[Music]
Number one is schedule. Find a time that works for you and fit it into your daily routine. If
you put it into the agenda just like any other activity you can plan on it every single day, plan
at least 10 to 20 minutes per day and you'll be well on your way to having mastery over your voice
instrument, daily routine is the key to success. Number two quick body warm-up. We're going to do
three things, we're going to shake, we're going to stretch and then we're going to fix our alignment.
First of all, I want you to just wiggle your body on your toes get on your toes and literally go
up and down until you feel your entire body shaking and relaxing getting rid of all
the tension, now when you stop, you're going to feel a little tingle coming all the way through
your body from your fingers to your toes and everything is going to feel warmed up, the next
thing we're going to do is just stretch, to really open the throat, open the chest and stretch all
the way up to the ceiling. Take a big breath and then all the way down, arms by the sides. That's
the stretch so you want to shake first to get the blood moving and the oxygen flowing and then big
stretch. Before you start making any sounds, you want to make sure that you're fully aligned, you
want your ears of your shoulders, your shoulders over your thorax cavity the thorax cavity over the
hips, hips over your knees, knees over the arches. Now the easiest way to do that is simply this,
roll your shoulders up back and down, make sure that your ears are over your shoulders,
hands on your tummy and relax, now you're ready for the next step. Number three is breath control,
we're going to feel the breath now in the lower lungs because this is the key to
really good breath control and breath control is the key to an amazing sound speaking and singing
voice, so we're going to do this by placing the hands on the knees, to feel the diaphragm kick
in and I'll show you how to do that in a moment. We want to actually breathe into the lower lungs,
this is really imperative for speaking and singing. And then we want to blow out strongly
and feel the tummy moving inwards towards the spine on the out breath. It goes like this,
this is the first position that we're going to use to get to know the diaphragm and how it
works for speaking and singing. When you've completely isolated the upper body in this
position we're putting our hands on our knees now my upper body can't move on the in-breath and this
is very important you don't want to upper chest breathe when you're upper chest breathing it will
keep you in a state of anxiousness, and you won't be able to breathe in enough to make a beautiful
vibration regardless of whether you're speaking or singing. In this position, we're going to take
a deep breath from the diaphragm and we're going to fill up the lower lungs I want you to imagine
that you're trying to blow out a candle, big breath in, no upper body movement at all, blow.
One more time, flop the tummy towards the thighs on the in-breath
and blow. If you're doing this mindfully, you'll notice that your tummy
releases tension on the in-breath and pulls strongly towards the spine on the out breath,
now let's vocalize it with a loud HA sound, and I want you to mindfully again
move your tummy muscle inwards towards the spine on the out breath. Ready? Breath in HA and again,
breathe in HA, one more breathe in HA.This is the way that you get to know your breathing muscles.
The diaphragm is the major muscle of inhalation and the abdominal muscles are the major muscles of
exhalation, so practice this a few times until you really get the hang of it.
Open pharynx, this area is called your pharynx, your throat muscles and when we speak we need
to make sure that there's no tension in these muscles. Before you speak or sing
because tension in the throat can make you sound very tight very thin and tense it's not a good
sound so to loosen this tension up we're going to open the throat muscles into a yawn and sigh
with a downward motion we're going to do it like this, nice big open throat breath,
and we're going to allow the airflow to flow freely through the vocal folds so you don't sound
like you're strangling yourself. Are you ready? Let's do it a few times together, big open throat.
Now I want you to make sure that the sound sounds free and it doesn't sound like this....
You don't want to strangle yourself at all, you want open throat muscles
so your vocal folds can vibrate with the airflow flowing freely
let's do it a few more times together getting higher and lower every single time, open throat.
Let's do two more times, higher.
Last time.
It should feel very easy and very relaxed you should feel the airflow flowing the entire time.
This is the very first proper vocal warm-up and this is something that singers and actors and
speakers do every single day before they get on camera or on stage. The very first one is called
the lip bubble, it's very popular and it's simple to do. Now the trick is this, don't blast too much
air through the lips because it won't work. If you use too much force when you're doing this
you'll end up with a very tight sound and it's not going to work at all,
the easiest way to do it is actually take a little bit of weight off your cheeks take a
little breath in from the diaphragm remember and blow up and down the scale like this.
Now the same as the other exercise with the yawn and the side coming down the scale,
we want to make sure that every single time we get a little bit higher and a little bit lower
don't start going to the edges of your range the very first time that you do this
you want to make sure that you're expanding gently so you're not forcing your voice this is
very similar to the lip bubble but this time we're going to do it with the tongue like this
so a lot of languages have the rolling of the tongue but in English we don't usually do that,
we don't use the tongue so much the tongue in singing acting and speaking is a very
important part of the articulation. We need to use it in very fast clear speech
so we're going to warm up the tongue, this time instead of the lips we're going to do
it in the same way using the siren, going up and down the scale let's do it together.
Again with me.
Now let's do it faster and go up and down a siren, as fast as you can until you run out of air ready
now when you've done that a few times it'll feel very easy to produce the sound, give it a go. Now
if you can't do the tongue trill, go back to the bubble or skip this exercise and go to the very
next one. It doesn't matter so don't beat yourself up for not being able to roll your tongue,
just keep at it, it will come. Vocal warm up number three,
this is humming and ng, now the reason that we use a nasalized sound sometimes in the warm-up of the
voice, is simply because airflow is much easier to control when it's put through a small pipe that's
why singing through a straw is also sometimes handy but we'll do that in a different video today
we're going to do it with humming, and with the sound as in the word sing the ng at the end of the
word sing, let's try it with humming first but we want to do this in a particular way. You're going
to bring the vibration of sound to the front of the lips so when you're doing a humming sound hum
you feel your lips only vibrate you don't feel tightness in your throat like this
um that doesn't feel comfortable at all it feels very tight and this again the air flow
is being arrested so we're going to do the siren one more time but with humming this
time and bringing that vibration forward to the front of the mouth ready nice big breath.
So really feel the vibration. tickling the lips this is the most important thing,
you might have to try it a few times over to make sure that that vibration is really coming forward
and you don't feel it in the throat, instead of the lips now we're going to change to an ng sound,
same sort of thing but we're going to feel the vibration in the roof of the mouth. This time,
say the word sing, and you'll feel that ng again is a nasalized sound at the end of the word,
so let's try the ng together from low to high high to low in that siren effect.
Now our goal with all of these sirens is to really make sure that we have a seamless transition
between the speaking lower range and the higher upper range, so whenever you're doing highs and
lows we don't want the voice to break in the middle of the range, you don't want to have
this going on. If you feel that and you hear it, you're not doing it right yet,
so I want you to back off the energy and really focus on getting that seamless connection
between the low registration and the high registration, then back again the key here
is to do it really gently, until you build up strength and resilience and flexibility
between the low range and the high range. Keep at it and you'll get there.
Number nine speaking voice resonance, now we're going to build on what we've just done with the
m and feeling that vibration really forward with a particular exercise that's very well known in
schools called, my mother makes me mash my m and m's on a Monday morning. Now lots of people all
over the world use this exercise for a warm-up activity in music class and in singing class,
and the reason is this it's a long phrase which challenges the breath plus it brings the m's right
to the front of the face just like we did with the humming but we're going to do it like this
we're going to do it on three or four different pictures on one breath every time big breath ready
my mother makes me mash my m&m's on a Monday morning, raise the pitch, doesn't matter which
pitch just choose a higher pitch, my mother makes me mash my m&m's on a Monday morning
and again let's do two more together my mother makes me mash my m&m's
on a Monday morning and last one my mother makes me mash my m&m's on a Monday morning
Number 10 the articulators, tongue twisters that help make your voice sound clear
resonant and flexible. I'm going to give you a few tongue twisters that will really help you
move your articulators much more efficiently for speech so what we're going to do is the following
exercises together, here's the first one, the tip of the tongue and the teeth and the lips.
That's super slow, I want you to follow me one time super slowly then we're going to
do it four times fast, you ready, the tip of the tongue and the teeth and the lips, breath,
the tip of the tongue and the teeth and the lips, now we're going to do it four times much faster on
one breath, the tip of the tongue and the teeth and the lips the tip of the tongue
and the teeth and the lips the tip of the tongue and the teeth and the lips the tip
of the tongue and the teeth and the lips. Let's try it a bit faster and with one breath still,
the tip of the tongue and the teeth and the lips the tip of the tongue and the teeth and the lips
the tip of the tongue and the teeth and the lips the tip of the tongue and the teeth and the lips.
The next one is a very familiar acting exercises all actors know this one it's the same type of
thing it's another tongue twister, red leather yellow leather let's try it four times fast
red leather yellow leather red leather yellow leather red leather yellow leather red leather
yellow leather, now you want to make sure that not only are you articulating the th
very clearly but you're remembering to drop your jaw on the vowel so the words are very clear
next one this is one of my favorites and i'm going to show you this with arm exercises to
make it super clear this is the way that i do it to remember the pattern tick tock
tickity tock tick tock tickity tock tickety tock tickity tock tikkity tikkity tikkitytak
let's do it slowly one more time then we're going to speed it up tick tock tickity top tick tock
tickity tock tickity tock tickity tock tickity tikkity tikkity talk let's try it faster tick
tock tickity tock tick tock tickity tock tickity tock tickety top tickety tickety tickitytalk.
Last one a proper cup of coffee in a proper copper coffee cup, let's speed it up,
a proper cup of coffee in a proper copper coffee cup one more time a proper cup of coffee in a
proper copper coffee cup there you have it 10 exercises, if you do this 10 minutes in
the morning 10 minutes at night every single day you'll have a much better voice you'll be well on
your way to that amazing speaking voice that you really desire. I'll see you in the next video.