Are you looking for some of the best vocal warm ups to practice daily before
singing? In this video, expert vocal instructor Stephanie shares a few quick
exercises that every singer should know. So keep watching, and before you go, click
the link in the description box to learn more about our free online singing
classes. I'm Stephanie from TakeLessons and I'll be talking about vocal warm ups. The first question
I normally get is: when should you do vocal warm ups? The answer is, always,
reason being is - you have to consider yourself an athlete. When you sing you're
using muscles that require loosening before you actually produce the
sounds that you're trying to produce. So the first exercise that I think is
important and actually very helpful is humming, reason being is - when you hum
you actually find your mix without trying too hard. So when you hum the
sound completely comes to your face and sits in a very relaxed manner, and most
of the time when you're humming you actually get pitch correctly as well.
So if you take your hands and place it on your face and hum anything, you should
feel a bunch of vibration in your hand and in your face. It also is a gentle way
of warming up. An exercise you can do, and I'll demonstrate, is humming any scale.
Another exercise you can do is sirens, the reason being is that you actually
learn to control your registers. So you want to first start from your chest
voice. So I'll demonstrate three placements in terms of registers. Ahh. Now
mixed. Ahh. It's kind of like in your talking area. Now head voice. Oh. Way up here
above your head. Okay so if you use a closed vowel like "whoo"
you're more likely to get it right because you're concentrating the air
in a form that's very seamless. Whoo-whoo. The sound should be all the way forward.
I'll do it one more time from chest to mixed to head. Alright another
exercise we can do that is very helpful is lip trills. They tend to loosen up the
jaw, relax the mouth and the tongue. If you need help doing this you can take
your two fingers and almost create a dimple, like this, so when you spit the
air should almost feel consistent and seamless. So once you got that going and
you can do scales on them, another exercise we can do is perfecting the way
you deliver air or the air flow. You should have good control of your air and
a lot of times problems happen because you're not controlling how to
manage the air when you release it. So it's learning to deliver the right
amount in a very relaxed manner. So one thing you can do is take your hands. Your
thumbs, you want them on the back of your back and around your ribcage, and
your hand (the front of your hand) should be around your stomach and your ribcage.
So when you breathe you should feel your stomach widen, your sides widen, and your
back expanding. So it's almost like a 360 breath. An exercise you can do to
manage your air and see improvement is take note of how many times you can
extend that hissing that you release with the air for an extensive time.
Between 35 to 45 seconds is a good amount; anything below that, you need to
work on it. So you take your hands, breathe in low. Hiss.
See how my air release, it's very controlled. It's like almost like a string of air. So
you want to control that initial attack. So start controlling it from the very
beginning to the very end. You shouldn't hear any pitch fluctuation or feel your
air kind of spit out inconsistently almost like a train. You don't want to
hear ssss. And your body shouldn't do this. You should be controlled and seamless
like a string. Another exercise you can do is learning how to breathe correctly
with time. So a lot of times an upbeat song will seem like it's harder to
breathe but it really isn't. It takes the same amount of time to breathe correctly
as on a ballad or if you're singing acapella. So as long as you keep that
tempo and inhale on the correct beat, you take a correct breath. One thing you can
do is give yourself some time do a four-four count. Inhale for four counts,
hold it in for four counts, release it for sixteen. Then do it for three, hold it
for three, release for sixteen. Then two, hold, release for sixteen, one, hold
release. Another important exercise you need to learn to do is a vowel exercise.
So in singing you always want to create sound with the vowel not the consonants. A
lot of times tension will happen if you over pronounce a consonant. Guh, guh. All
those block your airway which don't allow your air to pass down to your
diaphragm, impeding the sound to be on the vowel and resonate properly. So you
want to actually drop your jaw. Ah. Eh. And keep your tongue as far forward as
possible and lift your soft palate as you produce these tones so they almost
sound British or like your mouth is numbed out.
So always round down relax. So I'll demonstrate an exercise - you can either take the Ah to Eh to EE
or EE to Eh to Ah, whatever works best for you. Pay attention to how you feel
and how your body is feeling. So I'll demonstrate a lower one and then a
higher one.
So my mouth wasn't that open. Now I'm going to take it up several notes... Now a little higher. And
you can create the tone in different places. Make sure you're not allowing
them to stay in the same place. So this next exercise is to increase vocal
flexibility. It is something that requires you to be very aware of your
larynx, how registers work, where sound is placed, and how your diaphragm feels.
You want to take your hand, place it on your neck, and as you sing a scale you
should feel the sound completely forward, your diaphragm engaged, and the notes
should feel like they're shifting in your neck... So the top one should feel
like it's here then dropping dropping dropping. These exercise are all
important because this is what will help you execute that song that you want to
sing correctly, so if you don't learn to do the technique and you don't do the
work that's important, that song will seem impossible to sing. So start with
these and make sure you do warm ups before singing. Hey there, thanks for
watching. Which of these vocal warm ups is your personal favorite? Leave a
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