Singing 101 - Basic Warmups

Hi, I'm Nancy Bos, vocologist, author, singing teacher, and today I'm going to lead you through some vocal singing warm-ups. Warm-ups that get the body ready to go, get the blood flowing, and help get the brain ready to start singing. Warm-ups should ideally be done every day, and if you're singing at different times during the day, brief little warm-ups before every time that you sing. But warm-ups are different than exercises. Exercises are where we strengthen and tone the voice, gain new skills, work on old skills, make new habits. That's exercises. Warm-ups are just to get things going. So first we go, we're going to start with our Singing 101 Warm-Ups whole body stretch, top down. Actually, let's go bottom up. Start by feeling your feet. Are they well planted on the floor? Spread your weight across your feet so that you're in a confident, strong posture. You can maybe feel your feet open and relax a little bit, which leads to your knees. Do you feel your knees being just a little bit wiggly? They're loose enough. Now check in on your hips. Hips can wiggle a little bit, which means the lower back is also loose. Do a couple hip circles if you can. Make sure all that is checked in with and loosening up. Now let's do shoulders. We're going to start with rolling our shoulders in one direction. Here we go. Rolling it the other direction.

Ah, pop, pop, pop.

Little percussion section going on there in my back. Now if you have the room for it, I'm not sure I do, we're going to try swinging the arms out. One arm at a time. Ah, see if you can stay facing forward instead of going backward, but facing forward. And again, my ceiling's kind of low, so I can't get real tall with my arm. Switch arms and the other way.

Good.

Let's do some forward with the arms and then back, a little bit of cross body. Getting those shoulders on the back side loosened up and flexible so that you're not locked in in your back, and stretching out the muscles across your chest. All right, let's go back down a little bit to the waist. We're going to do a twist, and you have a choice here of a slow twist, which would be like casual skiing, cross-country skiing, or a fast twist like the dance. You're going to do that for 15 seconds. I'll call out every 5 seconds. Here we go. There's 5. And 10. Feel that stretching out around the intercostals, the waist, the tummy, and stop. Good job. Now wiggle it all out. Body is awake. All right, next thing to wake up is the breath. How we're going to do this is we're going to do a quick, silent, full inhalation followed by 10 seconds of a fairly intense hiss where you try to get rid of all of the air. The goal here is in singing we exhale for a long time on pitch, so we're getting that voice ready. So here's how it's going to go.

Ssssss!

Like that. We're gonna do that 3 times in a row. Inhale silently please but a full breath. Here we go—

inhale ssssss!

Cut. All right next one. Inhale Cut and inhale.

Sss. Great.

I got a little spitty on that last one, I gotta say. All right, check your neck for looseness. Roll it around a little bit. Stretch out the face. Stretch out your tongue. Ah, mm-hmm. There we go. Now it is time to start making some sounds on pitches. The first thing we're going to do on pitch is downward slides from the high end of your voice to the low end. No pitch accuracy required.

Ah.

Let's do that 2 times together.

Ah.

And 1 more.

Ah.

Now for me personally, I'm having a little bit of a hard time getting started at the top. That's because I haven't warmed up yet today. This is my first time through as well. Next, we're going to take these slides from the bottom over the top and back down like this.

Ah. Okay?

2 times with me, please. Ah.

Ah.

Great! Now we're going to combine together—

gonna—

we're going to combine together the pitch slides and the extended breathing. What I want you to do is pitch slide for 15 seconds. I'll try to call out the 5 and 10— 15 seconds. This is kind of a long time. I'd rather you don't breathe during the whole thing. So it'll be something— I'm just going to give you a short sample.

Ahhh! Ohh! Ooh! Uh-uh-uh-uh! 5 seconds. Aahhh!

You're gonna wiggle all around your voice. For 15 seconds with no breath in the middle. You ready? I'm looking at my clock. Here we go.

Ah. There's 10 seconds.

Ah.

And done.

Fabulous. Guess what? We're going to do it again. So inhale, Swim around on all these different pitches for 15 seconds, ideally not breathing in the middle. On your marks, get set, inhale.

Ah. Ooh!

All right, let's go to the keyboard and sing some specific notes. Now, all the notes that I'm gonna play— gonna, there we go again— all of the notes that I'm going to play are not gonna fit in everybody's voice. So if I'm too high or too low, feel free to switch octaves. The idea is just to get the voice going and warmed up. Blood flow, control, flexibility, and balance with your breath. Let's start on C's.

That one.

And we'll do 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. I want you to literally sing those words. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. We're gonna start by going lower and then we'll go back up.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. 1-2-3-4—5 5! —five-four-three-two-one... One-twos three four five fives,five-fours one? ...One-two-threes four-five fifes,five fours s ones? one,twos trois quatre cinq six septemains!? 1-2-3-4—5 5! Five-four-three-two-one... One two three four five one Two Three Four-Five /Five). ...five-fivefourthreetwoone? Hm. Mhm hmh mm-hmm hmm-mmhmmm..... Hmm-mmh mhhhmnghnngggggnnnnhhhnmhrghgmñlmhnfgbmhfmgfmhgvmfhmfhdjmhlmdrngrtm hrëjrgemäht nhrrrhwmgbmrwrthmm hhnrjjjrrejkrm gmhcndlrshmjmbd hnrfjhgaah rmhwmtuh mh-rbhbim dhvbnlhnmhrbhdmrzhckl gäh-gää-aagh ghffafagflaughmfrgfmlsmkhlfadum röntgenwürfel und so weiter it goes on forever for hours without stopping until you're tired of your voice or just can't sing anymore because I'm not good at singing like Taylor Swift does but that's okay cause she was born to do this shit anyway there we go guys hope y'all enjoyed my little cover video thanks again everyone who voted by email if ya did comment down below what song would have been better let me know how well I sang along; don't forget subscribe click all notifications turn them off when they come out 'cause then YouTube won't send us any more videos unless something bad happens which hopefully doesn't happen ever haha bye-bye 1, everybody! 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

Alright, let's do some slides. We call them arpeggios. It means a chord that's broken up. We'll start the one a little lower. The word is "fa." or "fo," whichever one you like singing better.

So it's fo fo fo fo fo fo fo, fa fa fa fa fa fa fa. Here we go. Fo fo fo fo fo fo fo, fa fa fa fo fo fo fa. Long loose space. Fo fo fo fo fo fo fa, fo fo fo fo fo fo fa, fo fo fo fo fo fo fa. One more. Fo fo fo fo fo fo fa.

We're gonna repeat that pattern now. Only make it staccato—

fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa!

It's going to engage your belly a little bit. Here we go—

fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa! Fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa! Fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa! Fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa! 2 more— fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa! Fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa!

Now legato for the smooth sound. Let's switch to "go." The word is "go," but you're only going to say it once. Go.

Go. Go. Go. Two more. Go. Go.

Now we have to get in some high stuff to stretch the high part of your range. What we've done here pretty much is in kind of easy zone so for the high stuff again if this isn't comfortable for you— If you're bass or low alto contralto this might not be great for you! Do what's right for you—if it hurts don't do it okay? Here we go—the word is "ya" yoyoyo... Yoyoyo...

Yo-yo-yo... Yo-yo-yo... You-you-you... Ya ya ya... Yeah yeah yeah... Yah yayahh... Yoo-yoo-yoo! Yoo-yoo-yoo! Last one— yoo-yoo-yoo!

All right, and then the final thing I want you to do is either rolling your Rs or buzzing your lips or singing through a straw. Fabulous, like that. So we're going back to those slides. Okay, I'm going to do it through the straw. This is my favorite way to do it, and we're going to go through the straw for 15 seconds. Again, no breath if you can, or random notes. Breathe in.

Mm. Cut.

I didn't make it. I had to sneak a breath. Anyhow, that should do it for warmups. You've now checked in with your whole body from toe to head. You've loosened things up. Open up your breath, you've opened up your mind, and you've started making sound. Now go sing! All of this is available as the Singing 101 course and book. If you want more exercises to go with these warm-ups, visit nancybos.net. That's nancybos.net, and there you're going to find the course, the book, and more exercises. Thank you. Bye!