How to Strengthen Your Singing and Speaking Voice
- Cynthia Robinshaw
- Jan 14
- 3 min read
No matter how long you have been singing the majority of people do not like vocal warm-ups. Singers and speakers don’t realize the importance of them . I explained to singers that it’s like a 26 mile marathon when you sing for an hour. If you don’t stretch your muscles before you run, you’re going to end up with a lot of problems like shin splints, hamstring pulls, and other injuries.
Vocal warm-ups are essential in your lessons for the same reasons as they help prepare your voice for singing or speaking by ensuring your vocal cords, breath support, and muscles are ready to work efficiently. Here are a few key reasons why warm-ups are important:
Preventing Strain or Injury: Just like stretching before physical exercise, warming up your voice reduces the risk of strain or damage to your vocal cords.
Improving Vocal Range and Flexibility: Warm-ups help loosen your vocal cords and surrounding muscles, making it easier to reach higher or lower notes without tension.
Enhancing Tone Quality: They allow you to focus on proper resonance, breath control, and articulation, leading to a richer and clearer tone.
Building Muscle Memory: Repeated vocal exercises help train your voice to maintain good technique, even when singing challenging pieces.
Focusing Your Mind: Warm-ups serve as a transition, helping you shift focus from daily distractions to being fully present with your singing.
These are some effective training exercises for your voice:
Diaphragmatic Breathing: Diaphragmatic breathing actually begins in your pelvic muscles. When you cough, you can feel your pelvic floor rise. When using diaphragmatic breathing correctly, your pelvis pushes into your intestines, which then push up into your stomach, which pulls into your diaphragm and pushes into your lungs, expelling your breath. Practice this by sitting or lying down and place your hands on your belly. Take deep breaths through your nose, focusing on expanding your belly as you inhale. Exhale slowly while making a "sss" sound to control airflow. If you can’t feel this bend over at the waiste and try again.
Pulsed Breaths: Take a deep breath, then exhale in short bursts on S-S- Sssssssss engaging your diaphragm. Then add Z-Z-Zzzzzz. This should have you feeling the whole belly moving.
Lip Trills or Tongue Trills
Sing a scale or glide up and down your range while buzzing your lips or rolling your tongue. This helps with breath support, relaxation, and vocal placement.
Humming: Hum gently on a single pitch, then slide up and down your range. Focus on feeling vibrations in your face which promotes resonance. You can practice this using a plastic straw in water to feel more vibration.
Sirens: Glide from your lowest note to your highest (and back) on a single vowel, like "oo" or "ee." This smooths out transitions between registers.
Scales and Arpeggios: Sing simple scales on vowels like “ah,” “oh,” or “ee” to practice pitch accuracy and tone quality.
Use patterns like “1-3-5-3-1” or arpeggios to warm up different parts of your range.
Lip and Tongue Twisters: Practice quick phrases like “red leather, yellow leather” or “unique New York” to improve articulation and diction.
Staccato Exercises: Sing short, detached notes on a single pitch or scale (e.g., “ha ha ha” or “pa pa pa”) to build control and support.
Resonance Exercises: Use M, N and “NG sounds (like the end of "sing") and focus on projecting the sound forward. Transition from those nasal sounds to open vowels like "ah" to explore resonance.
Vocal Fry: Start on a relaxed, low pitch and let your voice “creak.” This is a gentle way to stretch and engage your vocal cords, but use sparingly.
Interval Jumps: Practice singing intervals (e.g., jumping from a low to a high note, like “do” to “sol”) to improve accuracy and control.
Once you have practiced at least 30 minutes a day, consistently, you will begin to hear subtle vocal changes. Enjoy growing your voice on your musical journey.
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