Learn how to sing better right now with our free report - "5 Tips To Sing The title says it all: the vocal warm up truly is absolutely necessary. Why? Good question – I hope to answer that in the lines below.
After a long day working, thinking, sweating, and the like, our bodies are exhausted and need a good night’s rest. When we wake up the next morning, our bodies are stiff, movements are weary, speech is groggy…you get the picture. But for some crazy reason, we have this notion that our vocal cords are immune from these weaknesses and will be able to perform at a moment’s notice. Guess again, my friends. Our vocal cords, unfortunately, are not immune to the everyday aches and pains of the body. In fact, the vocal cords have some unique aches and pains of their own.
When we wake up in the morning and attempt to speak, we generally have groggy speech. The grogginess in the voice is normally caused by mucous drainage during the night. When the mucous drains from your sinuses, it has this uncanny ability to latch onto your vocal cords. Since the mucous causes interference between your two vocal folds, your speech and singing will “hit and miss”, and thus grogginess occurs.
**Note: this is different from hoarseness. Hoarseness occurs when the vocal cords have been overused and become inflamed. When the vocal cords become inflamed, it becomes painful to bring them together. Hence you are forced to talk very light and breathy – aka, you are hoarse.
This is why the vocal warm up is so vitally important. If we do not warm up the voice to loosen the vocal cords and remove excess mucous, we are being mean to our precious folds because they are not ready to take on the task of singing. Herbal teas are very good for removing excess mucous from the vocal cords (chamomile is my favorite). Also, if you struggle with allergies, I sympathize with you because I do too. Take medicine (Claritin-D works the best for me) on days where your allergies are really getting to you.
As for exercises, use vocal fry and that grogginess to your advantage. Vocal fry is the lowest sound singers can make. Your vocal cords vibrate very slowly when using vocal fry – just think of Elmer Fudd. When he speaks, he speaks in vocal fry. Vocal fry is an excellent vocal warm up because it gently loosens the vocal cords and helps remove mucous. After you have used vocal fry for a few minutes (I generally do five minutes of vocal fry), I do some slow lip roll exercises. For an example on lip roll exercises, please click here. Once I have done enough lip roll exercises to get my voice loose, I move on to “nays”, “mums” and thin edge exercises on different scales (generally octave and arpeggio). These exercises prepare my voice to sing in all of my registers: chest, head and mix. All in all, I spend anywhere from 20-30 minutes warming up my voice before I begin to practice or sing.
You may have a different vocal warm up routine. Just having some type of vocal warm up is better than nothing at all. If you do not have a vocal warm up routine, please consider implementing one for the safety and health of your vocal cords. Vocal warm ups will vary from singer to singer, but each singer should have some sort of vocal warm up routine.
Warm up those vocal cords and sing on!
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Not to continue to try and cut corners, but was curious whether or not it mattered if you did the vocal warmups perfectly. Two examples: First, instead of going through the full Tenor range with a 5 tone scale exercise, would it be acceptable if I just sang soft la-la’s up and down the range on my own? Not hitting each and every note and octave, mind you, just wandering up and down my vocal range warming up with the middle range first and then lower then higher. Second, does it matter in a vocal warm up if you hit the note perfectly or is it ok to be flat? Will that do any damage to my voice?
@Axiom Wolf – If you can do vocal warm ups perfectly, then you have an incredible voice lol. The vocal warm ups are there to help aid along your vocal cords, so no need to worry about being perfect. Soft la la’s would be fine, and you don’t have to go all the way through your tenor range when you warm up. Sometimes I am able to do it in my warm ups, sometimes I am not. It all depends on your voice on that particular day. It’s good to warm up and not worry about hitting notes sometimes too, because you are letting your voice do what it wants to do and not forcing it into anything. I guess the biggest part about the vocal warm up is not to force your voice into singing something that it isn’t ready for. As long as you are not straining your voice, you will be fine during your warm up. You can be flat as much as you want as long as it doesn’t hurt. And hopefully during your warm up you will get rid of all those flat notes anyways!
Thanks Thomas, you’re very helpful.
@Axiom Wolf – no problem! If you ever have any questions, just feel free to ask! Hope your singing is coming along well.
I found your blog on google and read a few of your other posts. I just added you to my Google News Reader. Keep up the fantastic work Look forward to reading more from you in the future.
@LPSB – Awesome! Glad you have found the content useful!
actually I have found over the years that if possible you should warm up in to your mid and uppper (tenor if you are a male tenor) voice. You should start to lean into the sound bit by bit so when you actually start singing you are not slamming the voice…
-Ken
@Ken – I usually get into warming up those two registers after I have done my vocal fry stuff. If I start out trying to warm up those two spots in my voice, my balance and control is all wacky. But I do agree, you need to get into warming up those parts of the voice as well so your vocal cords don’t get shocked when they start singing in the mix.
When you do lip rolls, do you use your fingers? Are you supposed to not use your fingers?
@frank – Yes, I would encourage you to use your fingers when doing the lip rolls. If you do not use your fingers, the tendency will do to blow out extra, unnecessary air in order to lift the cheeks. It is more effective and better in the long run if you use your fingers when doing the lip rolls. Just place your fingers about 1/2 inch outside each corner of your mouth, gently lift up and then lip roll away!
Recently I did a search on the issue and found a alot number of persons will agree with your blog,2
i wonder, how long should you be warming up?
its a pity that i only notice this (the importance of vocal warm up) now that my voice became bad >..<"
A couple things
1.) What exercises do you recommend for vocal compression?
2.) When I’m compressing, how much pressure should I feel in my abdomen (assuming I should feel pressure at all).
3.) When I do nay nay nays, I can’t get the nasal balance right–too much and I start to feel pinched, too little and I feel like I’m not doing the exercise.
4.) When is it acceptable to raise your tongue?