Vocal Exercises

Lip Trills: is also sometimes called lip bubbles, is an extremely useful warm up exercise for all singers, be it to warm up before a performance, or to build a strong and healthy voice. Imagine you are swimming, and your head is submerged under the surface of the water. Now when you blow air out from your lips, there will be a 'brbrbrbr' sound, and your lips will vibrate naturally and easily. Now try to repeat this motion out of the water, by letting your breath be released from your mouth, with your lips vibrating in a relaxed manner while you control the supply of air with your diaphragm muscles. One important point to note is that you should not be blowing air from your mouth by pursing your lips. Your lips should be relaxed and the air should be controlled with your diaphragm, with your lips vibrating freely as the air passes over your lips

Humming is a great vocal warm up! And a personal favourite exercise of mine. Humming can be done almost anytime, anywhere because it's quieter (the tone is emerging from the nasal passages and not the mouth) and does not project like open mouth singing. The basic principle is to resonate the voice with gently closed lips (not tight lips though). Everything should be relaxed – no tightness of lips, jaw, and tongue, facial muscles, neck or shoulders. The only thing that you should feel is the abdominal support muscles coming into play (gently) as should happen in any singing.

Diaphragm Exercises Before doing any kind of vocal exercises you have to make sure your diaphragm is engaged. One of the cornerstones of learning to sing is knowing how to breathe correctly and learn to control your breathing so that it is used to optimum effect when you sing. Surrounding your lungs is a muscle system called the diaphragm which is attached to the lower ribs on the sides, bottom and to the back acting as an inhalation device. When you breathe in the muscle lowers displacing the stomach and intestines. When you breathe out the diaphragm helps to manage the muscles around the lungs (abdominal muscles) control how quickly the breath is exhaled. If you breathe out quickly, the diaphragm does nothing but when you breathe out very slowly the diaphragm resists the action of the abdominal muscles. A singer learns to use this muscle system to control the breath as it is being exhaled.

Mouth Exercises The various mouth exercises I have chosen help with good articulation, good vowel production and mouth formation for singing vowels. You are the instrument as far as singing is concerned and your entire body is involved. The singer has to combine and control many parts of the body in order to sing well. One of the most important techniques to learn is proper shaping of primary vowels. (Ah Eh Ee Oh Oo.) In order to sing in such a way that every word is clear and can be understood the singer must learn how to shape the vowel within the word itself. Learning how to do this will enrich your singing because the vowel actually carries the sound itself.