Easy Warm-Up Tips For Your Vocal Cords

For instance, like every professional, an athlete needs to stretch their muscles before a big game. Your vocal cords also need to warm up before an important project to work their best. 

Vocal warm-ups are necessary for people whose career depends on their voice, for example, singers, actors, voice-over artists, and radio jockeys. To deliver their best performance and avoid damage to the vocal cord, voice-over artists need regular warm-ups. 

When a person talks, they make a sound in their larynx with their vocal folds. Warming up stretches your vocal fields and increases blood flow to your larynx, including the tongue, lungs, and lips. Doing this prevents your vocal cords from feeling tired and hoarse. This practice also helps artists reach a wider range of pitch, which is important for speech elevation. 

You should perform warm-ups for your vocal cords to nail your next performance, audition, or speech. In this article, we will talk about the importance of vocal warm up and give you tips to get you performance-ready in no time. 

Effective verbal communication depends not only on the delivery but also on the tone of voice. To get your message across effectively, you should be able to experiment with your styles and vocal ranges. Using dull and monotonous voices while giving a presentation or speech will make the public lose their interest, and you will not be able to achieve anything out of it. 

When a person goes through physical activity, they need to stretch their muscles to avoid injury. The same can be said for the vocal cords. To prevent any damage to your vocal cords, you need to stretch your muscles, such as the larynx, upper vocal tract, and thorax. Stretching these muscles will improve your sound quality and lower any risk to your vocal cord.

A vocal warm-up can help balance the air pressure in your vocal cords, making it effortless to use all the vocal registers such as head voice, chest voice, and mixed voice. Vocal warm up exercises help create a bridge between the vocal registers, allowing you to speak in a wider range of pitches and tones. 

Using particular words that you can resonate with or articulate well will tone your vocal cords. A flexible singing voice greatly helps the artists in their singing or acting careers. Using more fun ways of warming up your vocal cords will help you feel less stressed and more relaxed while performing. 

Daily vocal exercises can help increase your voice pitch and are essential for any singer or vocal artist’s training. Maintaining a relaxed posture is the most important thing to keep in mind while doing these warm-up practices.

Lip Bubbles

This exercise is done in order to reduce the tension in the lip area. This exercise links the speaking and breathing of a person.

• Placing your lips closely together and releasing the air in a stable stream to produce a ripple or a raspberry sound
• First trying on the “h” sound, then repeating the same on the “b” sound
• Keeping the stable stream of sound while maintaining the air moving past your lips
• Now, trying on the b-trill sound while slowly going up and down the vocal warm up scales
• Don’t push yourself too much over the comfortable limit of your vocal scale. 

Jaw Release

This exercise will help diminish the tension around the jaw and mouth area while talking:

• Putting your palms on the side of your face and steadily massaging the cheek and the jaw area muscles in small relaxed circular movements
• Keep massaging in a circular motion while lowering and raising your jaw
• Adding the sound of “m” with slight lip contact while practicing the word “mama mama.”
• Now round your lips and make a slightly distorted " w " sound with the word “Wawa Wawa.”

Tongue Trill 

Engages the breathing and voice while relaxing the tongue:

• Gently position your tongue behind the upper back teeth and release a breath while vibrating the tip of your tongue in a trill
• Holding the stable stream of sound while keeping the breathing linked
• Now try to stretch the voice pitch up and down the scale
• Now again, do not force yourself beyond a certain scale range if it gets too uncomfortable

Lip Buzzing

Enhancing the resonant focus of the voice and keeping on working with the maximum stretch on the vocal cords:

• Bring your lips to close together and let go of your breath while vibrating your lips.
• Keep in mind to relax your tongue as you let go of your breath.
• Replicate the inhaled yawn, and trill your lips while vocalizing
• Do this again, increase your pitch and then bring it down again
• If this exercise starts to tickle the nose and lips, then you are doing it perfectly

Two Octave Scales

To perform this exercise, follow these steps:

• Begin with a low pitch and gradually increase the scale on the sound of “aa.”
• Do not force the bottom or the top of your range, but attempt to expand the range slightly every time you start the scales.
• Do this a couple of times and then go reverse, moving from your chest to your head. And do this again by employing other vowels.

Breath Support System

This exercise is easy to perform. Here are the steps:

• After a slow deep breath, exhale loudly by contracting the muscles in the abdomen with a loud and hard sound of “huh.”
• Your throat and larynx should stay ajar and loosened up.
• This is a complex exercise and requires outstanding concentration. You must maintain the focus keeping both the upper airway and contradiction of the abdominals separate.
• As you enhance your capacity to perform this perfectly, you can increase the pace and repetition of this workout.

Humming

This exercise focuses on various types of vibrations in different parts of your facial area:

• You can start by gently closing your lips and releasing your jaw
• Inhale a calm breath and then release the sound “hmmm” while humming out.
• Now you can switch between “hmmm” to “ahhhh” in between the exhaled breath
• Try and change only the gap between the mouth without moving much

Low-Flow

Follow the given steps to perform the low-flow exercise for your vocal cords:

• Keep the right posture with loosened-up and low shoulders
• Breathe in gently and deeply, and do not lock the shoulders at the top 
• While breathing out, replay the word “hello” steadily and breathe out a little air each time.
• Put your hand in front of your face to notice the thrown-out air.
• You should not try to dominate the level of your pitch and don’t force your breath out.
• As you repeat the exercise, you can experiment with diverse pitch scales.

Cooldown

Remember to cool down after a long verbal session, such as a presentation or a speech. One of the best ways to cool down is by humming:

• Concentrate on the sound and the vibrations of the letter “m” while gently humming it.
• Do this exercise for a minute or two to cool down.

Some Examples Of Vocal Warm-Up Tips

After you read through the warm-ups mentioned above for your vocal cords, you might be looking for some instances to get the ease of the process:

To increase the range of the vocal cord, you should try using tongue twisters. Tongue twisters are the best way to achieve clear enunciation and articulate your speech. The main motive behind tongue twisters is to say them without extra effort and tension in the jaw and tongue. Keeping a good posture and drawing in a full breath helps in this exercise.

Also More Read :- Steps To Choose The Best Voice-Over Artist For Your Brand

Doing breathing exercises will help you prepare for the presentation and improve your speech. Speaking for an extended period without drawing in breath for a longer period will make your speech look rushed and unclear.

You can head to our website Voiceover Adventures if you want clear and effective voiceovers. The owners of Voiceover Adventures are a dynamic duo with years of experience and skills. We provide services such as commercial voice-over, digital advertising, narration, and commercial projects. We finish your work with all the services before the deadline and great quality.