warm up swapping out the vowels for the complicated phrase. recite the tongue twister while going half a step up on the scale.
Although this sounds difficult, it will teach you perfect articulation with your performances.
Enjoyed the tips and want to take your vocals further?
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