College students with a music degree treat warm ups as an essential preface to singing. I remember taking my freshman year with one voice instructor, as the one that I wanted was full my freshman year. So, I had lessons, for one year, and switched during that summer before my Sophomore year.
During those summer lessons, I basically started over with vocal training. 6 weeks of one lesson a week, practicing one hour minimum a day on ONLY VOWELS! Yes, you read that right. Vowel work is now automatic with me because of this intense and basic study.
When I was working with a gal in a Sweet Adeline chorus she said to me, “You don’t have a break”. She meant hearing a break in my range. I replied, “that’s because I have trained my voice to work through the passaggio, or break in the range. It is possible for you too to experience this same accomplishment, but it does take practice.
Having difficulty finding the time to practice? Have you tried scheduling your practice time into your day? People accomplish what they want to get done, not when it is on the “to do” list, but an actual time set aside for practicing. You know your schedule, does early morning work best for you, mid day, or evening? Narrow it down to a specific time. Set your alarm if you need to.
Another tip, even if you just start with 7 minutes a day, is a positive habit you will be forming. You can practice longer if once you get into it, you have the time and you enjoy it. You can even piggy back it to another habit you already do, like after you brush your teeth.
Warming up your voice gradually is my first step. Especially if it is early in the day and I haven’t been speaking much. So, humming and bubbling are my first choice of warm ups. It doesn’t have to be much, usually in my mid range. After that I do a 5 note pattern on different vowels. I like the EE vowel as it gets my voice forward in my mask. I like the OO vowel to create space for my resonance. Again, I stay in my mix range.
As I get to where I stop with the 5 note exercises, I come down the arpeggio and go down to the lower part of my range. When I take the arpeggio from the top down, I focus on keeping head tone into my range. This assists my mix to be able to have head tone in a plethora of notes. I eventually change into my chest range and then continue with a 5 note pattern descending. And I open the vowel to an AH just to allow the lowest notes in my range to exist. I don’t worry about quality as my goal is to keep a three octave range.
Then, I will work on my mid range to my upper range. I like to do the exercise that starts on SOL, yawning to the high DO and coming down the scale. This helps me to give the necessary space to the top note and then continue down keeping my tone more in the mask as it gets lower. More space for the higher notes, and more mask for the lower notes.
That is my basic warm up. But often times I like to add other exercises for a variance. There are many books with exercises in them, as well as you can make them up yourself.
Feel free to contact me if you have any questions. PM me from FaceBook.