Vocal Warm Ups
As athletes need to carry out warm up exercises before a race or a game, singers need to prepare their voices before a rehearsal or performance. Singing warm up exercises get the air flowing and relaxes your muscles to prepare for the more demanding activity to come. This is perhaps the most effective approach to avoid vocal weakness and overuse damage.
It could appear counterintuitive–more exercises to prevent overuse injury? Yes. Your vocal folds are controlled via tiny muscle groups, and when they’re warmed-up they are more elastic, a lot easier to use, and less vulnerable to injury.
Before starting your singing warm up exercises, do some whole-body stretching and relaxation. hang down for one more minute or so. A good exercise to begin with is the “rag doll”. Stand upright bending forward from your hips. Then allow your arms and head to droop and dangle for a little while.}Follow that with a stretching exercise for proper posture alignment. Stand together with your feet level on the floor, about hip-width apart, and your arms at your sides. Bring your arms rapidly upward and across your body in a circular motion until they are over your head. Rising onto your tiptoes, take in a good, deep breath as you move your arms up. As you slowly breathe out, move your arms back toward your sides come to rest level on your feet. Endeavor to keep the chest up and shoulders back, as they had been at the top of the stretch, after bringing your arms down. You are now ready to start singing.
The first singing warm up exercise uses a method that goes by several names: buzz, bubble lips, lip roll, or lip trill. Exhale through puckered lips to make a vibration, sounding quite like a power boat or perhaps a “raspberry”.
You will do the buzz slide {between three tones: the base tone, up a fourth, and back to the bottom (do-fa-do): in the key of C major, it would transpire C,F,C. Do again, moving up a semi step each time (C, F, C, then D,G,D, then Eb, Ab, Eb, etc.). You can also execute this on the syllable “ee” or “oo”, but the buzz forces you to use good breath support.~The buzz slide will be made between three tones: the bass tone, which is up a fourth, and then back to the base. (do fa do) so in C major the notes would be C, F and C. You want to repeat this and then move up a semi-tone each time. Do this as well with the syllables “oo” and “ee” but the buzzing technique makes for you to make use of great breath support.}The next singing warm up exercise is the fifth-slide. Begin on the fifth tone with the syllable “wee” and slide downward to the base (so-do): in C major once more, it would be G, C. Do again on the equivalent tones with “zoo”, then move up a half-step and repeat, “wee” and “zoo” on Ab and Db. Persist moving up by half-steps.
After that is the five-tone descending scale. Starting on the fifth tone, descend stepwise to the base: so, fa, mi, re, do. First do the syllable “na”, then “nay”, “noh”, and “noo”. Move up a half-step and do again the scale on each syllable.
The fourth singing warm up exercise is a descending 8-tone scale (do, ti, la, so, fa, mi, re, do) on the syllable “noo”. Once more, move up a half-step with every repeat. You can in addition attempt other vowel noises, such as “nah”, “nay”, “nee”, or “noh”, or use “m” as a replacement for of “n” as the initial consonant. Attempt to feel your mask, or higher resonance, as you perform this.
Follow that with a descending arpeggio: do, so, mi, do, on the syllable “nah”. Replicate on “nay”, “nee”, “noh”, and “noo”, after that jump up by half steps and repeat on each syllable yet again.
The final singing warm up exercise is the octave slide. Utilize the buzz and start on the base note; slide up an octave and back down to the base: do, do, do. Repeat on “oo”. Jump up a half-step, execute the buzz, and followed by “oo”. Carry on moving up with half-steps.
Tags: vocal exercises, vocal warm up, vocal warm up exercises, Warm Up Exercises
