10 Minute Vocal Warm Up For A Strained Voice

Let me walk you through five 2-minute vocal warm-ups that will release tension from your strained voice and prepare it for your next vocal task. These are my 5 favourite vocal warm up exercises that you can do anywhere and anytime. You don’t even need any equipment or audio files, and you don’t even need to know anything about notes, pitches, or scales.

The very first thing I do with all of my clients before doing any exercise, any exploration, I ask them to take a baseline. What is a baseline and why do you need it? If you want to know if an exercise is working for you, if it has any benefit to you, you need to know how your voice feels before you do the exercise and then compare it to your voice after the exercise.

And if the exercise is beneficial, you feel improvement in some way - maybe your voice becomes more resonant, louder or easier to produce. Taking a baseline is very easy, just count from one to ten or say the days of the week or sing a cut from your song and notice how your voice feels. After you are done with the exercise, do the same vocal task and notice if your voice feels different.

Exercise #1 Humming to wake up the resonance

I love humming. In my coaching program, we call this exercise the fluffy hum because you are trying to find the fluffiest hum you can. The fluffy hum has two conditions: it has to feel buzzy in the face and very easy at the level of the vocal folds. This exercise is all about micro-adjustments of the vocal tract while keeping it easy at the level of the vocal folds. Start humming in your comfortable range. Then start changing the position of the tongue, jaw, larynx, false vocal folds, and other structures along the vocal tract to create the most resonant space you can. When you succeed in doing that, your hum will feel easy and powerful at the same time without putting pressure on your vocal folds.

There is an added bonus to humming. It is now known that vibrations positively affect the tissue of the vocal folds towards healing. So, if you have swollen vocal folds or hoarseness, humming actually will promote healing. 

Humming is the easiest warm up you can do and the beauty of this exercise is that you really don’t need anything. Just your body and your voice. Hum for two minutes.  

Exercise #2 Sirens to stretch the vocal folds

Sirens are my go-to exercise for my own voice and the voice of my clients. Sirens are amazingly versatile and you can use them for many different purposes. Well, today, we are talking about sirens as an excellent way to warm up your voice. I like to use the NG sound for sirens. The NG is a sort of neutralizing sound that brings your larynx in the right position. The NG sound is nasal so that takes away pressure from your throat as you go up in your range. Your tongue dorsum is high so the larynx actually has a space to move.

If you don’t know how to find the NG sound, just say the word FINGER and stop in the middle. The back of the tongue is high and is touching your soft palate. The sound is small, you don’t need to push a lot of air for this sound. Actually, you should not be pushing more air through as you go higher because you can invite constriction and that is exactly what you don’t want to do. So, keep the sound small and you don’t need to push it too high or too low. Remember, this is a warm-up exercise to stretch the vocal folds. As you go higher in your range, the vocal folds become thinner and longer. So, with this exercise you are waking up the muscles responsible for stretching as well as shortening of the vocal folds as you come down with your siren. So, do sirens for two minutes.  

If you are experiencing vocal strain, tension or even pain when speaking, and you are ready to work towards a free, strong and confident voice, you can apply to our Vocal Freedom System coaching program. Click here to schedule a chat with me.  

Exercise #3 Lip trills to release tension

Some people love lip trills, some people hate them. The people who hate them are people who need them the most but have trouble making this sound. Lip trills require absolutely perfectly coordinated breath, vocal fold closure and relaxation of the muscles around your mouth. If the breath pressure is too high or too low, the lip trill will not work. If the vocal folds closure is not coordinated, the lip trill will not work. If the musculature around your face is too tight, the lip trills will not work. So, I understand that it takes practice and patience to do lip trills.

Here are some tips to make them easy, or easier: Use your fingers to relax the muscles in your face even more. First, practice a raspberry with your breath only, without any voicing. Just blow air through your relaxed lips and find the breath pressure that will set them into vibrations. Once you can do that comfortably without much effort, then add voicing. So add a sound underneath, a sound like “UH”. And keep it going. You can just try to sustain the sound or take your lip trill for a spin, take it up and down in your range or lip trill a melody if that is more fun for you. Just do it for 2 minutes to release some tension and start your voice.  

Exercise #4 The motor sound to rev up the breath

Fricatives are wonderful sounds and if you heard me talking about SOVT exercises, then you know that fricatives are an example of semi-occluded vocal tract exercises. For our 10-minute vocal warm up, I chose the V sound or the motor sound. Just lightly touch your lower lip with your upper teeth like in the word vacuum. Start your motor. The narrowing at the front of your mouth will reflect some pressure back at your vocal folds and will help them vibrate more efficiently. That is the beauty of semi-occluded vocal tract exercises. Now, let’s play with the motor sound. Once you find it, add more breath pressure to the sound. It will sound like cars driving by. The sound will become louder but make sure that you are not putting stress on the vocal folds. So the loud sound still needs to feel easy at the level of the vocal folds. You may feel more vibrations on the lip or teeth but it should feel effortless in your throat. If you are feeling itch or scratch in your throat as you add breath pressure, then you are engaging more muscles than necessary. In that case, just add as much breath pressure as comfortable. Rev up the motor sound for 2 minutes and let’s conclude our 10 minute warm up with:

Exercise #5 Straw phonation without straws to equalize the pressures

This is a silly exercise but it is very effective. I love straw exercises but sometimes you don’t have a straw handy. This exercise will give you the same benefits. Cover your mouth and make any sounds you want. I will be saying U with my mouth covered, but you can use any vowel. You can just make one sound or make any random sounds or use sirens or a melody. Whatever rocks your boat. The hand that is covering your mouth will again reflect breath pressure back at your vocal folds. This back pressure will be quite high as the hand almost creates an occlusion. The back pressure will equalize the pressures above and below the vocal folds and the more equalized pressure, the easier sound production. Just try it for 2 minutes.

Baseline

After this easy 10 minute warm up, you can take a baseline. Count from one to ten, say the days of the week or sing a cut of your song. How is your voice feeling right now? Is it more resonant, louder or easier than before?

Here is a video, in which I demonstrate all of the vocal warm up exercises: 

Link to the video: https://youtu.be/bMGyX559lts