Spend approximately 5-10+ minutes warming-up the voice (varies depending on how your voice feels). Touch on each of the following areas (feel free to come up with your own warm-ups that focus on each area or expand on the suggestions below).

While there's no hard right or wrong to the order you approach your warm up and exercise types, follow the path of least resistance:

1) Establish breath flow and sensations of releasing air
Examples: Sighs, Hiss, Fffff, Shhhh, 
2) Mouth Partially Closed (SOVT)
Examples: mmm, vvvvv, ng, straw glides
3) Vowels / Open Mouth Exercises 
Examples: Ah, Eh, Oo, etc...Mouth shaping (narrow towards front, tall in back)
4) Consonant and Vowel combinations
Examples: Vee, Mah, Goo, Thoh, Bah, etc..
5) String full words together
Examples: Repertoire, phrases
STRETCH
  • Jaw  
- Lean your head back as far as it will go comfortably and let your jaw open. Take a few deep breaths through this open mouth space. (Use a towel or airplane pillow around your neck to lean your head against if you have neck problems.) 
- Make exaggerated chewing motions. Try while humming gently on a single pitch.
​- Release jaw. Massage jaw hinge and mandible with fingertips. 
  • Tongue
- Stick tongue out! Move it up and down, and side to side. 
- With mouth closed, put the tip of the tongue against your bottom teeth and the topside of your tongue against the hard palate. Release your jaw to a comfortably open position but keep the tongue against the roof of your mouth - your tongue will have to slide forward along the hard palate to keep the tip of the tongue on the bottom teeth. 
  • Neck
- Roll your head around from should to shoulder, and tilt it gently backwards, forwards, and from side to side.
- Try to move your head from side to side in a smooth continuous motion while sliding up and down on a hum. 
  • Ribs
- Lean to the side with arm up and over your head. Take a couple of deep breaths - feel your ribs expand.
​- Bend forward at the waist - breathe into your back, feeling the ribs expand.
ENERGIZING BREATH AND SOUND
  • Use my Breath Work page to check in with your breath support. Floor breathing exercises are a good place to start.  
  • Sigh
- A long relaxed sigh from the mid-top range down to the lowest range on open vowels such as “ah” [a] or “uh” [^]. Try to extend a single breath as long as possible once without any audible tone/pitch (just air) and next with tone/pitch (the vocalized sigh.) Try to imagine and feel the air traveling high in your mouth, across your hard palate. 
  • Siren
- Starting with a good singing posture, begin sound as low as you can then glide upwards as high as you can and back down again. No holding back. Be loud and proud. The purpose of the siren sound is to get you to move the voice and breath without any concern for making a "pretty" sound. It's just a noise. It also reveals to you what your breath support feels like when making sound. There is no "one size fits all" when it comes to sensations in the body. What you feel is what you feel, and it might not be what someone else feels.
  • “Hi, How Are You”
​​- Speak-Sing (sprechstimme / a sing-song, lilting voice) with extended, resonant speech. Feel the release of air, the connection to your breath, and the resonance of your voice. Speak-sing at various volumes and vocal registers. Let this one sound ridiculous :) 
VIBRATION - Semi Occluded Vocal Tract Exercises (SOVTs)
These exercises should help you find a more "forward" or "in the mask" resonance. Read more about the benefit of SOVTs here. 
  • “Home” - hum
​​- Hum on the word “home." Try to aim the vibrations toward the front of your face, nose, and sinus cavities, keeping the resonance “forward.” As you sing higher pitches, the point of resonance will ascend and focus into a smaller point. (On lower notes you may feel vibration diffused at the roof of your mouth. As you sing higher, the vibration will narrow down to a smaller, more focused point towards your sinuses and bridge of nose.)
- Try scooping and sliding around in your range and observe the shifting location of the sympathetic vibrations. 
  • "Ng" 
- Same as above, but substitute the closed "Mmm" hum with the "Ng" hum. Try to feel even more nasal / forward resonance.
  • “Ming ming ming ming ming”  / “Nyang nyang nyang nyang nyang” - 5 4 3 2 1
- Shoot for a very nasal and "bright" sound. Shoot for similar sensations as the hum exercises above. Let yourself play with extremes of "twang" / "brightness" 
  • “Lip Trill”
- Trill/vibrate your lips while singing up and down a comfortable range. Relax! This warm-up's main purpose is to loosen tension in the face, jaw and throat, and to get your air moving. On a single breath, shoot for uninterrupted air flow, uninterrupted lip trilling, and tension free neck and shoulders.
SOFT PALATE
  • Yawn. Notice the stretch in the back of your mouth / throat. Sigh through that open throat space. 
  • Try “Hi, How Are You” with a lifted soft palate - Your voice will sound open/round (like Julia Child.)
  • Try “Hi, How Are You” with a lowered soft palate - Your voice will sound more nasal, focused. 
  • Try to find a balance between the two extremes. We want a mostly open / lifted soft palate sound with about 5%-10% nasal resonance to give our sound brilliance and forward resonance that projects with ease. We all have different bone structures and tendencies toward bright or dark resonance. Observe your sound and try making adjustments that are best for your tone and ease of production.
  • ​If you plug your nose while holding a note, your sound should change very very slightly. If it changes a lot, you have too much nasality (soft palate too low/relaxed), if it doesn’t change at all, you need a tiny bit of nasal resonance (soft palate is too high). ​
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