Why do we need to warm up our voices/ what are some ways to warm up your voices?
There are many different vocal exercises you can do to warm up, but I am going to be talking about three main ones. We need vocal exercise because we need to relax our vocal chords before we sing so that we don’t risk damaging our voices. In my essay I'm going to explore what are the best methods to warm up your voice and why we need to use vocal exercises because as a singer I believe it's essential to be informed about the effects these can have on your range. I am going to focus mainly on vocal work for people in musical theatre as that’s what interests me the most. I also want to see why we need to warm up our voices and whether different voices use different strategies.
When it comes to singing warming up your voice is key, as to hit certain notes you need to relax your vocal chords. It has been suggested that the first song actually came from vocal exercises. In one source suggested that Seneca (4 B.C.-64 A.D.) wrote that he could hear loud the noises of people warming up their voices.(Wikipedia, 2019) Singing was a huge part of early Christian worship it has even been said they used singing as a ritual to show their devotion to god. So if people have been warming up their voices for that many years why are people still forgetting to warm up now? I also found out that people would warm up their voices by singing songs they would just go straight into singing.
I have had personal experience with the effect of not warming up my voice, once I went to sing a song that had a really hard high note and I had to sing it in a lower octave which did not sound as good. Another time was when I had to go to a performance at nine in the morning and I missed the vocal warm up and I had to go on stage and sing and again I couldn't hit or sustain certain notes. I have realised that since I have started warming up my voice on a daily bases that I have improved a lot in singing such as I can go higher then I could and I can also hold longer notes. I also found that other people have had experiences with warming up their voices. A woman called Susanna who is a singer said in a YouTube video that she never used to warm up her voice but could still perform live but once she started warming up within a month she was able to hit notes she never thought she could. This just shows how much warming up effects your voice. Vocal coach Leah-jade said that she was told to always drink a warm drink with lemon to help the ease the voice when warming up, she also went on to say that she would advise anyone who wants a serious carrier in singing should warm up for thirty to sixty minutes. A vocal coach that I used to work with said that ‘you need to warm up your voice so you don’t risk causing damage to it, you also need to warm up so you feel prepared you wouldn’t run a marathon with no training would you?’ (Alfie Darwin, 2014). Another vocal coach/piano teacher I had told me ‘warming up your voice shouldn’t be a chore it should be something you want to do to improve your voice’ (joe teacher at Acland Burghley, 2014-2016) these words have always stuck with me because as a performer I am always wanting to improve my voice. I spoke to my doctor at the local GP and she said ‘the voice is a very precious thing, a lot of people thing you can just start singing or even talking when they first wake up without even clearing their throats’ she then went on to ‘we clear our throats to get rid of all the trapped flehm that’s blocked out vocal chords’.
A singer on YouTube says that’s there are ‘four main things you need to before you warm up’ she says that we need to ‘have discipline, a healthy diet, breathing exercises, drink plenty of water’ (howcast.com, 2010) .Dr dan who is a vocal coach says that only ‘13% of singers warm up their voices’ he also goes on to say that he thinks that we don’t do it because we find it ‘boring and tedious’ but that we should do ‘15-20 minutes of a warm up’ (Dr dan, 2012). However, when I watched a video of the professional warmup coach Eric Arceneaux who says that ‘a five minute warm up is a lot better than a thirty minute warm up’ ( Eric Arceneaux, 2016) this shows that different people spend a different amount of time into warming up their voices. The American Academy of Otolaryngology says that ‘A short vocal warm up improves the quality of the sounds you make and helps prevent vocal injury, keeping you in good voice and making your voice production feel better’ (The American Academy of Otolaryngology, website). They then go on to say how ‘Many people use warm ups everyday. You should use vocal warm ups before vocally intensive activities like public speaking or singing, classroom teaching, or exuberant social events’. Each of the different sources may talk about different styles and ways to warm up your voice but they all agree that warming up your voice should be a daily thing.
We need to perform vocal warm ups because our vocal muscles need to be relaxed to enable the sound comes out a lot better. We also need to warm up our voices because after sleeping our voices haven't been used for hours so the muscle is tight again, it also makes cleaner sound come out. If you don’t warm up your voice you can risk your voice breaking and damaging it. There are many different ways to warm up your voice but there are a few generic ones such as doing scales, scales are a great way to relax your vocal chords and it also helps expand your range, you can also see how big your vocal range is by doing this. Another effective vocal exercise is humming. Humming helps warm up the voice without straining it and helps the singer to explore the different octaves. Lastly, tongue twisters that help you articulate your words so that u can be heard. Tongue twisters are a great way to help with pronunciation and it is helpful to do tongue twisters whilst singing up and down the scale. To get the best out of a warm up it should be performed until you can ‘hear a clear difference in your voice from when you started the exercise to when you finish’. (power to sing, website 2016).
Science daily says that ‘the vocal cords, are composed of twin infoldings of mucous membrane stretched horizontally across the larynx. They vibrate, modulating the flow of air being expelled from the lungs during phonation'. Knowing the way the vocal chords work is very key when warming up your voice because you need to know what to can damage certain parts of your voice. They also say ‘The folds vibrate when they are closed to obstruct the airflow through the glottis, the space between the folds: they are forced open by increased air pressure in the lungs, and closed again as the air rushes past the folds, lowering the pressure’ I think not enough singers know the science behind warming up your voice and how your vocal chords actually work (science daily, website, vocal chords, 2015). Amy from amy’s voice box blog says that ‘I am however suggesting that a simple understanding of your instrument will help you to embrace its full potential’ I found this very key because she is saying that you need to know how your voice works before you warm up. (amyboxvoice.com, 2018). a vocal coach called Aaron says ‘Our vocal cords are actually housed in what we call our voice box or larynx, also commonly known as our Adam’s Apple’ this is good to know because singers need to know how the voice and what it is they are stretching.
I think finding out this information has been very useful and I think people should use it a lot more because no enough people know the different ways to warm up your voice and how it effects your vocal chords. I feel like more people should research into the different types of vocal exercises that you can do, researching all of this has helped me in my trying to warm up my voice. The one thing that I didn’t find out was what was the first warm up and who started this craze to do all of these exercises that is something I was really interested in finding out.
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