Vocal Exercises That Will Enable You to Sing Better

Doing vocal exercises is essential because it helps you to improve your voice quality and enhance your singing technique. Not only that, but vocal exercises can also help prevent vocal strain. In fact, a lot of singers always do vocal exercises before a performance because of the benefits it brings.

If you come to think of it, singers are not far different from athletes, really. If athletes do warm-ups before a game, singers do vocal exercises before getting up on stage. For 15 to 30 minutes, you can already do vocal exercises, and it’s ideal for both beginners and advanced singers. For you to improve your singing voice, these following vocal exercises will be a big help for you.

Breathing Exercises

Practicing breathing exercises is important to make your voice more relaxed when singing. It helps ease the rigidity in the air passage for you to create a beautiful vocal sound. If your voice box muscles are tensed and rigid, it can negatively affect your singing performance.

That’s why you should make sure that you do breathing exercises before you sing. You can start by taking in air deeply and exhaling it slowly. Focus your breathing in the lower part of your abdomen.

Also, don’t forget to loosen your shoulders and chest every time you breathe. When exhaling, make sure to draw out an “s” sound. You can do this exercise repeatedly before you sing.

Humming

This breathing exercise accentuates vibrations in your teeth, lips, and jaw muscles. For you to do the humming, you should see to it that you close your lips and relax your jaws. Inhale deeply and exhale the air out of your chest with a humming sound.

You can also produce the nasal sound “m” and change the pitch now and then as you breathe out the air. After that, take a moment to cool down and repeat the exercise.

Tongue Trills

Another way to relax your breathing and enhance your vocal sound is to do tongue trills. This exercise is as easy as placing your tongue at the upper set of your teeth and producing a vibrating “r” sound as you exhale. You should keep in mind to breathe steadily while producing the trill and vary the pitch as you do the exercise.

Lip Trills

Lip trills are essential to do before a singing performance because it eases the tension in your lips and vocal folds.

For you to do this exercise, you just have to relax your lips and produce a vibrating sound while you exhale the air out of your mouth. You should see to it that you allow the air to go through your lips and produce the sound steadily. You can also try to produce “b” and “h” sounds and vary the pitch as you go on with this exercise.

Singing Open Vowels

If you want to hone your vocal technique, doing this vocal exercise is a must. Singing open vowels require you to focus on the movement of the muscles of your throat and the shape of your mouth as you pronounce the vowels. You can start with the vowel “oo” by singing it using your upper vocal range and downwards.

After doing this particular exercise several times, you can now go on and try singing the consonants. Learning the basics of singing both vowels and consonants helps you to vary your tones effectively when singing.

Solfege Singing

Singing “Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Ti Do” before a singing performance is an important vocal exercise. Learning these classic musical syllables is crucial for you to improve your vocals and familiarize yourself with the pattern of tones and semitones C-D-E-F-G-A.

You can start by singing these musical syllables while varying the pitch as you go along the scale. For you to make yourself familiar with the pitch and sound of your singing voice, you should sing the solfege without any instrumental accompaniment.

The Siren

The siren exercise is an excellent way to extend the power of your vocal folds and enhance the resonance in your singing voice. You can start it by taking in the air into your mouth as if you’re sucking a noodle. After that, exhale the air with the “woo” sound steadily for a few seconds. You should make sure to vary the pitch as you do the exercise.

Takeaway

It’s essential that you do vocal exercises to improve your singing voice and hone your singing technique. Before you do a singing performance, you can practice breathing exercises, humming, siren, tongue and lip trills, solfege singing, and open vowels singing for that purpose. You can also take up singing lessons from a Bohemian Vocal coach for you to learn the basics of singing.