'Warming up' the voice...

About 2 weeks ago I had a gig at a local Uni campus bar, earlier in the day I'd been recording some songs in the studio (mainly vocals).

I found that when I was singing at the gig, my voice was a lot better, could hit the notes easier and project more.

So I've started to sing for an hour or so a few hours before gigs, and so far it's working pretty well, I think it's improved my performances.

Does anyone else have experience of this?

I don't sing (or I should say, I CAN'T sing), but whenever I have a singer come into the studio I always have them just sing for around a half hour or so. Find that if they just warm up, not giving a full volume performance that it really 'opens' up their vocals.

Its just like everything other instrument, warming up and practice equals great performances.

I find this is true with guitar too... If I play for an hour during the day my playing at night is much better.

I'm no vocal expert but my advice to any singer is to just relax and NEVER push your mid-voice (the place where your voice changes from it's midrange to the high range).

Vocal warm-up is crucial; even if you're a "natural" singer, you'll benefit from some kind of warm-up. I do lip trills and tongue trills, jumping between I-V on the scale and covering my entire range. This will help you get your breath regulated, as keeping the trills going in the higher scales requires proper breathing. Then I sing some of my regular songs at a lower than usual volume. This soft singing really helps, though I'm not sure why.

Before I'm to sang, I'll warm up my DIAPHRAGM(not the sex thang) this way:

when I'm not in the studio but on my way to the show I'll be in the car and blow out almost all my breath slowly, just empty my lungs and then hit a middle c or whatever note the car is makeing. you know, the tone a car generates going down the road?. Or i'll use a note from one of my tunes.

just in the middle of YOUR RANGE.

with my lungs mostly empty almost all my air gone, I'll just make a soft ooooh sound and just keep singing the note til I run out of air and keep pushing the note and pushing the note and poushing the note til Im useing pure muscle to drive the tone.

you know you are doing it correctly when you can only make a little strangley noise. no, really. agahhhhhh!

I do it ten or twenty times(blow out air, sound an oooh) and add vibrato to voice and go up a full tone every time, continuing to the top of my range whatever that is then.

sometimes i'll go up four or five tones top out, and have to drop two tones and start again, increaseing my tonal possibilities as i go along. i'll be able to go up another tone or two, topping out my natural range.

sometime folkes in the car look around and hear "something" but not know that that it's me "warming up" cause i sing softly or no louder than the radio. you don't have to be loud at all.

it's funny sometimes to watch people react to stuff.

anyhoo when i get to where I'm going,

i'm all warmed up.

unh huh huh!!

3 or 4 beers for me.

About 20 minutes of warmups during my morning shower, and I'm good to go for the rest of the day. The steam is also beneficial.