Quick vocal warm-up

How long it takes

Play it in your range

Piano: Salamander Grand Piano V3 by Alexander Holm, licensed under CC BY 3.0. Retuned, shortened and compressed for this site.

Steps

Why this order

Five exercises, from a light sound to the widest pattern and back to a light one.

1. A tongue trill on a five-note scale, across your whole range. A light sound to cover a lot of ground with before you open up to vowels. Scalita starts on the tongue trill. If your language has no rolled R and it feels hard, start on the lip trill.
2. An arpeggio on M, a hum that opens into a relaxed, speech-like vowel. The pattern widens to an octave.
3. The same arpeggio on N. This step is marked Cross once: it goes over your voice break and back a single time, so you have been through the shift before a song asks for it.
4. An octave and a half on an open vowel. The widest pattern of the routine, sung once the voice is moving.
5. A lip trill in a small window. The last thing you sing before you go on is something easy rather than your biggest stretch.

It runs a little faster than the full warm-up and takes about 6 to 8 minutes on a two-octave range. Every exercise starts on a comfortable key rather than your lowest, climbs to the top of its range, then comes back down through the keys to the bottom.

What to feel

On the trills, an even buzz at the lips or the tip of the tongue, kept going by steady air, not by effort. On the M and N steps, the buzz you feel in your lips and nose while humming should carry on into the vowel. On the wide step, a loose jaw that drops a little, as if you were starting to yawn.

By the end, singing should feel easier than when you started. If it feels harder, read the part on when to stop.

Common mistakes

• Singing at show volume. Medium or softer is enough here. Save the volume for the stage.
• Reaching for the top keys. If a key feels like a stretch, sit it out and come back in on the next exercise.
• Lifting your chin on high notes. Keep your head level and let the pitch move, not your neck.
• Fighting a trill that keeps stopping. Ease off with the lips or tongue, keep the air steady, or switch to the other trill.

What to do next

Go and sing. On days with more time, the full warm-up spends longer on the trills, the hums and your break. After a long show or rehearsal, the cool-down is slow and quiet on purpose.

If none of the presets matches your voice, the vocal range test finds your lowest and highest notes, so the warm-up can follow your own range. In the app, Adaptive Mode can also build a warm-up paced to five minutes.