How To Warm Up And Cool Down When Singing

Warming up and cooling down before and after singing is crucial in preserving a healthy singing voice. If you don’t warm up and cool down your voice, you risk damaging your vocal cords and sometimes permanently so.

All athletes know that an effective warm up is essential for optimal athletic performance. But you say, singers are not athletes, so why should singers warm up their singing voices?

Singers who are dinner guests are often asked to perform impromptu entertainment by their host after the dinner to entertain other guests. The wise singer will politely decline the request rather than singing raw which is further complicated by a bloated tummy.

A proper warming up before a singing performance lets the singer to get in touch with the singer’s inner self physically and psychologically since self awareness is the foundation of good vocal techniques.

All good singers know that there is a co-ordination of many muscles parts and therefore warming up before singing should be an unhurried and a leisurely self-exploration that allows enough time for the loosening and coordination of the muscles that assist voice production. Warming up your voice should be an enjoyable experience because as you warm up, your voice begins to sound better, effortless and a sense singing freely is felt.

Unfortunately, most of the time, the singer is warming up while rushing to a rehearsal or as a last minute preparation before taking the stage. The pressure of a hurried warming up may cause physical and mental tension and as such, the warming up may prove to be ineffective or worse, counter-productive.

All well trained singers develop their own distinctive warming up routines best suited to their own personal requirements. The routines may vary with changes in physical, mental and also emotional state.

Most good singers begin by warming up their body first with light physical exercises. This is done to reduce the muscular tension so that the singing voice will not sound strained or tensed. Furthermore, light exercises helps to stimulate deep breathing which is essential for good voice support.

It is vital to start vocalizing in your comfortable vocal range so as not to strain your vocal cords when it is cold. You can then gradually move on to the higher and lower extreme notes. Some recent biomechanical research have shown that singing at the extremity of both the higher and lower notes of the vocal range can strain the laryngeal muscles, and can result harmful patterns of muscle tension. It goes on to say that thus it is good common sense to avoid the extreme pitches whether they are high or low notes until your voice is warmed up appropriately. Most singer’s warm up is devoted to the goals of obtaining a beautiful voice timbre through the use of various vocal exercises.

After a singing session, the singer should cool down the voice with exercises that soothe the vocal cords such as soft descending scales on the “oo” or the “ee” vowel. If the singer does not cool down after a sing session, the vocal tension will stay and the vocal cords remain tensed and this will lead to further voice complications. So, to maintain and preserve a healthy singing voice, adequate warm up and cool down is a must in any singer’s inventory.

Why Do I Need Professional Singing Voice Lessons?

Picture This:

It’s your birthday. It’s late afternoon and the sun is on its way down. Nothing is happening at the moment because you’re sitting down in the company of friends trying to entertain yourself hoping someone would make a suggestion like, “Hey, let’s do something!” Just as you’ve had enough of doing nothing, a group of friends surprise you from the rear, “HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!” What a treata.you hug each onea then out the blue, one of them decides to sing a special song just for you on your special daya.

Your eyes and everyone else’s eyes are looking at each other questioning, “Why is this person with this unattractive voice singing NOW or EVER in his life?! We were nice. We survived it. Nobody died but, boy, it would have been nicer if that person could have sung that special rendition two days earlier before anyone could have had the chance to hear it.

Do you think you would continue to sing if you knew everyone else did not think as highly favorable of your singing voice as you do?

The “everyone else” category includes:

1.) Empathic persons – those people who will want to give support of your singing just because you’re just another human being

2.) Relatives – they like the thought of someone in the family who not only sings but also becomes famous by their singing [so they can borrow money from you when you become rich ] “and it might just happen if we cheer him on strong enough…”

3.) Friends – those acquaintances that will give an opinion of your singing voice that you would hopefully flatter you; even if it were not fully the truth. They want your friendship.

4.) Associates – those whom you have some sort of business relation and will not express any negative feelings concerning your singing voice so that they won’t jeopardize any personal future benefit you might offer them

5.) Church members – wonderful people but their spirituality may interfere with their honest judgment concerning your singing voice

6.) Nice, unknowing people – they may or may not speak the truth to you about your singing voice since they have no investment in you not to mention that they may not know what they’re talking about.

So who or what can you trust?

Answer: Unbiased, vocal music professional instruction. Someone who’s had the training and experience. A professional voice teacher with solid teaching experience. You want to entrust your singing voice, your time, your financial resources to a learned, well trained singing voice teacher that can explain step-by-step how you can maximize your singing voice ability without hurting it.

When you find the rightvoice lessons, you and others will hear and become impressed with the consistent improvement of your singing voice.

To try to teach yourself how to sing and be successful is tricky and usually frustrating. It can be very discouraging to fail to make the strides with your singing voice you knew you could if you had the proper singing voice instructor.

Sing to Feel Good About Yourself

Sing to Feel Love From Your fans

Sing and Hear Their applause!

To Your Singing Success,

Houston Simmons

4 Simple Steps to Singing

If you want to have a good voice for singing, then besides practicing with the correct vocal exercises to improve your voice quality and flexibility, you will still have to take active actions to protect your vocal cords.

Sounds like common sense, doesn’t it? Yes, it is precisely so basic that people forget about it or do not even think about it and that is why there are so many people damaging their vocal cords daily and depriving themselves of a good singing voice.

Let me ask you a question. Tell me how often do you burst into a song without doing proper vocal warming up exercises? Are you guilty of singing before warming up your voice properly? Every singer worth his or her salt knows that when you warm up your vocal cords, your singing will be more flexible and because of that, prevent strains and damages to your vocal folds. Alas, even then many singers do not bother to do warming up exercises and that even include some professional singers too.

What about cooling down your vocals after singing? Oh, you don’t think it is important to cool down your voice after a performance? Of course it is important because when you sing, tension builds up around your singing mechanism and you have to release the tension. This is what cooling down is for, otherwise the tension may create swelling of your vocal cords and other damages.

Screaming, shouting and speaking loudly can cause permanent damage to your vocal cords. All you need to have proof of this is just to listen to the heavy metal rock singers when they talk. Their voices are all raspy and coarse from shouting and screaming when they perform. Some of them even have to undergo surgeries to repair their vocal cords in order to stay in their career as a singer.

Yes, shouting, screaming and having a raspy voice may be the thing if you are a heavy metal rock singer, however how many of you aspire to be one besides also risking permanent vocal damage?

If you want to have a good singing voice and you are a smoker, then it is time to quit smoking. Look, if smoking can cause throat cancer that can destroy the entire throat, can you imagine what it is doing to your vocal cords right now?

People are always saying breathe with your diaphragm when you sing, but when you ask them what they meant by breathing with the diaphragm and they are stumped. So are you trained to breathe with your diaphragm when singing or as a matter of fact, that is the correct way to breathe even when you are not singing?

All babies naturally breathe with their diaphragm and that is why they can throw their voices so far and wide when they cry. However as we get older, most of us just lost this natural ability and must be trained to get it right.

When you are breathing right when singing, your voice will soar effortlessly, be of better quality, the notes will be steadier and you can also hold notes longer because you will be able to better control your breathing. As such, you will less likely be straining your vocal cords and so offer it more protection and voice preservation. If you do not know how to breathe with your diaphragm, then get some singing lessons to learn it. This is essential if you want to be a better singer.

The above are just some of the many things you can do to protect your singing mechanism. If you are a professional, don’t just stop here because there are many more things you can do to protect and preserve a good singing voice.

Duration : 0:7:20

[youtube xK09T0O5Ns4]