- A vocal warm up doesn't need
to employ fancy singing exercises
to be super effective.
Today, I'm gonna walk you through
a straight forward collection of activities
perfect for the beginner singer.
Especially designed and organized
to prepare your voice for excellent singing.
Let's go.
- [Woman] Sound check.
- [Woman] Check one, check two.
(cheering)
- G'day, I'm Dr Dan.
Welcome to Voice Essentials, where everybody sings.
Recently I've noticed a lot of chatter online
about the necessity of vocal warm up.
Well, are they necessary or aren't they?
We live in a fast-paced world
and no one wants to be left behind,
so I guess it's all too easy to find ourselves
looking for easy shortcuts.
For example, what we'll be covering today
when done diligently,
will take between 10 to 15 minutes.
Now, for some people,
even 10 minutes feels like a lifetime.
Especially when the activity is a discipline.
In many respects, vocal warm ups
are an exercise in delayed gratification.
We all wanna get straight to the fun stuff,
the songs, but for most voices
singing songs without vocal warm up
can mean the voice will not be able to sing
as many songs, both short-term and long-term.
A vocal warmup is all about preparing the voice,
a mechanism whose moving parts are mostly muscle.
Your muscles need to be ready for use.
Cold muscles are susceptible to injury
and they also don't perform as well.
Muscles need heightened blood flow
when placed under load
and if you're a contemporary singer,
you know all about vocal load.
So, let's now walk through, or in this case sing through,
a collection of vocal exercises
that will prepare your voice
for singing longer and stronger.
It is vital for me to note that
you will have to adjust the activities we'll cover today
when applying them for your voice.
Each of the exercises I'll be singing through
can be found on my exercise CD
"Dr. Dan's Voice Essentials".
Together "Voice Essentials" One and Two
have over 30 activities designed to workshop the voice.
Today we'll mostly be using tracks from CD one.
Now, I'm going to stand up as I do the exercises
and I strongly encourage you to do that also.
And I'm also going to use the tracks
from the exercise CD,
just like you will also
so you can see how the whole thing comes together
in a real world setting.
So, let's do it.
Okay, so let's take us through these exercises together.
I'm just going to be playing them on a mobile device,
just like I've encouraged you to do.
And we're just gonna go through them.
These are the raw tracks.
I'm not gonna be doing any doctoring to them.
I'm literally going to work through them
as I would encourage you to do also.
So you'll hear the intros to the tracks.
The whole thing is gonna take around about 10 minutes.
What I would encourage you to do
is make sure you download the tracks and you sing along,
and organize the tracks for yourself
so that you're not simply singing along with me.
Although you can do that,
but it's always much better
for you to sing the tracks yourself.
Sing to the tracks yourself.
So, let's get started.
- [Recorded Instructor] Exercise eight.
- To start with I'm just gonna do the mm-ah activity.
And then we'll actually repeat it
and do the mm-ee.
But I'm not gonna go to high.
I'm gonna stay relatively confined, yeah.
So, probably just an octave and a bit.
So, here we go.
- [Recorded Instructor] Here we go.
♪ Mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm ♪
♪ Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah ♪
- Nice and gentle.
♪ Mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm ♪
♪ Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah ♪
♪ Mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm ♪
♪ Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah ♪
♪ Mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm ♪
♪ Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah ♪
One more.
♪ Mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm ♪
♪ Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah ♪
Now notice I'm being relatively gentle with it.
I'm not taking it to far to quickly.
Let's do it again on a changed vowel, an E vowel.
This is gonna focus it in.
And I'm gonna have to work a little bit more for my balance.
- Exercise eight. - Here it comes.
- [Recorded Instructor] Has been designed
for us to establish forward placement.
Placement's the word we give to a sense
of where the voice sits along the vocal tract.
Listen carefully to this example.
♪ Mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm ♪
♪ Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah ♪
- So here we go, mm-ee.
- [Recorded Instructor] Here we go.
♪ Mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm ♪
♪ Ee, ee, ee, ee, ee, ee, ee ♪
♪ Mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm ♪
♪ Ee, ee, ee, ee, ee, ee, ee ♪
♪ Mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm ♪
♪ Ee, ee, ee, ee, ee, ee, ee ♪
♪ Mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm ♪
♪ Ee, ee, ee, ee, ee, ee, ee ♪
♪ Mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm ♪
♪ Ee, ee, ee, ee, ee, ee, ee ♪
♪ Mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm ♪
♪ Ee, ee, ee, ee, ee, ee, ee ♪
Let's take this a little bit higher.
♪ Mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm ♪
♪ Ee, ee, ee, ee, ee, ee, ee ♪
- [Recorded Instructor] And now for the ladies.
♪ Mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm ♪
♪ Ee, ee, ee, ee, ee, ee, ee ♪
- And that's where I'd hop off.
The next exercise is a twang activity.
Actually no, at first we're just gonna do
a straight talk tribe on a vowel
which will actually require the voice to step,
a slightly larger step.
So we've gotta balance and keep everything nice and free.
Here we go.
- [Recorded Instructor] Exercise three is a triad
with simultaneous concept.
- We'll get to the twang in a moment.
I would like to include at least one twang activity
in my warm ups which we'll do after this.
♪ Ya, ah, ah, ah, ah ♪
- [Recorded Instructor] Okay guys,
it's our turn to kick this one up.
Here we go.
♪ Ya, ah, ah, ah, ah ♪
- Not pushing.
♪ Ya, ah, ah, ah, ah ♪
One more.
♪ Ya, ah, ah, ah, ah ♪
Now let's get straight to the twang exercise,
which is going to focus the voice in.
That's what I love about including it in my warm up.
It just helps me to find that nice clear tone
as a part of my vocal warm up.
Here we go.
(fingers snapping)
♪ Sing, nn, nn, nn, nn ♪
- [Recorded Instructor] Okay basses, kick us off.
♪ Sing, nn, nn, nn, nn ♪
One more.
♪ Sing, nn, nn, nn, nn ♪
Now notice I'm not really being overly technically
attentive to what I'm doing.
I never switch my technical ear off
but equally these warm ups
are not about a technical work out of your voice.
These warm ups are about toning
and getting blood flow into the muscles.
So, let's now go to the next one
which starts to take the voice out over the full octave.
Yeah, so it's an alternating vowel.
And we're now starting to really stretch the voice
out over it's full range.
- [Recorded Instructor] Okay gentlemen, take it away.
♪ Ee, ah, ee, ah, ee, ah, ee ♪
- Up into the upper registers.
♪ Ee, ah, ee, ah, ee, ah, ee ♪
Really stretching now.
♪ Ee, ah, ee, ah, ee, ah, ee ♪
Now another thing to notice
is that I'm not getting hung up over perfect notes.
It doesn't matter whether my pitch is a bit,
you know, how's your mother.
It really is about the muscle tone
so don't focus in on accuracy and perfection.
Just get the muscles working.
Always remember the task at hand is the vocal warmup.
The preparation of the musculature.
Your entire instrument ready for singing.
Now let's do some lip bubbles.
I love lip bubbles
and we're gonna do them as a nine note scale
and that's gonna really start to take us
even higher than what we just did.
- [Recorded Instructor] Exercise 10 is not pitch heard.
- Oh, wrong track. - Exercise 15.
- Here comes the next one.
- [Recorded Instructor] Is an ascending and descending
major scale with a ninth note at the top.
(fingers snapping)
Make sure you sing each note being careful
not to slur through the phrase.
And here's the example.
- Brr, rr, rr, rr, rr, rr
♪ Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah ♪
I sang the wrong track.
- Here we go. - Here we go.
♪ Brr, rr, rr, rr, rr, rr, rr, rr, rr ♪
Feeling nice and free.
♪ Brr, rr, rr, rr, rr, rr, rr, rr, rr ♪
Couple more.
♪ Brr, rr, rr, rr, rr, rr, rr, rr, rr ♪
Excellent.
Now the last track is the only track
we're gonna use from CD two.
In fact, this the first time I've ever shown
one of the tracks from CD two on one of my videos.
This is a siren activity.
Now, sirens are fabulous,
but I always encourage people to leave them
until the end of their warm up
and make sure you allow that siren to stretch
the voice right out
once the musculature is agile and warm in tone
and then they will do you and your voice wonders.
So, we'll just wait for the track to come along.
- [Recorded Instructor] Let's get started.
♪ Brr, rr ,rr, rr, rr, rr, rr, rr, rr, rr, rr, rr, rr ♪
- Then you do a tongue trill.
If you can't do a tongue trill, do a lip bubble.
♪ Drr, rr, rr, rr, rr, rr, rr, rr, rr, rr, rr, rr, rr ♪
Hum.
♪ Mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm ♪
And here comes and NG, one more.
♪ Sing, nn, nn, nn, nn, nn, nn, nn, nn, nn, nn ♪
So make sure if you don't own "Voice Essentials Two" yet,
make sure you get yourself a copy
and download it from my website.
So, by now your voice should be starting
to feel rather warm.
Some people will even feel a topical warmth
throughout their neck.
The whole idea is to slowly but gradually warm the voice.
And you can see the tracks that I chose did that.
To start with we didn't go for range.
We just slowly but surely massaged the voice
out over the complete range.
I've just taken approximately 10 minutes or so
to do my complete vocal warm up.
Now, some of you won't need to take as long
and a few of you will need to take a little longer.
What none of you should do
is skip the vocal warm up altogether.
Now if you haven't already done so,
I encourage you to download my exercises
and transfer the tracks onto your mobile device
so you can take the MP3s everywhere you go.
Now of course, your voice is more than just your larynx.
So, allow me to suggest that you watch this video
about full body vocal warm ups
that will help to prepare your entire instrument,
your whole body for singing.
I'll see you again soon.
I'm Dr.Dan, sing well.