Preparing to sing: hip wiggling and knee bending

This is a guest post from Alexander Massey of Authentic Voice™. It originally appeared in the Natural Voice Practitioners’ Network newsletter in June 2005. This post is the last in the series Preparing to sing.

Chris has asked me to explain why knee bending, funny walks, and various hip wiggling and belly dancing movements can help ‘ground’ our voices, and create stronger breath support and a more centred tone. Okay, here goes with a brief (-ish!) explanation.

When we breathe in, our diaphragm (roughly horizontal dome-like sheet of muscle below the lungs, and above the viscera, guts, etc.) muscularly contracts downwards; the muscles of the ribs also make the rib cage expand; through these two actions, the lungs expand and air comes in. As the diaphragm contracts downwards, the guts and contents of the abdominal cavity are compressed, and move outwards (front, sides, and lower back). Because our front below the rib cage moves outwards, many mistakenly believe this to be the diaphragm moving outwards; it isn’t; the diaphragm can only move up and down, not in and out, so we can never see it move, however athletic we are with our breathing.

In normal everyday breathing, an out breath happens when the diaphragm simply relaxes, and springs back upwards, and the rib cage closes a little through a similar ‘elastic recoil’. Abdominal and pelvic muscles play little or no part in this.

For singing, we need to make the out breath a more ‘muscular’ event, so that the air pressure at the vocal cords is sufficient to sustain their vibration when they are flexed for vocalising. The diaphragm itself can only contract downwards; it cannot ‘push’ upwards of itself. This is why we need to use extra muscles to act upwards on the diaphragm from below. This is where the abdominal and pelvic muscles come in. In singing, abdominal muscles squeeze the viscera inwards, which in turn pushes the diaphragm upwards. If we didn’t do this, no air would come out, as the coming of together of the vocal cords would prevent its exit.

So why all the wiggling? Well, the majority of people have lazy bodies and lazy breathing; their posture tends to be slack, so that the spine curves in at the base, and the abdominal muscles are virtually ‘switched off’. When these people try to sing, they push with their rib cage, and muscles just below the sternum, but never engage the deep breath support. The result is a forced, inflexible sound, sometimes hard, sometimes breathy or thinner than it could be, limited in range, and it is difficult to sustain notes for very long. This method of breathing produces what Meribeth Bunch (in her excellent book Dynamics of the Singing Voice) calls a ‘false sense of fullness’; the singer feels upper body strength and energy, and feels full of air, with an illusory sense of ‘support’, and then is puzzled why the voice feels stiff, and the air supply doesn’t seem to last very long.

To wake up the abdominal muscles (and the muscles of the pelvic floor that also help deep breath support) - so they start doing what the singer needs them to do - the simplest thing is to bend the knees, keeping the spine as lengthened and upright as possible. If you try this, you will notice immediately how the muscles just above the groin become ‘toned’, and start supporting the lower back. Breathing is automatically deepened, and exhalation becomes more muscular. Silly walks (e.g. Frankie Armstrong’s chains of ‘elephants’) will help achieve the same thing. Either rocking the pelvis, or rotating it during a knee bend will ensure that the abdominal muscles remain accessible for ‘singer’s breathing’. If the muscles are moving, then they can’t lock. (If they lock, even if we bend our knees, we tend to revert to stiffer, upper body breathing.)

Another couple of handy tips:

1. put one foot up on the wall in front of you, and sing - see if it you feel a greater vocal centredness;
2. sit on a dining room chair facing its back, and press your thighs against the side, and sing.

So, bending your knees, and wiggling your hips helps engage the abdominal muscles needed for efficient ‘singer’s breathing’. The beauty of it is that when we do such exercises, the voice starts working more efficiently quite automatically, and we don’t have to get so self-conscious and tense about trying to work out the ‘right’ way to breathe.

I think it is helpful to distinguish the word ‘natural’ from ‘habitual’. The mechanisms I explain here may feel odd when people first try them – and can take weeks or months to absorb into our technique. That does not mean that they are ‘wrong’ or ‘unnatural’, but simply unfamiliar. What we do habitually, we often call natural, though it is not necessarily the healthiest or most efficient way of doing things. Because we live such unaware lives a lot of the time, and have such entrenched inefficient habits, we have to learn afresh how to do what is most natural - it does not come automatically. Singing IS simple, but sometimes we have to work hard to reach that simplicity.

The good news is that more efficient and healthier vocal, postural and breathing habits can be learned, given a clear understanding of the principles, appropriate application, and perseverance. Now in my 23^rd year of professional singing and teaching, I still take myself back to these basic principles, and use them in my own warming up, and monitoring myself in rehearsal and performance. Whatever our level of experience, and whatever the context in which we sing, I believe we always need to attend to the basics of what makes any voice work well; we are all subject to the same natural anatomical laws! Observe these laws, and our voices should survive well into our 70s (at least) as serviceable singing instruments, giving pleasure to ourselves and others.

Alexander Massey © 15 June 2005
www.AuthenticVoice.co.uk and www.OxfordSingingLessons.co.uk

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Preparing to sing: physical and vocal warm up ideas for choirs

Now that we know warming up for singing is a good idea (Preparing to sing: why bother?), and now that we’ve considered what kind of things we might do in a warm up (Preparing to sing: what should a warm up consist of?), I’d like to turn to some specific exercises that you might use in a physical and vocal warm up for a choir.

I’m not going to simply give a list of exercises because we’d be here all week, and I don’t want to give away my best ideas! Also, it’s hard to describe accurately some of the physical exercises (and I don’t have a video camera yet!). What I think will be more valuable is to look in detail at a few exercises that I’ve developed over time to show you how you might include all the essential elements of a good warm up (engaging the breath; adding sound; involving the body; using the imagination; working with others) into a single exercise by developing, combining and extending simple exercises. I’d love to hear from you if you have any good examples of exercises like this.

Reach for the sky!

Let’s start with a simple stretching exercise. We’ll ask people to stretch both arms up to reach for the sky. Simple, but a bit boring and people can easily be lazy and not really stretch. So ask them to imagine that they’re reaching for something: a jar high up on a shelf; a golden ball of incredible value that keeps moving just out of reach; a magic apple. You can stretch each side of the body (loosening the rib cage) by using each arm in turn.

To make the exercise more vivid you could tell people that they’re climbing hand over hand up a rope ladder. Perhaps they’re in an Indiana Jones movie trying to escape from the baddies. To make sure the stretch is full and extended, get them to hang on to the rung they’re on, look down to see if the baddies are still following, then reach up for the rung above that one. By getting them to look up at where they’re going, and down at the baddies, they are also beginning to flex their neck and release tension.

You could extend the stretch horizontally by reaching out to a partner (you’re on the polar ice cap and a crack has appeared. You begin to float away from each other and try to reach out to pull them onto your piece of ice). You could combine this with sound by sending a sustained ‘A’ vowel sound across the space to your partner. The more you reach out, the longer you can sustain your note.

Get those hips working!

Next week will be a guest post from Alexander Massey looking at why we do all these hip wiggling and knee bending exercises. Simply put, these kinds of exercise can help to ground our voices, create greater breath support and a more centred tone. Alexander will offer an explanation of how and why this works.

One of these hip wiggling exercises is to make a smooth, large circle with the hips. Many people feel a little self-conscious when they first do this because we Brits don’t really like much to do with bump and grind, especially when it involves the groin area! So I usually start with a joke around this and point out that it will make people better salsa dancers.

To help people engage with their hips, I might start with the idea that you’re in a tight huddle (jumble sale? football crowd?) and you need to bump the people either side of you because they’re getting a little too close. That deals with the side to side hip motion. Then I might get people to imagine that their pelvis is a big bowl full of spaghetti and if they tilt it forward (which will mean their bum will stick out) the spaghetti will all slip out onto the floor, whereas if they tilt it back up (so their belly button will push forward), they will keep it in. That will help people find the front and back positions of their pelvis.

Get people to slowly hit all these points that we’ve found with their hips: right side, front, left side, back and gradually make it smoother and larger. Use imagery like stirring porridge or soup. Make sure people’s knees are bent. Point out that the torso doesn’t need to move (the best salsa dancers have a completely still upper body). Ask them to imagine they are in a sweet shop at the counter. The shop keeper won’t know what they’re doing with their hips because their upper body is still. Only by the twinkle in their eye will anyone know what’s going on below!

You can take this limbering up aspect further by, for example, asking people to spin a record with their hand or stir soup in the opposite direction to their hips at the same time (a good exercise for the brain and co-ordination!). You could ask people to do something with their arms such as raising and lowering them slowly. Or to get them to roll their shoulders at the same time (creates a strange looking dance!). The possibilities are endless.

You can introduce voice by asking them to vocalise on a low ‘O’ vowel sound, as if it’s coming from the bowels of the earth. Slowly raise the pitch whilst keeping the sound rooted in the belly. Get them to imagine they’re carrying out some ancient healing sound ritual and choose someone else in the room to send this healing energy to. Pass the sound between pairs of people as a call and response. You can introduce ear-training at this stage by asking people to send the sound back to their partner a semi-tone higher each time. And so on.

Buzz those lips!

Gentle humming on a fairly low note is a common way to begin to engage the voice. Ask people to focus on trying to get their lips to buzz/ vibrate/ itch so that the sound is forward and not stuck in the throat. Extend this by gently sliding down to their lowest note until all their breath is gone (helps with breath control). Gradually cheat the topmost note upwards. Ask them to go down with their body as the notes slide down. Then reverse this: still sliding down the scale, but ask people to move from a collapsed body to an upright, more beautiful, erect position, full of confidence and charisma.

Introduce scales whilst warming up the voice. Ask people to slide from the root note up and down a third. Visit all the micro notes in between. Working as a group (by all breathing at the same time), repeat the exercise but move a semi-tone up each time without anyone leading or conducting.

Extend this by doing three slides one after the other: root to third and back down; root to fifth; a whole octave. To make things less technical and to engage the body, ask people to express the rise and fall of the note with their bodies. Use visual imagination to picture an object or animal that is expanding and contracting. Then ask them to perform the movements in relation to another person in the room (different person each time). Combine the whole exercise: three slides plus movement at the same time as everyone else in the room (nobody leading), then up a semi-tone each time and repeat.

Up scale, down scale

A simple vocalise on ‘la’. Short, staccato on the way up, smooth legato on the way down:

Gradually move the exercise up a semi-tone each time. As the top note gets higher, ask people to drop their body down for the top note (stops people from extending up to reach for high notes). Emphasise the staccato and legato. Then begin to emphasise the pause for breath at the top just before smoothly coming down.

Extend this by asking the whole room to pause at the top together for a dramatic moment (don’t conduct them). Hold their breath at this moment of suspension, then all come down at the same time. To add interest and to emphasise the staccato notes, ask people to strike a clear and separate pose for each note on the way up, and then (after the dramatic pause) to ‘dance’ the smooth descent afterwards.

Extend this by asking the whole group to work as one and to repeat the whole exercise but a semi-tone up each time. Develop this by asking people to move (quickly!) to face a different direction before each repeat of the exercise. You will then have the whole group working off each other, breathing together and tuning in to each other.

Beginners mind

If you repeat exercises often, there is a danger that people will stop engaging fully with them due to their familiarity. It’s possible to add a different focus of attention each time. For example, in the exercise above you can ask people to sing in a very posh accent in order to make the vowel sound clearer and blend better. Or you could focus on changing volume dynamics as you go up and down the scale.

Or you can add new visualisation ideas, but you could also point out to people that they have a choice. They can either go through the motions, or get the full benefit of an exercise by approaching it as if it were the first time. This enables people (if they choose to!) to learn more about their own bodies, habits and voices over time. I’ve written about this Zen notion of beginner’s mind in a previous post (Blame it on the weather).

I hope that's given you some thoughts for how you might begin to combine and extend familiar exercises, bring to life well-trod warm ups, and to bring in all essential aspects of a warm up into each and every exercise. Do leave a comment and let me know if you have any good examples of warm up exercises that use these principles.

Next week is a guest post from Alexander Massey who will explain why we need to do all this hip wiggling and knee bending in our warm ups.

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Preparing to sing: what should a warm up consist of?

OK, we’ve looked at why we should bother to take the time to prepare to sing (Preparing to sing: why bother?), but what will that preparation consist of? This week I’m going to break down the warm up into areas that I think should always be covered. I will look at some specific exercises, next week, but for now I’ll just consider the kinds of thing we might want to cover.

Dividing the warm up into different areas like this is very artificial and I’m doing it simply as a way of looking at the elements in more detail. The ideal warm up exercise will include all the different elements that I mention!

Always keep in mind

Whilst we design our warm up, invent new exercises, or get ideas from others, we must always keep in mind, at every point of the warm up, the following:

• engage the breath
  Even if you’re doing a simple stretching exercise, it is important to engage the breath. It begins to help people connect body and breath, it helps to extend and deepen any stretches, it encourages people to breathe correctly, it helps an awareness of your breathing (many people hold their breath whilst stretching!),
• add sound
  Resist the temptation to separate the physical exercises from the vocal exercises by bringing sound in at every opportunity. It’s really easy to add simply humming to many physical stretching exercises. Not only does this begin to warm the voice up, but it engages the breath automatically (see above), and connects voice with body.
• involve the body
  This is the converse to the point above. Just because we are doing vocal exercises doesn’t mean that our bodies cease to exist. Find ways of involving the body by moving in space, by focusing on different parts of the body (e.g. “imagine the sound coming from your belly”), mirroring breathing with body movements, reminding people of correct posture, etc.
• use imagination
  Yes, it is possible to do a complete warm up in a very dry, technical way, but by engaging the imagination it allows exercises to become more vivid, vibrant and fun. It helps people engage and focus rather than just going through the motions. It helps extend exercises and allows people to go into them more fully. It can also act as a distraction (i.e. different focus of attention) to allow the body and breath to just do what it does naturally rather than forcing it to happen.
• work with others
  In a choir you are always working with and off other people. It’s OK to have points in the warm up where people are inward looking or focusing on themselves, but don’t fall into the trap of having a room full of individual exercisers. It’s really easy to bring people’s focus onto the other people in the room whilst doing a simple exercise. This is important because they will need to be aware of other singers when singing together, but also they need to be aware of the audience when performing. In the warm up you can develop the ability to be focusing on several different things at once.
• develop/ combine
  It’s rather boring and limited simply to do a series of separate exercises. To make things richer and more fun, always be thinking of ways you can develop a particular exercise (“how can I make it better/ deeper/ more interesting/ more useful?”) or ways of combining several exercises together. This will help keep the warm ups fun and challenging and also help people to be able to do several things at once.

An artificial division

For the purposes of this post only, I want to divide the elements of a typical warm up into three areas: body, voice, mind. They are not, of course, separate, and as I stated at the beginning, the ideal exercise should involve all of these.

As I mentioned last week (3. connect body, breath, voice), all too often we compartmentalise and separate parts of ourselves which should actually be working together all the time. Every single thing we do – whether preparing to sing, or singing itself – should engage mind, body, and voice.

Within each division, here are the different areas that I believe should be covered in any and every warm up.

Body (physical/ relaxation/ flexibility exercises)

To wake up, loosen muscles, release tension, improve posture, get rid of bad habits, extend flexibility, reduce fatigue, develop self-awareness.

• stretch/ reach
  Stretch up, sideways, cat stretch (arch the back), arms apart
• twist/ bend
  Twist the torso, bend over and roll up, lean sideways from the waist
• shake/ bounce
  Act like a dog, shake off water, bounce on heels, shake the whole body
• dance/ walk
  Moving in space, engaging the whole body, walking action with swinging arms
• rhythm/ timing
  Moving in fixed beats, stepping, clapping, unusual time signatures
• head/ neck/ shoulders
  Tilting, dropping, leaning, lifting, shrugging, rolling
• face/ mouth/ tongue
  Opening, scrunching, chewing, massaging, drawing shapes with tongue
• pelvis/ diaphragm
  Hip wriggling, drawing circles, tilting, figure of eight
• manipulation (with partner/ s)
  Shoulder massage, arm pulling, shaking shoulders
• relaxation/ fluidity/ calmness
  Correct singing posture, being seaweed, slow motion

Voice (vocal/ breathing exercises)

To engage the vocal folds, release tension, improve muscle co-ordination, develop listening skills, avoid vocal damage, gain control.

• engaging the voice
  humming, sirens, croaking, soft vowel sounds
• breath control/ support
  blowing candles, “sh” and “ha”sounds, laughing, pulling spaghetti from mouth
  
• range
  vocal slides, simple melodies up and down the scale, rising in semitones
• melody/ intervals/ scales
  call and response, scales, simple tunes, interval training
• pitching/ tuning
  call and response, pitch matching, drones
• harmony/ singing with others
  simple triads, drones, rounds
• articulation/ vowels
  body centres, pronunciation, blend, tongue twisters
  

Mind (awareness of self and others)

To be present, develop awareness of your own body and voice, work effectively with others, attend to the conductor, perform better.

• focus/ concentration
  being in the moment, focus on self, awareness of others, focus of attention, relaxation
  
• working as a team
  group exercises, stopping and starting, working without a conductor, selling the song

Next week I will look at some physical and vocal warm up ideas for choirs by considering a few specific examples of how you might develop and extend a particular warm up exercise. Do please leave a comment if you think I’ve missed out something important!

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Preparing to sing: why bother?

I’m often asked for ideas for vocal and physical warm ups for choirs. I’m also always on the lookout for new ideas for my own choir and singing workshops. I can get bored quite quickly doing the same old exercises, and so can the singers I’m working with.

I usually do around 10 – 15 minutes of warm up stuff with my choir. This includes vocal development work since we meet each week and I can slowly build on work from one session to the next. If I’m tailoring a warm up to a specific song, or difficulty that the choir is having, then the warm up might be longer. In a one-off workshop I may do a little longer, depending on the circumstances.

No matter how long the warm up is, I can be sure of the following:

• some people will think the warm up is too long, while others will think it’s not long enough;
• some people will think it’s a waste of time, while some will think it’s an invaluable and important part of being in the choir;
• some people will love one particular exercise, while others will simply hate it.

So you can’t win whatever you do!

Next week I’ll be looking at what a warm up should (in my opinion) consist of, but this week I want to stand back and consider why we do a warm up at all. In some cultures and contexts, there is no physical or vocal warm up at all!

I was lucky enough in 1994 to work in Cardiff for a whole week with two amazing Georgian singers and ethnomusicologists: Edisher Garakanidze and Joseph Jordania. I remember on perhaps the second day of singing, one of our group asked Edisher if we could do some kind of stretching and vocal warm up before we started. He was rather bemused but let us go ahead. Someone led us through a typical physical and vocal limber up session lasting 5 or 10 minutes whilst Edisher watched with increasing amusement. He indulged us and then we just carried on with the singing.

It made me realise that in a culture where people sing all the time, every day, or in a profession or context where you sing regularly, then your voice is pretty much ‘warmed up’ all the time, and if you have sufficient body awareness, you will be loose, relaxed and limbered up in any case. But working with ‘civilians’ who maybe sing in a choir just once a week, or who come to a singing workshop every few months, then a warm up is important and necessary.

As a singer, perhaps this post will give you an insight into why we, as choir leaders, make you do all this stuff at the beginning of a session. As a choir leader, you might want to remind your singers every now and then that there are good reasons behind the various physical contortions and strange warbling noises you make them to do!

These are elements that I believe need to be considered when preparing to sing and designing a warm up. I’m sure there are plenty that I’ve missed and would love it if you would add a comment and let me know what you think.

1. transition from the everyday
   Many choirs are run on weekday evenings and their members have usually come from a hard day’s work, fixing a quick supper, dropping the kids off to their ballet class, driving in the cold rain, forgetting to bring their song lyrics, etc. etc. The atmosphere we are trying to create is one of relaxed informality, of focus and concentration, of silliness and imagination, of creativity and beauty, of timelessness and joy. Most of these elements are missing from our everyday lives, so we have to allow a period of transition for people to settle into a different world: a world of music-making and collaboration.


2. relax and release tension
   Having sat all day at a PC, driven for half an hour, and rushed to get to choir on time, it’s no wonder people are rather tense and a little stressed. Their shoulders are up by their ears, their pelvises are locked, their jaws are clenched, their brows furrowed. We need to coax and persuade people to relax, release, stretch, let go and be free in their bodies (and minds!).


3. connect body, breath, voice
   It’s so easy for us to compartmentalise in our everyday life: now we’re at the gym, now we’re sitting at our desk, now we’re giving a presentation to our colleagues, now we’re shouting at our kids, now we’re swimming in our lunch hour. When I use to teach at drama school (and you’d think performing arts students would know better!), the students would either be doing a dance class or a singing class. You could see their demeanour change as they walked from class to class. They didn’t need their body in the singing class, and they didn’t need their voice in the dance class.
   

   We need to re-connect these three vital components of singing and point out how they are inextricably linked. Gone are the days of the clenched buttocks, feet in second position and formally held hands of the posh recital. We need to get back to the cotton fields, the chain gangs and the weaving looms and sing with our bodies, breathe with our imagination, and dance with our mouths.

4. engage imagination and creativity
   If we just go through the motions of familiar technical exercises it soon gets boring and also we don’t really put ourselves fully into the work. However, if we can engage our imaginations, pretend we’re in a magic world, have reasons for doing things, be playful and creative, then the work comes alive and we have fun. We become totally engaged in the exercises and get the maximum benefit from them. Rather than asking someone to simply stretch upwards, ask them to reach for the stars. Rather than asking for short, sharp breaths from the belly, ask them to pretend to be a steam train.


5. hone listening skills
   We have become a visual society. We are constantly bombarded with visual imagery through advertising, TV, cinema, the internet, etc. There is such a cacophony of noise in our everyday lives that we start to filter it out in order to cope. One way of doing this it to stuff buds into our ears and listen to music. But then we tend to zone out and not notice things happening around us.

   In order to sing together, especially in harmony, we need to re-connect with the world of sound, re-engage with our ears, hone our listening skills. We need to hear our own voices to realise if we are singing at the right pitch. We need to hear the other harmonies so we know if our part is fitting in correctly. We need to hear the whole song in order to make sure we have the rhythm right. And we need to become aware if we’re chatting too much or not listening to the choir leader!

6. develop self-awareness
   This is a tricky, but vital one! I really don’t know how to do this when working in large groups. To help people develop a strong sense of self-awareness (“is my chin jutting out?”, “am I on the right note?”, “am I stepping in the same rhythm as everyone else?”) you really need to give people individual feedback (“you’re jutting your chin out again John!”, “no, you’re slightly flat there”, “did you realise that you’re starting off with your left foot and not your right?”). That’s not possible in a room of 60 people that you’re trying to shape into a choir! I trust that by coming every week and doing the warm up, people’s self-awareness will improve naturally – but maybe I’m deluding myself!


7. increase confidence, lose inhibitions
   It can be a very scary thing, especially for new choir members, to be in a large group and to think you’re the only one having difficulties. It’s no good if everyone thinks they can’t ‘sing’ very well because then they’ll all sing quietly and we won’t ever know if the song is coming out right! People need to be encouraged to let go and to sing out, even if they think it’s ‘wrong’. I try to persuade people to go for it, and if they make a mistake whilst learning, then make a BIG mistake. In this way you can hear where you’ve gone wrong and correct it.

   Many people don’t like being in that vague, eggy state where you’re not in control and the song is not yet on its feet. Everyone is struggling, it doesn’t sound very good, and you’re having trouble getting those notes right. This is a necessary part of the process of learning a song. It will feel uncomfortable and unfamiliar, but we need people to soldier on regardless and trust the process. We need confident singers (who are behaving as if they know what they’re doing – that’s all that’s needed!) who have no inhibitions or worries about looking silly (we’re all in the same boat) or getting things ‘wrong’ (it may just be a ‘different’ harmony!).

8. improve pitching and vocal range using a centred, healthy voice
   Once people have left behind their everyday life and confidently entered a relaxed, creative space, then we can get down to the business of singing! Every session we need to work on developing people’s ability to sing accurately on pitch and to help them develop and extend their own personal vocal range (even if it’s only a few notes), whilst all the time ensuring that their voice comes from the right place.


9. develop sense of timing and rhythm
   In British culture, this is perhaps one of the hardest challenges! Especially if we are learning songs from the ‘world music’ repertoire, e.g. from Africa or the Balkans. Ours is predominantly a culture where music is melodic rather than rhythmic. Our songs, if danceable at all, tend to be in strict 4/4 or 3/4 time. In our warm up sessions we can practice off beats, all coming in at the same time, strange dances to 7/8 beats, clapping in time, stepping in time, and so on. This will all feed back into those songs that have a rhythmic basis, it will also help the choir engage their bodies with their voices.


10. awareness of working with others
    We can always stay at home and sing ballads on our own, but these people have chosen to come out to sing with others. Even when singing in unison, we need to be conscious of everyone else in the choir in order to sing at the same time, to get be singing the same melody and to articulate the vowels similarly to enable vocal blending. In harmony singing this is even more important. There is a tendency when running warm ups to simply give out a series of individual exercises, but there should be a way of gradually helping people become aware of the rest of the choir and to introduce exercises that help people work with and off others.

And all this to be done with laughter in a fun, non-judgmental way!

Next week I will be looking at the individual components of what constitutes a warm up, and the week after that I will cover a few specific physical and vocal warm up exercises.

I’d love to hear from you and your own experiences. What kind of warm ups do you do? Do you find warm ups helpful? What are the best kinds of warm ups? Do leave a comment!

If you’d like to leave a comment on any post, but don’t know how,
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