Easy Vocal Warm Ups: How to Prepare Your Voice for Singing

It doesn’t matter whether you’re a multi-platinum album selling singer about to embark on your latest tour, or if you’re just getting ready to hit the Karaoke bar with your friends on Friday night, if you’re a singer, it’s important to know easy vocal warm ups to keep your voice sounding its best.

Singing is actually a very demanding process, both physically and mentally. Some people like to refer to singers as musical athletes, and that actually makes more sense than you might at first realize. Whereas athletes need to stretch and warm up their muscles before they compete, singers need to warm up their vocal cords before they perform.

Keeping the vocal cords fit and healthy not only helps ensure that your singing voice sounds its best, it’s also great for your vocal health in general. This again is why singers perform vocal warm up tracks, exercises, and voice warm up songs before they perform.

To help keep your voice sounding its best before you sing, here are several easy vocal warm ups to help prepare your voice for singing.

How to Warm Up Before Singing – Why Should You Warm Up Your Vocal Cords?

Keeping your vocal cords fit and healthy is important for a variety of different reasons, and certainly not just for singing.

Having healthy vocal cords will make it easier for people to hear and understand you. It will also help you to speak clearer and avoid common issues affecting the voice. If you’re a singer, warming up your vocal cords and keeping them healthy is vital because it will protect your most valuable commodity – your voice!

As mentioned, singing is physically demanding, and it certainly takes its toll on your voice. No matter how good the acoustics are, or how great your microphone is, strained vocal cordsare one of the worst things that can happen to a singer. To help prevent them from becoming damaged, we need to look at how to warm up before singing.

Your vocal cords, also known as the ‘vocal folds’ are basically two small bands of muscle tissue located within the larynx (voice box). Their primary purpose is to enable people to speak and vocalize. They work by vibrating as air passes through them via the lungs, allowing you to speak. If they become strained or damaged, they can cause a variety of different issues, including:

• Persistent hoarseness
• A sore throat
• A croaky voice
• Voice quiver
• Changes in pitch
• Unusual sounding speech
• Pain in the throat when talking or singing
• Breathy voice
• Dry throat
• Difficulty speaking or singing

Because the vocal cords are so delicate, it’s important to keep them in the best possible condition. Remember, they’re still made from muscle tissue and like any other muscle in the body, they need to be stretched and warmed up before they’re used. Just like an Olympic sprinter wouldn’t run the 100-meter race without first stretching and warming up, a singer shouldn’t perform before warming up their vocal cords.

Warming them up means that they work as they should, plus it reduces your risk of damaging them. Healthy vocal cords mean a healthy singing voice so you can really hit those high notes and sing to the very best of your abilities.

Easy Vocal Warm Ups

Now that we know what our vocal cords are, how they work, and why they’re so important, it’s now time to look at how to warm up your voice before singing.

Here are several easy vocal warm ups taught by professionals, to have your voice sounding its absolute best.

Breathing Exercises

Breathing exercises aren’t just for people trying to unwind and relax. It turns out that breathing exercises can also help to keep the vocal cords in tip-top condition. Controlling your breathing and getting it just right will help you to sing clearer, it’ll give your voice more power, and it will allow you to sing in a more expressive tone.

One very simple breathing exercise you can perform before singing is to stand up straight, take a deep breath in through your nose, hold it for 5 seconds and then slowly breathe out and exhale. Repeat this several times.

As you find the exercise easier, try to practice holding your breath for longer durations, or performing the exercise more often.

Humming

In terms of how to warm up vocal cords, humming is another activity you can perform anywhere, at anytime.

Humming is something most of us do anyways, whether we realize it or not. Some people like to hum in the shower, others do it while cooking in the kitchen, and some do it while listening to their favorite songs.

What you may not know is that humming helps to gently stretch the vocal cords and keep them strong and healthy. It’s also a great way to improve your singing voice by boosting the quality of your tone, along with vocal resonance. The vibrations which humming creates help to relieve tension in the face, neck, and jaw and relax your facial muscles. This in turn helps to relax the vocal cords.

Simply relax your face and body, place the tip of your tongue firmly behind the bottom of your front teeth and, with lips closed and jaw slightly open, make a ‘hmmm’ sounds. Hum different notes, increase the intensity of each hum, and try to do it for longer each time.

Lip Trills

Lip trills are sometimes known as ‘bubble lip trills’ and involve blowing air through the lips you keep them loose and relaxed. This creates a bubbling sound, similar to that which a horse makes, and helps singers to move their resonance and expand their pitch range safely, without the risk of straining the voice.

Tongue Trills

Tongue Trills are very similar to lip trills, though there are a few subtle differences. The main one being that it focuses on tongue movement as opposed to the lips.

The basic premise behind a tongue trill is to curl the tongue and roll your ‘R’s’ as your range switches from low to high.

Simply relax your tongue and place it behind the top of your front teeth. Breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth. As you exhale, roll your tongue as you make an ‘R’ sound, similar to a comedic cat purr. As you become more confident, and the exercise gets easier, focus on increasing the length of the rolling ‘R’ sound.

Sirens

Despite their dramatic-sounding name, Sirens are actually a very gentle and relaxing vocal warm up exercise which helps singers to increase their range, without overstraining.

You’ve all heard the sirens on fire trucks, police cars, and ambulances, right? Well, think of the noise they make and then gently imitate it. Begin with the low portion of your vocal range and then gradually increase to the higher portion as you grow more confident.

Quick Vocal Warm-Ups for When You’re in a Rush

For many, time is a precious commodity which few can afford. If you aren’t blessed with a great deal of free time and need to get your vocal cords warmed up fast, here are a few quick vocal warm ups you can perform if you’re in a hurry.

Yawns

Who knew that being tired could help your vocal cords? It turns out that yawning is a movement which actually helps to improve the vocal cords.

Yawning helps to relieve tension in the neck and face and loosens up the jaw, tongue, throat, face and neck. If you can’t yawn at will, mimicking a yawn will work just as well.

Jaw Massages

In terms of how to warm up before singing, performing a couple of simple jaw massages before you pick up the mic is a quick and easy way to get those vocal cords working properly.

Simple Tongue Twisters

As far as how to warm up your voice before singing goes, tongue twisters could be your secret weapon.

Tongue twisters aren’t just funny phrases and sayings to recite with your friends, they’re also useful as quick vocal warm ups to help loosen up the vocal cords. They can also help with your singing, as they’ll help the brain and mouth to deal with the transitions between syllables.

Choose a couple of tongue twisters, you know the ones, ones such as ‘she sells sea shells by the sea shore’ and ‘Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers’ and practice reciting them clearly and concisely. As it gets easier, try to speed up, making sure each word is just as clear and easy to understand as the last.

How to Warm Up the Vocal Cords Safely

Warming up your vocal cords safely is essential not only for your singing voice, but for your health in general.

In this next section we’re going to share a few quick and easy tips with you on how to safely warm up your vocal cords before you perform.

• Drink plenty of water and stay hydrated well in advance
• Use a steam bath or hot shower to moisturize your vocal cords
• Practice good posture and basic yoga stretches
• Avoid shouting, grunting, or yelling
• Listen to basic voice warm up songs online
• Sing along to vocal warm up tracks

Conclusion

So, there you have it, just a few easy vocal warm ups you can do to keep your vocal cords fit, healthy, and functional.

Warming up the vocal cords isn’t just important for your singing voice, it’s important for your voice health in general. By performing simple voice warm up songs and exercises, your natural singing voice will sound better than ever, and hitting those awkward high notes will be far less demanding.

After performing a few vocal warm up tracks and exercises, why not test your singing voice out on Singer Test and see how you did? Alternatively, if you really want to challenge yourself, check out Singers Basic Challenge to really put your vocal cords to the test.