Warm Up Exercises and Warm Up Tips - Get A Good Start In The Morning!

Warm Up Exercises and Warm Up Tips that will help you to make a good start to your singing day.

It is a good idea - if you are able - to warm up your voice in the morning so that you set a healthy vocal "tone" for the entire day.

That is, you exercise your voice into a good singing co-ordination. And for the rest of the day, you speak from that place, as well. Often, we singers speak either higher or lower than we should. A good warm up can get you into the place where your voice really "speaks!"

Some singers who do no want to make too much "noise" at home in the morning, will do their initial warm up exercises in the car as they drive to work. They like the quiet of the car and the precious privacy. But when possible, it is best to do your first warm up with quiet concentration when you don't have to fight the cranky morning traffic at the same time!

WARM UP EXERCISES THAT DON'T!

One of my vocal coaches told me that she thought a "warm up" was finding the right co-ordination of breath with vocal cords. She thought that singers were going through all sorts of silly warm up exercises that were not really required in order to re-discover that simple singing co-ordination.

I understand her point. I think we singers often don't know what to do in order to find the right balance in our voices, so we end up just singing a lot and hoping for the best.

Over time, singers do come to "know" their voices. They learn the right sound and feel (texture) of a good balance in the voice. And finding that "feeling" each day becomes easier and easier, as time goes on.

But early on, singers are still developing the right co-ordination for their musical needs. So here are several tips that I hope will help singers to warm up with greater ease and confidence while they are still in the earlier stages of knowing their own voices...

You will find the tips below, but first:

A gentle approach to warming up:

1. Start in the easy part of your range. For most of us, that is the middle/low notes in our voices. Do a couple of your favorite exercises in that area for about 10 minutes, and then walk away.

Let your body and brain absorb that co-ordination. Come back about 10 minutes later and start again.

2. Do this 10-minutes on 10-minutes off process 2 or 3 times. Work only on the easier parts of your range. Feel how your breathing is getting deeper and how your sound is coming out more evenly. Avoid doing things at this point that will frustrate you - or make you strain your voice.

3. Then move on to the wider range of your voice. If you have high notes to sing in your songs... first use an exercise that gets you into the upper range with fun, rather than with push or strain. Try the

EEEEEE stretch. You will find several exercises on this linked page. The eeee stretch is #4.

Try out the other 3 exercises, too, if you have time. I like how these 4 exercises get me started on singing in the morning. Especially when I am going to be singing in a wide, head-voice oriented range.

4. Once you have worked the top - move on to the lower notes. Again, develop exercises that work for YOUR voice type, range and music style. Here is a free video lesson that deals with tongue position and your lower notes: Singing After Forty - Lesson #4.

Over time, with patience and a bit of instruction, you will find the right way to warm up your voice so that you don't waste time or precious vocal energy while doing it.

For more information about singing exercises - have a look at my free video series: Singing After Forty - 9 free video lessons.

I Wish you great and well balanced singing!

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