Vocal Warm Ups that Work Wonders for Your Voice
A warm up routine is essential for any skilled professional be it an athlete or a singer. Every day is a new day and every performance is different from the last one and should be treated differently. Just like a car engine needs to warm up on a cold day, warming your skills up will help your body and mind reach your peak standards each time you plan to use it. The vocal cords, just like any other muscle, need proper exercise, warm ups and rest periods for proper development. Musicians at the peak of their game or at the very start of their musical journey; both need to have a good warm up routine to protect their vocal cords from any damage. Vocal training from either offline or western vocal classes online can help you preserve these cords better. Damaged vocal cords means loss of singing ability thus learning to protect the muscles with the right exercises can help maintain and also prolong peak function of the body part. Here are a few warm up exercises you can do to prepare your voice: 1) Humming exercise: Simply humming through the notes of a scale can help loosen the muscles. Hum through an entire scale from low to high and high to low for a few rounds. Keep increasing and decreasing the pitch of the humming as per your convenience and make sure to not strain your vocal cords too much in the process. The whole point is to open the vocal cords to facilitate a smooth flow of the voice. Simple humming exercises can go a long way in terms of safely warming up the vocal cords of a singer. 2) Buzzing the lips: A common exercise that is also seen a lot in pop culture, buzzing the lips and holding it for a few seconds is also a great way to warm up your vocals. Buss your lips and either maintain a key or go from low to high and high to low and hold certain notes for a short period of a few seconds. This is a great exercise to open up the vocal cords and train the muscles to hold notes accurately without causing too much stress to the vocalist. 3) Portamento or the Slide technique: The name of this exercise, Portamento, is an Italian word which implies the act of carrying. Vocal slides is a simple interpretation of the name and just like it says, a vocalist needs to slide from a certain note to another and come back to the original note for a few rounds. This will train the muscle to change notes instantly without going through a series of notes and will allow the vocal cords to open up and be ready for quick pitch changes during singing. 4) Vocal Sirens: Pucker your lips and release an “Ooo” sound just like a siren does and escalate to a higher pitch and wing back to a lower one. Repeat the same process on different keys in order to open the vocal cords and allow notes to be hit right. This will help tone the voice better and also warm the cords for both the low and high registers of our vocal range. 5) Solfège The solfège in easier terms is the famous ‘Do - Re - Mi - Fa - So - La - Ti - Do’ exercise that has been popular through movies and is used all over the world as a great warm up routine. Training the voice to transition smoothly from a low pitched note to a higher pitch, this exercise is used to both warm the vocals and also to help increase the rage of a vocalist. This exercise can be done on various scales and increasing or decreasing the scale can help practice each note of the scale and can overall boost the ability to hit notes accurately. The Sargam is the Indian version of this and the ‘seven notes of the sur’ is what ‘Sa - Re - Ga - Ma - Pa - Da - Ni - Sa’ are collectively called. Along with these exercises, practicing diction and also jaw exercises can help improve the quality of the singing and add an extra layer of perfection to the vocals. The correct diction and enunciation of the words will improve the vocal quality and make the song sound even better. Learning such skills adds an extra sprinkle of professionalism to the sound of the vocalist and can have an underrated effect on the overall sound that the listener hears. Remember, even the best vocalists out there have their warm up routines which they never forget to follow. Warm up and take care of your vocal cords and your vocal cords will protect your ability to mesmerize people with your voice. Today, western vocal classes online can help you learn the necessary exercises and the right way to do them in order to preserve your vocals in the long term.











