Warming up my voice used to be an arduous and lengthy process. I believed that I could only adequately ready myself to perform a recital or a role by singing through the entire recital or role, hoping that enough energy and stamina would remain to get me through the actual performance. For me, the point of my warm-up was to test how well my voice was functioning. It felt fateful, like consulting my horoscope about forces beyond my ability to influence: Will I be able to sing in tune today? Will my high notes come out? Will my scales move fast enough? Will I get through those longer phrases without running out of breath? The only way to assure myself that I was ready to perform was to do a comprehensive test run. It would leave me exhausted, often also with wounded confidence about anything that hadn’t gone as well as I would wish.
I know plenty of singers whose warm-up rituals consist of vocalizing along with a recording of a recent voice lesson. While more useful than my old routine, this procedure also does not stem from a place of agency and confidence because they thus place their trust not in themselves but in the opinions expressed by a teacher about how their voice was functioning at some point in the past—perhaps a few days earlier, perhaps a few months. For them, the point of the warm-up is an attempt to replicate sounds that previously earned the validation of someone they respect.
The best warm-up routine for a singer is neither one designed to assess how well your voice is functioning on a given day nor one that you believe will help you earn your teacher’s validation. While such assessments may provide some good benchmarks, they are only useful within the context of a procedure that can actually get your voice functioning better and raise your performance to meet a high standard.
A truly effective warm-up routine is one that takes you from where you are to where you need to be in order to perform your best—a means to prepare your body, prime your vocal technical coordination, and center your mind.
Athletes engage in preperformance warm-up routines designed to increase blood flow in order to improve the suppleness and responsiveness of muscles and tendons—to literally heat themselves up. Raising the temperature of musculature through stretching and/or aerobic exercise decreases viscous resistance between layers of muscle so that muscle groups move more smoothly and easily across each other. For singers, an increase in warmth confers greater mobility not only upon large muscle groups such as those involved in breathing, but also upon the intrinsic and extrinsic muscles of the larynx. A physical warm-up of appropriate length and intensity can thus prepare the voice itself for engaging in warm-up exercises.
Athletic warm-up regimens are designed to meet the specific flexibility and strength requirements of a given sport. A physical warm-up routine for singers should include strategies to release and stretch the musculature involved in breathing, including self-myofascial release of the shoulders (figure 6.1) and stretches for the lats (figure 6.7) and pecs (figure 6.8). A short aerobic session of low to moderate intensity will encourage more expansive breathing and condition the body to meet an increase in oxygen demand. An abbreviated core strengthening routine will enliven the musculature required for stabilizing movement and breath management.
The amount of time and level of intensity you invest in the physical portion of your warm-up depends upon your unique needs. Remember that the goal is to take you from where you are to where you need to be to perform your best, so take inventory of what it will take to get you ready. If your day’s activities already have you feeling flexible and energized, you need not do as much to prepare your body for singing; if you just spent four hours studying in the library, your body will need a more vigorous wake-up call. However, it is usually unwise to engage in a highly challenging physical workout on a performance day, as doing so may overly tax your musculature and deplete your energy stores.
Take inventory of your physical tensions and level of vitality, develop strategies to generate the supple liveliness you need to sing your best, and keep track of the level and types of activities that precede your best performances.
Instrumentalists warm up to reintegrate their bodies with their instrument and rehabituate the movements they execute while playing. While you may not have to perform exercises to reintegrate yourself with an external object, you face a similar transition because throughout the day your respiratory system, throat, and articulatory anatomy perform many functions other than music making. An effective warm-up enables you to home in on the specific aspects of respiration, laryngeal function, and articulation that feature in your singing.
The way your body is feeling and functioning determines the kind of physical warm-up you need; similarly, the state of your breathing, phonatory, and articulatory anatomy at the beginning of your warm-up should dictate the routine that will most effectively prepare you for performance. You must accomplish the following transitions:
Breathing. From unconscious and relatively shallow to intentional, expansive, and well modulated.
Phonation. From relatively weighty and variably focused within a restrictive pitch and dynamic range, to accessing your full pitch and dynamic range, registration potential, and consistent clarity.
Articulation. From habitual speech movements to optimal engagement and coordination of the jaw, tongue, lips, and soft palate.
Your warm-up need not take very long to accomplish all of these transitions. A few wide-ranging scales and sustained passages may be all that you need to meet these goals, as long as they provide an opportunity to assess and integrate your breathing, phonation, and articulation. The exercises you regularly perform in the service of technical development can likely be adapted for an effective warm-up routine, and you can allow a tried-and-true instrumental approach to warming up to serve as your template.
Wind and string players generally warm up in accordance with these steps:
Sustained tones to engage the generator. String players do this by bowing open strings, wind and brass players by sustaining long low notes.
Diatonic scale passages, slow and fast, within limited and then extended ranges, to activate the full pitch range and promote flexibility.
Sustained arpeggios to equalize intervals and promote consistent tone generation while changing pitches.
Melodic études to integrate generation and vibration skills with one another, as well as expressive intent.
Singers should incorporate some articulator work with scales and arpeggios and substitute phrases from repertoire for études. Be ever mindful of your purpose, which is to engage in movements and awaken your skill set rather than to assess the sounds you are making.
Vocal warm-ups should be as economical as possible. Sing only as much as necessary to prepare your voice for performance and refrain from doing anything that could lead to fatigue.
In chapter 5, I pointed out that it is your intention, rather than your breath, that is the true generator of the voice. Successful, satisfying performances rest on your ability to allow expressive intent to motivate your singing. Your warm-up routine should therefore include a means of leading your mind to a state of deeper focus and concentration. This will empower you to train your full attention on your artistry and redirect your thoughts should they stray in the direction of self-criticism or other anxieties.
Any practice that sharpens your focus will enhance your performance, and any activity or phenomenon can serve as an object of meditation, so there are many different ways to design a mental warm-up procedure. Both your physical and vocal warm-ups can double as a mental warm-up if they enable you to organize your thoughts and sharpen your focus.
Assessing and acknowledging what you need to become centered and focused is more important than specifying how you will meet that need.
• Do impending performances tend to rev you up or shut you down?
• How likely are you to experience performance anxiety? How long before a performance do you expect it to set in?
• What kinds of things are liable to distract you, and how likely are you to encounter them in the context of a given production?
• How well prepared are you and your colleagues?
The prospect of going onstage may fill you with excitement, in which case you will benefit from a routine that will ground you and slow you down a bit. If instead it inclines you to space out, however, a calming meditation session will not be nearly as useful as some vigorous physical activity for mobilizing your body and mind.
If you grapple with performance anxiety, it is important not only that you devise a routine that will keep you mentally centered before and during performances but also that you initiate this routine before you are likely to feel an onset of anxiety. Engage in strategies to help manage your state prior to carrying out the physical and vocal components of your warm-up, and seek resources to diminish your anxiety symptoms for the long term.
While some distractions cannot be anticipated, many can. If you know that you will share a dressing room with a chatty colleague or that your extended family will descend on you in the hours leading up to your performance, carve out not only time but also physical space in which to center your mind.
Your degree of mental focus is likely to be proportional to your level of preparation. Even the most disciplined singer may occasionally have to perform without being as fully prepared as he or she would wish, perhaps when filling in for an ailing colleague on short notice or due to last-minute staging changes. This means an increase in the mental demands of your job because in addition to your singing you must keep track of extra things like new blocking or unfamiliar text. You will need to increase your focus proportionally in order to meet these demands, as well as to contend with any increase in stress caused by the situation.
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There is no universal warm-up protocol that would suit all singers under every circumstance. Even the order in which one warms up the body, voice, and mind will differ in accordance with personal preference. I find that focusing my mind first makes the rest of my warm-up more effective, and that warming up my body leaves me well-prepared to vocalize—but your experience may differ. The amount of time required for the individual components of your warm-up may vary for you on different days. Get in the habit of taking inventory of your physical, vocal, and mental state; measuring the distance between where you are and where you need to be; and allotting adequate time and resources for a comprehensive warm-up every time you perform.
Once a performance begins, there are many things that are beyond your control. However, contrary to what I once believed, how you prepare yourself to give your best performance is something that is within your control. Settle your mind, warm up your body, vocalize intelligently, and you will never have to wonder whether your voice will function well. You will know just what steps to take to ensure that it does.