How to Develop Your Voice with Vocal Warm-Ups and Exercises

Singing is an incredibly complex coordination process that requires our body to work as a common, extremely complex system.

It takes time for our body to synchronize all of its actions.

You've probably noticed how difficult to think clearly and solve complex problems in the morning, right after waking up. We need at least five minutes to open our eyes and give our brains time to process and launch full cognitive activity.

Just as the brain needs time to wake up and get ready to work, our muscles also need time to prepare for challenging physical tasks.

Warming up is a necessary step in training any muscle, and when we sing, we use a large number of muscles from different groups. Therefore, in singing, as in sports, neglecting warm-ups leads to injuries.

Increasing temperature in muscles, tendons and ligaments

The contraction of our muscles generates heat, so the temperature in the muscles rises locally. Warmed-up muscles and ligaments become more elastic: they can stretch to a greater length without damage, reducing the risk of sprains and injuries. In addition, the increased temperature in the muscles accelerates metabolic processes inside the cell (due to increased enzyme activity). This stimulates the muscles to contract faster and with greater force.

Increasing the speed of nerve conduction

A warmed-up muscle has an increased speed of nerve transmission, which can improve coordination of body movements, which is especially important in the process of singing.

Dilation of blood vessels

The small blood vessels that supply blood to the muscles are constricted at rest, but when a person warms up, these blood vessels dilate to supply the muscles with the oxygen and nutrients they need to perform. This phenomenon increases muscle endurance.

Preparing the brain for vocal activity

Before you start singing, it is important not only to prepare your vocal muscles for work, but also to prepare your brain for vocal tasks.

Warming up helps you focus on the details and improves your overall concentration, and when we are concentrated, we can control our bodies more effectively.

Singing is a set of complex coordination movements, so warming up helps you focus on performing complex elements. We adapt more easily to new, unfamiliar movements and "turn on" the necessary muscle systems and neural connections for accurate performance.

The benefits of vocal warm-ups are also confirmed by a large number of scientific studies. For example, the results of a study by Julianna Wrycza Sabol, Linda Lee, and Joseph C. Stemple, "The Value of Vocal Function Exercises in the Practice Regimen of Singers", showed that the use of vocal warm-ups and exercises significantly improves the following indicators:

-ㅤSignificant reduction in airflow velocity (improved balance between pharyngeal adduction, phonation type, and subpharyngeal pressure, which led to increased phonation efficiency of the glottis).

-ㅤChange the phonation volume.

-ㅤIncrease the maximum phonation time.

The changes were achieved, among other things, by increasing muscle strength and endurance and improving muscle coordination during exhalation.

Here's what Lara Fabian says about vocal training in an interview:

"I work on my voice mostly everyday, not to say everyday. I do. It’s a classical technique I’ve been using for 20 years now. It’s a muscle. You know, sometimes, you also have to have the sense of relativety. What is that? It’s a muscle and you have to work on it, like a violinist plays instruments. The only difference is we have the instrument inside our body. We have the responsibility to really cherish it and work on it. So that’s what happens. Through the years, you work more, and more, and more not to lose the elasticity. We cannot grab the mic and sing with no warm-up. We can`t. That`ll guarantee the destruction of vocal cords. Taking care of yourselves is fundamental."

Vocal warm-ups should begin with gentle exercises that relieve any tension and allow a small amount of air to pass through the vocal cords without putting pressure on the muscles.

Step 1 - activate the body

We do a gentle warm-up of the neck, shoulders, and torso (just a few minutes).

Step 2 - breathing exercises

We saturate our body with oxygen, and then train our exhalation muscles to contract very, very slowly.

Step 3 - humming

This is one of the best exercises to start with because it doesn't put a lot of strain on your vocal cords, just a gentle warm-up. You should feel relaxed during this exercise. Your neck should be relaxed. Each note should sound like "hmmm". Including the "h" sound at the beginning of the workout reduces the stress on the vocal cords.

Step 4 - trills

Lip and tongue trills are an incredible exercise that performs many functions at once: it warms and relaxes the lips and tongue, helps control breathing, helps direct sound into the resonators, and helps expand the range. Trills are probably the most effective exercise because they accomplish many things at once, and you won't get hurt while doing them.

Keep the sound and air evenly distributed by changing the pitch during the trill.

Step 5 - exercises with gradual movement

There are many exercises with different melody configurations. Choose the ones that suit you best - the ones that you like best and contain phrases that are close to those that will be used in the song.

Step 6 - arpeggio

It can be of varying complexity, helping your voice to deftly and accurately change pitch and reproduce small jumps in the melody.

Step 7 - glissando (glide, slide, siren)

A great exercise to practice a smooth transition between registers. It can be used to practice modern vocal techniques: twang, mixtures, and belting).

Step 8 - diction and articulation

In order to make the words of the song clear, not blurred, and not to have the tongue "stutter" in fast songs, we need articulation exercises. When we sing, we have to sing smoothly, as if "shedding" vowel sounds and pronouncing consonants clearly. For articulation, we need to tone our tongue, lips, and facial muscles. This is where tongue twisters come in handy.

This is the end of the vocal warm-up. This was the preparatory stage. The vocal warm-up takes an average of 15 minutes.

Then you can start the voice training exercises:

Scales

This is also a gradual movement, but more advanced. This exercise improves your musical ear and your sense of harmony in music. The exercise is extremely useful for training melismas and will help you improvise in the future. Don't just stop at the major scale - try minor, pentatonic, blues scale, Lydian or Phrygian scales, etc.

Chords

It will be very useful to quickly run through the chords. This will help develop your musical ear in general, and will be especially useful for those who sing in an ensemble (or add backing vocals to their tracks). Gradually increase the complexity of the chords you sing.

Dynamics

In order to learn how to skillfully and smoothly increase or decrease the volume of our voice, we also need exercises.

In music, a smooth increase in volume is called Crescendo, and a decrease in volume (fading) is called Diminuendo. Vocal terminology offers another definition exclusively for vocals - Messo di voce, which means a gradual increase or decrease in volume within one sustained note, while maintaining a constant tone and sound quality. In essence, it is a controlled and smooth transition between quieter and louder dynamics within a single note.

Vocalise (melismatic or syllabic)

Vocalise is a vocal performance technique that involves singing nameless sounds or syllables without clear text. This can include repeating vowel and consonant sounds or singing melodic phrases made up of different vowel sounds.

Vocalise is almost like a song, but without words. They are beautiful, have a nice melody and accompaniment. Their benefit is that they are specially created to train a certain quality of our voice, and the whole melody is built on a certain principle (whether it's jumps, or transitions between registers, or cantilena, and so on).

The greatest benefit of training vocalise is to learn how to sing musical phrases expressively, distribute breath correctly between phrases, smoothly transition from one sound to another, and work on vowel sounds.

Drinking straw exercise

You need to place a drinking straw in a glass of water (about half a glass) and sing vocal exercises or a song melody into it.

This exercise helps you learn how to stabilize the air flow while singing and better control your voice by determining the intensity of the air flow by the bubbles.

With this versatile program you can develop different aspects of your voice. Our teachers develop individual programs of vocal warm-ups and exercises for each student, taking into account their strengths and weaknesses. You can try some of these vocal warm-ups in our repository or on our YouTube.

Don't forget that every time you are going to sing or do exercises, you need to warm-up. In order to prevent our students from being lazy, we have even released a video in which we have collected rare footage of famous performers warming-up.

Don't neglect it, because it’s your voice and your health.

Maggie

Professional performer and vocal teacher

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