I am not a voice teacher. I don’t pretend to have any extended knowledge on the voice, singing, or anything like that. But, there are some very easy and fundamental steps that singers and worship leaders can take to increase their tone, range, and longevity while reducing strain on their voice. Essentially, it’s just to warm up your voice before belting it out in practice or on stage.

I had heard quite a bit about the importance of properly warming up your voice before singing, but in my hoity-toity, prideful, I’m-so-good-I-don’t-need-this state of mind, I neglected to do them. That is until recently. I looked online for a free vocal warm up track that I could play on my iPod and do as I’m driving from my house to Church. I found one and tried it. From the first time I did it before going into a practice, I immediately noticed a difference. I wasn’t straining on the higher notes, my voice felt relaxed and not forced, and when everything was over, my voice wasn’t tired. I have continued to notice these same things happening with each set I warm up properly before hand.

Now, it’s not a night and day difference we’re talking about here. Warming up doesn’t completely change the way you sing and all of a sudden make you sing like Josh Groban. But it provides the same benefit as warming up and stretching before going on a run.

It’s not important which warm up track you do, if you bought one or got a free one, it’s just important that you start doing them. You’ll notice a difference and you’ll be saving your voice from unnecessary strain.

Keep on singing.

d

p.s. I’m pretty sure that it’s impossible to look or sound cool while doing warm ups. But that’s okay. Do it anyway. You can watch JD, from Hillsong United, who we all know is really cool, warming up before a concert.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 9th, 2009 at 12:24 pm and is filed under Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.