Breck Alan: How to Warm Up and Care for Your Over-Used Voice
A few useful tips from Breck Alan on How to take care of your voice and prepare for demanding singing situations.
How to Warm up and Care for Your Over-used Voice (click to download)
How to Warm Up and Care for Your Over-Used Voice
by Breck Alan
It seems like such a simple concept “the vocal warm-up,” but that’s not always the case. The first principle in warming up is “warm up to the level you wish to sing.” So in your case, you need to make sure you let your warm up really get you warm enough to handle the difficult singing you do. Start softly and gently and try to get your body and voice as relaxed as possible while you’re gently singing. It makes a lot of difference that you work on relaxation during singing and not just for a few seconds before you begin. You asked “how high and how low in your range to do your exercises? Ultimately try to touch the very top and the very bottom of your singing range during the warm up session. But be careful to keep nudging your voice a little higher bit by bit. When you start feeling your voice have difficulty or getting strained, turn the exercises back downward and warm up a bit more in the middle of your range. Then when you start heading back up into your upper range you should notice it get easier with each pass. As far as singing hard and loud you should gently build your warm-ups until they take you to the vocal territory that you cover in your performance material. This will help you avoid any big trauma and shock to your voice during a performance.
Another thing that can be of great service to singers that sing exceptionally hard material is to warm down your voice after high-energy performances and rehearsals. This will help cool down the throat and disperse blood in that area so that it doesn’t cause any muscle stiffness that will affect you the next day in singing. To warm down your voice go back to the early very gently warm-ups that you normally use at the beginning of your warm-up and do those for a few minutes. Using your hands to massage your face and throat area is very helpful here just as it is during the warm-up.
Pace your shows. Stagger your material in terms of difficulty level. Don’t put one voice exhausting song after the next. This approach is also good from a listener’s perspective. Pound them over the head, draw them in, pound them over the head some more, draw them in some more etc. Push/pull, tension/release, that whole thing.
Other than that, follow the basic principles that, as a singer, your body is your instrument and try to take care of it. Get lots of sleep, drink lots of water, eat decent food, etc. All these things will of course affect your consistency and vocal health.
Another thing that can be of great service to singers that sing exceptionally hard material is to warm down your voice after high-energy performances and rehearsals. This will help cool down the throat and disperse blood in that area so that it doesn’t cause any muscle stiffness that will affect you the next day in singing. To warm down your voice go back to the early very gently warm-ups that you normally use at the beginning of your warm-up and do those for a few minutes. Using your hands to massage your face and throat area is very helpful here just as it is during the warm-up.
Pace your shows. Stagger your material in terms of difficulty level. Don’t put one voice exhausting song after the next. This approach is also good from a listener’s perspective. Pound them over the head, draw them in, pound them over the head some more, draw them in some more etc. Push/pull, tension/release, that whole thing.
Other than that, follow the basic principles that, as a singer, your body is your instrument and try to take care of it. Get lots of sleep, drink lots of water, eat decent food, etc. All these things will of course affect your consistency and vocal health.