Important question, do you warm up your voice before practicing at home? I'm going to take a wild guess and answer for you: "No, not really..." right? Even if your answer was yes, I bet your "warm-up" lasts for approximately 60 seconds, and then you're off to practicing your songs. Well, allow me to convince you otherwise, by giving a few guidelines and tools to warm up just like we do in your lessons, every single time you practice!
First, it's crucial to know WHY we warm up. In my opinion, warming up your voice is the most important part of practicing (yes, even more than singing through your songs):
Warm-ups are intended to do just as the name states: to "warm-up" your body and mind for practice. Think of it as stretching before an intense workout: if we skip this step, we risk hurting ourselves, or at least, having very sore muscles the next day. Warm-ups allow our vocal folds time to get flexible and operate efficiently, to release tension from our body, and to focus our mind toward practice.
Warm-ups also serve a secondary and equally important purpose: to practice our vocal technique. Vocal technique is, essentially, HOW we sing. The purpose of voice lessons overall is to improve on how we sing in many different ways. Depending on the singer, we might need to adjust our breathing, posture, tension, placement, vowel shape, energy, high notes, low notes, transitioning throughout our range, acting, phrasing, dynamics, etc.
Warm-ups are a great way to practice and reinforce the changes
made to our vocal technique in voice lessons.
DID YOU KNOW? Vocal technique doesn't just change immediately. Progress happens slowly, over time, with lots of practice. Our brain is trained to sing a certain way. When we want to change how we sing, we have to undo thousands of neural connections and years of muscle memory in order to teach our brain to sing differently. Think of it as un-doing a habit: If we really want to make our bed every morning, but aren't in the habit of doing it, it's not going to be as simple as saying, "I'm going to make my bed every morning from now on". We would have to remind ourself every morning, day after day, and really commit to changing our habit of not making the bed. In fact, scientists say it would take 30 days of really trying to form that new habit. Singing is no exception! It's impossible to learn new vocal technique in a voice lesson and automatically sing with that new technique.
Warm-ups are the practice that makes our new technique the habit.
Now that we've dissected why warm-ups are so important, let's talk about how to do it on your own. The goal of warming up at home is to re-create what we do in voice lessons. The only difference is that now, YOU are your own voice teacher. Sounds intimidating, I know! But never fear, remember that you aren't looking to learn new things at home, your goal is to practice what you've already learned in your voice lesson. Repeating new technique until it becomes the new habit. If you run into questions or challenges along the way, leave it alone and bring this up to your teacher in your next lesson!
PRO TIP: Warm-ups require active thinking. It's really easy to go on autopilot when we warm up... we press play on the exercise, start singing, and let our mind wander. Resist the urge to do this! Before you start each exercise in your warm-up, have a goal in mind. What new technique are you working on? Be as specific as possible!
Example: I turn on one of my favorite exercises, the classic "My My My My My!"
BEFORE pressing play, I think to myself, "What should I be thinking about while I sing this exercise?"
I remember that in my voice lesson, my teacher talked about how the sound was falling into the back of my throat when singing. She proposed that I think about my sound falling forward, as if each note was coming from my two front teeth.
I press play on the exercise, thinking specifically about making that change, reminding myself that I can always try again if it doesn't work the first time.
CONGRATULATIONS! You are so ready to efficiently warm up at home. Click the buttons below for your warmup tracks, and create the perfect warm-up for your unique vocal needs:
With love for my singers,
Abby
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