Alexa: [00:00:00] Are warmups and cool downs for singers and teachers actually necessary? And if we are including one in our routine, what sort of exercises could be beneficial? It's been a while since Line Hilton and I chatted for our the best exercises for series. And so we are back bringing you an episode on the best exercises for warming up and cooling down and the in between.
You ready Line?
When I think of warming up sometimes the first thing that comes to mind is Sharpe Evans in high school musical, just doing a really kind of Diva sort of sound. But I mean, what's warming up for you? What do you advise singers to warm up?
Line: Oh, yes, for sure. Uh, when you think about it, if you're going out to perform and use your voice, like we've probably referenced before, it's like being an athlete, isn't it? A vocal athlete and no athlete would ever go [00:01:00] out onto the field or onto a competition or out to even practice without getting ready, physically, mentally, and for us it's got to also be vocally. Yeah. So for sure I would be advising that.
And for me, warming up is just doing some easing in exercises. They do need to be dynamic. So not, it's not just about stretching anymore. Uh, in the old days when you went out as an athlete, you would start with stretches and then you'd go into, start doing some more dynamic exercises. But the science has said that actually you should start with dynamic exercises. So get the blood flow going, get the oxygen, get the muscles warmed up, and I think that for the voice it benefits as well.
And I remember even when I was gigging, because I didn't used to do warmups before, I would just go out and start singing and I would wonder why it took two or three songs before my voice felt like it was [00:02:00] actually ready to go.
Alexa: Can we talk a little bit more about what the science says about warming up?
Line: Yeah. The science actually, interestingly, is a bit mixed. Certainly from an anecdotal point of view, singers will report that it feels easier when they've done some warmup exercises. And there have been a few studies that show that the, uh, phonation threshold pressure, which is the minimum amount of pressure required for the vocal folds to open and get going with the glottic cycle improves when someone warms up.
But there isn't a, you know, it's not as. Uh, it's not as evident as one might expect to say that and to support that vocal warmups, an absolute must before singing. But it's a little bit like the placebo effect. You know, if somebody feels like they're in a better position to go out and start performing [00:03:00] after warming up, then go do it.
And certainly, it is not gonna do any harm if you're doing it well. I mean, you can overdo it. You know, if you push your voice too much before you go out and perform, then you might cause fatigue or potentially even injury. So it is not just about warming up, it's the quality of the warmup as well.
So there's mixed reviews with regard to vocal warmups, but it's a very difficult one to study because first of all, you've got the individuals, you've got the various vocal styles and then all the different types of exercises that come under vocal warmups. And then do physical warmups also make an impact? Do mental warmups have an impact? You can't study all of them all at once, so it can be a little bit frustrating because you only get bitsy pictures of what's going on. There have been some studies [00:04:00] that demonstrate that vibrato is improved after warmup and, that, SOVTS in particular can be beneficial to the voice in helping with agility, flexibility, range.
But the evidence isn't as strong as you might expect because I think from a logical point of view most of us as singers feel that a warmup seems to be the right thing to do. I think it also depends on how much you sing. Anyway, there's a bunch of papers that we'll pop into the description so that anyone who wants to go and read them can, uh, can see what we've been reading.
Yeah. So. I find it a bit surprising. Well, I did, when I first started looking into it the fact that there wasn't such an obvious correlation between vocal warmups and better singing as, uh, as you might think.
Alexa: But you would still encourage singers to, to be involved.
Line: [00:05:00] Yeah. And, and I think also, it is got to be individual. So I always say to the individual, here are some ideas for warmups. Here are some ideas for how long your warmup should be. Here are some ideas for how, close to your actual performance you should do the warmup experiment, try to see what works for you, and understand that you might, you know, only require a couple of minutes. We might require 30 minutes. It just depends a little on your physiology, a little bit on what kind of genre you are in, what you, what the de vocal demands are of, of the, the performance, what kind of health you're in as well, state of health. All of these things will factor in.
Your hydration. You know, if you, if you're dehydrated, it's. Probably gonna tie your voice out to, to be, uh, warming up for too long. [00:06:00] Some people who have reflux find that they have to warm up for a lot longer before their voice is ready. Yeah. So it's very individual and so I usually give people some guidelines and then tell them to go and experiment.
Alexa: You mentioned earlier about how a vocal warmup, when it's not working for you, could actually be quite tiring for the rest of your set or whatever you are doing in terms of vocal task. So when you are asking singers to experiment, how do we know when we've hit a really good exercise or SOVT or scale pattern for ourselves that we may want to include in the future?
Line: Well, it'll be a little bit related to what are you observing? Is your range there? Do you feel as though your transition is nice and easy? Does it feel effortful in any way? Is your voice conking out? So it's probably a combination of what are the positives and what are the [00:07:00] negatives? And certainly if you're losing your voice, if you're losing range, if it feels much harder than it normally feels, if you are getting a husky tone or hoarse or rough tone or there's some sort of quality change in your sound, then either you need to pull back and do less or change the exercises.
Alexa: It is probably quite good to recognise also that your warmup might change from day to day. Sometimes I'll go and pop a straw in water and I'll think, oh, you know what? This is not the one today. I need something else. So it's just, again, listening to your body, listening to what your voice actually needs, and finding the right pressures and SOVTs and directions and things that actually your voice needs that day.
Line: Yeah, and of course if you've been using your voice a lot or you are recovering from a respiratory infection, or hormonal changes have shifted your body [00:08:00] and your physiology, then yes, you might find that certain exercises don't work as well on some days or weeks than others. And also you need to think about what you are going to be using your voice for coming up. If you need to belt a lot, then you are going to need to do different set of exercises to if you are doing a little acoustic set, you know, with half an hour.
Alexa: We spoke with Nic Redman on the podcast a little while ago, now, she's the author of On the Mic and she does a lot of recorded voice work and she was talking about how she warms up and how she gets some of these kind of public speakers to warm up. So it's not necessarily just for singers, is it? So you do a lot of recorded webinar work and course recordings for the L5 and what not, so how do you prepare your voice for that? Do you encourage us teachers to do a certain warmup as well?
Line: I actually even encourage [00:09:00] singing teachers to warm up before they start teaching. My usual go-to is straw, so I'll grab the straw. I did it today actually, 'cause I had to do a whole lot of lectures for L5, and I just got the straw out and I start to do some revs.
I start usually with sort of shorter range of movement, and then I get a little bit long, wider. Then I might do a scale, siren, do it on a melody, and I also like to do prosody exercises where you are using syllables, just making sounds. Ingo Titze teach us one where you use the voice of Papa Bear and Mama Bear and Baby Bear.
So you can actually read out a little passage and when you're on the straw, you'll be doing...
and so you are using your voice in a wide [00:10:00] range. And I'll use that exercise actually for people who are public speakers as well. And I'll get them to read out in syllables through the straw, their speech that they're going to, um, to make as well. And then I might go onto a song and depending on how good my voice is feeling, or depending on whether I choose something like somewhere over the rainbow, which is an octave jump at the beginning and just do a little snippet of the melody.
Maybe change key going up in semitones, or if I feel like it can't cope with, you know, such a big jump, then I might go for something like Amazing Grace, which is the perfect fourth. Then I'll start doing other SOVT kind of exercises like a lip trill or tongue trill. And actually I like to do the lip and the tongue trill together.
So that's basically what I'll do when I'm getting ready to talk on camera. Some [00:11:00] people will do things like tongue twisters as well, so articulation exercises, I probably should. It's just that usually I just wanna get on with the job, so I just get my voice to a place where it's sounding okay and not sort of dragging down too much, uh, sitting at a nice pitch and feeling comfortable.
Alexa: You mentioned time earlier about it might take us between five and 30 minutes to warm up. Does the science say anything about an optimum? Is there any red flags with it being a little bit longer or does it mean that you are really efficient if it's only five minutes?
Line: Well the science is very generic and will say anything between five to 15 minutes.
I think as I mentioned earlier, if you are getting signs like loss of voice or vocal fatigue, gloss of range, et cetera, then you need to make some adjustments, whether it's to reduce the amount of time that you are doing [00:12:00] your warmups for or the type of warmups you're doing. Sometimes I work with gigging singers who are singing, you know, pretty much every day of the week and they don't really need to do much in the way of warmup.
It might just be just a few lip trills and a couple of sounds that are gonna get them ready, you know, immediately to start singing. But 'cause they're singing every day, they're not needing to do as much in the way of warmups.
Alexa: For the singer who finds their warmup is actually just really taking them a lot of time, are there any things that we should be concerned about there?
Line: Well, I guess you could look at: what's your state of health? What's your hydration? Have you got some sort of allergy that your vocal folds are working against with mucus sitting on them? Uh, hormonal shifts, like for instance with females who are still menstruating, they're coming up to their period, quite often the vocal folds will [00:13:00] swell and singing and vocalising starts become more effortful. And in fact, it might even change the transition points up to a tone, if not more. So, yeah. Thinking about other things that might be influencing it, as well as obviously looking at what are the actual exercises that you're doing and are they the correct range? Uh, are they the correct sort of sounds for you and your voice and what your needs are? So they were some of the things that I would consider. Yeah. Is there something I might have missed out?
Alexa: No, I think that's what I would be considering. Yeah, just looking back, what's happened in the last 24 hours, maybe 48 hours? Did you go to bed late? Is there that reflux possibility that we spoke about earlier? So your voice isn't feeling that great in the morning? Yeah, I think, I think you covered it there ,Line.
For the teacher who does shorter lessons, maybe they're [00:14:00] working on 30 minute sessions, for some singers who come in and therefore find that it takes them 15 minutes to warm up, that's, that's half of the lesson gone.
Of course, they could warm up before they come if they're confident enough on what to do and what works for them. But how would you advise a teacher who is leading warmups in those shorter classes to get a good enough warmup in so that their singer can then go on to some of their goals and technical work?
Line: Yes, that can be quite problematic. Uh, 'cause it does take up a lot of the lesson. I suppose the advice there would be spend five or six minutes on the usual SOVTs and then gradually work them into melodies and so that you are actually working towards a song rather than just on the exercises. That could be one way of, helping a student feel like, you know, that not spending all the lesson on warming up.
Alexa: [00:15:00] Yeah. And following on from what you said about, getting into melodies, there have been times where I've done a bit of a wombo combo doing some physicality, which we'll talk about in a sec. But whilst putting an SOVT on the song immediately, so you're kind of getting a run through of the song as well. You're rehearsing it, but you're getting your voice moving and as you say, it can feel like you're spending a little bit more time on the art craft rather than the, than the prep.
Line: Hmm. Yeah.
Alexa: So physicality then that's part of our warmup. It's not all to do with localizing it at the voice. So what sort of physicality, movements, stretches would you be encouraging us to try out?
Line: Yeah. Well, as they say, singing is a whole body experience, so warmups, uh, physical warmups that are going to help support what you need for singing. So I literally start at the top, you know, thinking about neck and [00:16:00] shoulders, chest the side, you know, the side, so the flanks. So even warming up the arms, like getting them moving and doing like wind windmill actions or things like that is really good because it gets the oxygen going throughout the body, and that's going to benefit the voice as well.
And then making sure that we're not missing out the spine and the hips and the knees and the feet. All of this is part of helping to support the voice getting moving so that also you're not stiff when you are singing. There's nothing worse than somebody standing there, like a stiff board as they sing. So getting movement in, uh, from a physical point of view, it's going to help with the heartbeat, it's gonna help with the oxygen flow, it's gonna help connect, you know, all the body together. So we're thinking about not just doing the voice, but also [00:17:00] physically warming up as well.
And I'll do what you were talking about, which is actually do a combination. So someone might do lip trills while they're doing, uh, shoulder raises and drops or neck exercises where they're actually stretching their ear down to their shoulder while they're doing the lip trills, so you can do certain exercises quite easily together.
Alexa: I love listening out for the cracks when people roll their shoulders and they, they have some lovely little crackly chicken bone rattles.
I love it. Bit of a weirdo.
Line: Maybe you should have been a chiropractor.
Alexa: Yeah, I think you, you might be onto something there.
Pelvic clocking is another one that we might look at. So making sure that we aren't sticking our bums out, trying to be a Kardashian, but also not slumping down either and being into a gormless posture.
Uh, so finding our [00:18:00] balance and the, the distribution of weight on the feet can be quite nice as well in terms of movement and, and posture, really checking in.
It's also a really great way for us to check in on our tensions of the day and we might start seeing patterns. So my left side is always a bitch to me, and I've been saying it's my pillows for ages. I said it in the podcast with Genevieve Tawiah, have I done anything about my pillows? No. So it is still there, but every time I roll my shoulders or do my neck rolls or head turns. I know that's my area of tension. So we can maybe focus a little bit of movement in that in our vocal exercises as well, or whatever we might need.
Line: Yeah. If we've got tension somewhere in the body. Eventually it will end up causing tension around the voice as well, so everything's connected. And so the the less tension that we have and the more energy we have even, you know, kinetically, the more benefit that will be for our voice.
Alexa: You mentioned earlier [00:19:00] in the chat about will a mental prep help us? So what do you mean by that?
Line: Well, for instance, if you get anxious or worried when you go to perform, taking time out to actually prepare mentally and get into a relaxed state, engaged in what you're about to do, eliminating that anxiety so that when you go on stage, you're not taking that and undoing all the amazing stuff that you've done in the vocal prep and the physical prep because when you go on stage in a state of anxious anxiety, it's going to cause tension in your body.
So we need to do a mental prep as well, and get ourselves ready for what we're about to do, whether it's visualising, whether it's doing, um, breath management exercises, whether it's meditating, whatever it is, it's just supporting. I like I said earlier, [00:20:00] everything that the voice has to do. So if we have any tension, we wanna get rid of it, whether it's physical or mental.
Alexa: Hmm. It's quite good also for when you have a client who's coming in straight from a rehearsal or work or you are in an institution and they've literally just run from maths class or a dance class. Just to refocus where we are and as you say, set that intention and think, okay, what, this is a new room, this is a new session. What am I here to do?
Equally, when we spoke to Dr. Shannon Coates about neurodiversity in the studio, it's taking that time for students who might need a little bit more of that grounding in, in the beginning of the lesson. Is the lighting okay for you today? Is it too cold, too hot? Is there something you wanna look at over here first, do you want to involve this toy?
Or whatever that might be, just so that they feel set up in a nice space as well.
Line: Hmm. Yeah. And, and this goes probably [00:21:00] beyond warming up and it is, but it is to do with preparation. It might be that you start to practice in the environment that you are going to have to perform in, so that you can start to either desensitise yourself to.
The anxiety that, that might provoke or just get used to what kind of movement you can and can't do. Um, how the space is filled acoustically, and, you know, what, what will it be like in a place where you've never performed before? So I guess that could be part of your preparation and warmup as well.
Alexa: We know the impacts of singing can be really positive a lot of the time because we are singing on the exhale. So it's that long drawn out exhale that we have when we're singing. So the breath work that we do, I for the calm and for the mental tension that we might have is actually also that second part of the wombo combo where we are [00:22:00] setting up breath and the body for the singing task as well.
Line: Yeah. And there's a whole lot of different breathing exercises that you could be doing. Anything from the extended SS sound. To counting one to 10 over and over, and learning how to just take an inhale when your body needs to take an inhale in a relaxed way. There's so many different types of, uh, breathing exercises out there, and all of them I think, are beneficial.
So you just need to find out what suits you and what's, what's something that you can do easily and, um, and as part of your routine.
Alexa: What are some of the vocal exercises, scale patterns, directions that you like to encourage singers to experiment with?
Line: Well, at the start I usually get people to make sounds without really thinking about scales.
So for instance, I usually get somebody to start off with the straw. So it might [00:23:00] be one of these little ones, uh, or two of them, depending on the condition of voice, might be one of the larger ones that might be into water, might not be. I happen to use Mindy Pack's Voice Staw combo. So I'll start off with revs, so, mm, just to get the vocal folds starting to flow there, and to oscillate. Might do some. Uh, rising revs, so.... Might do some short medium and long glides so.. And medium... and then longer .... reverse laugh, which I got from chris Johnson, [00:24:00] and then I might start doing some sirens. So starting from the lower end, going right through the range, quite often the voice will cut out near the top and I always encourage the singer to go through that, and after a while, that will start to, um, to iron out.
Mm.
So for me that's quite an effort- end of the day, partly, 'cause I've been talking all day as well, so you wanna go throughout your range and then I might go to scales. So I might do something like the extended arpeggio. Then I might do something like a broken arpeggio, [00:25:00] might do, uh, even some sustain as well. And sometimes the sustain can start to help encourage vibrato as well. And I'll just go through the range. So all the usual scales, I tend not to do the shorter scale, so like the five note,
I think that's just a little bit early to be doing those shorter, smaller increments, but when the voice is warmed up, I might do something like... and try encourage vibrato. So right now my voice isn't, doesn't really wanna do vibrato. I think my vocal folds are quite stiff from having, you know, worked all day, talked all day. So, [00:26:00] it might take me about another three or four minutes to get my voice to a better place. And very quickly, I'll then get onto sounds.
So lip tril, tongue trill, which is one of my faves. And there, I'll start, probably start with a, an extended arpeggio.
Because you're getting the double whammy of, of back pressure from the lips and from the tongue. Yeah. So that's a very cool one to do. Not everyone can do it because some people can't do lip trills, some people can't do tongue trills. Uh, but if you can, then that's a great one, a great sound. To get, uh, going on a warmup.
Alexa: I like to involve the tongue, uh, in an SOVT as well, if possible. Uh, even just to get the tongue warming up and, and mobile in, in case we don't get to do tongue twisters or tongue twisters aren't [00:27:00] part of that routine for whatever reason. So like a puffy cheek and then wiggling the tongue up and down, or doing an er y ya, just so that it gets involved, doesn't feel left out getting FOMO.
Line: I have to admit that, uh, I don't do tongue twist as much these days, but it probably is something I should remember to put in. And also it might be just massaging the articulators. Another of my favourite tools is the vibrator.
Alexa: I bet it is, yeah.
Line: For various reasons. All vocal, of course. Yeah. So I'll do an exercise where I'll just get the signature, put the vibrator on the side of the larynx and then hum.
So you're getting the vibration of the M sound on the vocal folds and of the vibrator, [00:28:00] and it's kind of like a little massage. Quite good if you've got lots of mucus. And also you can use the vibrator to help release any tension that you might have around the throat or the extrinsic muscles that sit out outside of the larynx. So I might get someone to hum mm as the massaging the extrinsic muscles. So it's a combination of warming up and also releasing tension.
Alexa: Just out of interest, when you whack out the vibrator and you're like, let's have, have a bit of this, like how do you, how do you introduce that to them? Is there any weirdness?
Line: Well, I'm very clinical in the way that I approach these things. Yeah. So also, yeah, it is. It's a sex toy. But, and then I'll explain why it's useful and I'll, that's how I overcome any [00:29:00] embarrassment is I just talk about the benefits and from a vocal point of view, uh, clinical standpoint. Yeah, I, I don't get really that embarrassed about stuff like that these days.
Alexa: No, you've got a nursing background, so I can't imagine. I reckon that's done, that's helped. Yeah.
Line: Um, gosh, some of the jobs that I've done so it just reminded me of a job where I used to do all the STD screenings for prostitutes and I got to hear some very interesting stories and I realised that there wasn't very much for me to get embarrassed about compared to what was going out there in the world.
Alexa: Line, I've said this before. You've lived so many lives. I'm gonna need to hear some of the stories from that job.
Line: There's a few interesting ones. Probably not fit for the podcast though.
Alexa: We'll have to set up a side podcast. Line's
Line: weird jobs
Alexa: In terms of what you do after you've [00:30:00] done sots and straw, straw work and gliding and all of that stuff. What? What's the next stage for you?
Line: Oh getting as quickly as possible to the sounds, I would say. Yeah. The other one I like to go from say, straw into lip trills or some other kind of similar SOVT, like a V or a. One of my big favourites is the creaky M sound. Mm. But making sure that it's happening at the vocal fold level.
So maybe get the singer to start with HUH, so they bring the vocal folds together and then into the m mm as opposed to the M that sits more on the front of the lips.
Alexa: And do you find that you can also do that for the whole range? Can you put that karate chop in for the upper part of your voice as well as the lower?
Line: Well, the karate chop or the sound is always done at the lower chest [00:31:00] range. So it's all about just setting up the vocal fold closure. We don't want the HUH to follow pitch. Yeah. So it's functional in terms of closing the vocal folds and then we create the sound and the pitch. So yeah, we don't want the HUH aspect of it to be changing pitch.
Alexa: When would you start to work into consonants and vowels?
Line: Probably once I've done the MM sound, we've got a m then it's very easy to move into a mum. So I might then, I might be doing sort of like a long scale on that. Mm.
Then it's really easy to go to a... and then off we go into all the other various combinations that you can have, depending on where it is that you are going. So if I'm working a singer to a [00:32:00] belt quality, then I'll probably want to be moving fairly rapidly into sounds like NAYs or NAEs, uh, where you're getting a little bit more of that belted quality and yeah.
So I'll, I'll move quite quickly into sounds. Maybe spend three to five minutes on SOVTs and physical warmups. So either working on the developing exercises, you know, moving forward from there to correct whatever's going on, or moving the voice towards where it needs to be in order to be able to perform.
Alexa: For singing teachers who are working in groups, whether that's a choir or maybe a stage coach class, how can they lead a warmup that is suitable for all of those different ages and abilities?
Line: Well, it's very challenging, very challenging especially if you've got young voices and teen voices and adult voices all in the same room.
[00:33:00] But you can start off with the physical exercises, breath management exercises, the lip trills, and the straws. In fact, I did a workshop with the rock choir leaders teaching them how to take straw exercises. And we did some experiments with the various groups that they had there of what they sounded like before and after doing straw exercises. Really quite phenomenal to hear the difference in the sound. There's no reason why you can't do that in their parts as well. So it might be that we do a few exercises running through scales or sirens. Sirens is a little easier because that's kind of random. You can start wherever is right for your voice. Maybe you do some scales where you start in the lower end and then as you start to go up the different keys, then the other voices start to join in. And then maybe the [00:34:00] lower voices will drop out as you get higher. So that's the way that I tend to work with groups. And then when you are working into song, there's no reason why they can't do the straw exercises or literals or SOVT exercises within the context of singing the songs. So they might do it in their various different parts as well. So that could work. And you could also put people into groups, you know, work with the sops, work with the altos, work with the tenors, work with the basses, uh, and you could also do things like call and response where you do certain exercise and then they repeat it back. Either the same octave or a lower or higher octave, depending on where you are. Yeah, so there's a variety of different ways and it will still be beneficial.
Alexa: Sometimes you might get a student who comes back into the next session and you ask about their practice and they say, yeah, I put it into my [00:35:00] warmups.
When you may have been doing something that's targeted for developing a register or articulation, whatever, how can we help students to understand the difference between. A vocal exercise for progression and developing a particular area of technique versus what's getting them prepared for that task or for a song, but when we are using the same sort of things, SOVTs and certain scale patterns.
Line: Well, I think it's just helping them recognise that the warmups are going to be more gentle generally going to comprise of these SOVT type exercises. Uh, so the straw, the lip trill, tongue trill, um, V and siren sounds like NNG, creaky m the puffy cheek OO, you know, those kind of exercises. They're very [00:36:00] specifically targeted towards warming up, and that when they start to combine consonants and vowels or sing lyrics, now that's working towards development. So I think it's mainly just being able to educate them on which exercises are deemed warmups and which ones are developmental.
Alexa: And just intention as well, isn't it, in terms of what, what are you doing this for? You are doing it to warm up or I'm doing that to target this particular area. So having a clear idea of what actually you are using it for can sometimes be quite helpful to, to categorise them.
Conversely to the warmup then is the cool down.
So do you encourage singers to, to cool down at the end of the day or singing task? I.
Line: I do for some bizarre reason. I used to call it the warm down until one day I heard someone calling it the cool down. I went that's makes so much more [00:37:00] sense. But anyway. So yes I do because I. We want to reset everything and just get it back to a balance.
You don't want to go to sleep on tension. So if you've been out performing, you know, for a few hours, maybe talking, maybe stressed about, you know, the performance, et cetera. Maybe you've had a fight with your keyboard player, or is that just me? Then you want to just get rid of that tension. Or maybe you've been, singing very belty songs, so your voice has naturally being more tense and stressed and we want to relax it and reset it. So you want to make sure you go to sleep on a nice reset, balanced voice. But we probably won't spend as much time on cooling down as we might on warming up. It's just maybe, I don't know, two or three minutes of, uh similar exercises.
So you could [00:38:00] do the lip trill, tongue trill, could get your straw out and just wind down to a more neutral place. So instead of thinking about winding up, you know, we're winding down so that maybe you start with top down exercises, getting into the revs, and staying there and not really doing much in the way of wide range glides or anything like that.
And another favourite of mine is the reverse fry, which is, comes from, uh, speech and language therapy. So you are actually sucking in the air over semi-close vocal folds...., so basically I'm sucking the air in over my vocal folds rather than pushing the air out. And that's a really good way to relax the intrinsic muscles and just reset the vocal folds.
Yeah.
Alexa: And any excuse to get the vibrator out again?
Line: Yes, you could do that too. [00:39:00] Release tension around the throat area. Yes.
Alexa: It's also a good time for a reflection. How did we feel that was, what do I wanna work on next time? I know from like the writing world, if you set yourself what, a goal for next time what you, what you intend to do, then you can pick up where you left off.
So if you think next time I'm gonna try it with this sound or this song or apply it here, then at least you can sort of meet yourself back to where you were when you're finished.
Line: Yeah, that's a lovely idea.
Alexa: Thanks Line for that. So is there anything else you want us to know before we go and apply those warmups and cool downs?
Line: Well, if you are a member of the Knowledge Hub or if you join our foundation or L5 course, then you'll get my 14 lesson warmup course that not only goes through each of the exercises, but demonstrates them and gives you some backing tracks as [00:40:00] well for male and female voices so that you can be accompanied with these exercises on the scales.
And three really cool webinars that we did with Ingo Titze who's a voice scientist talking about the science behind vocal warmups. Uh, Josh Alamu, who talks about how he warms up the artists that he's working with on tour, and Katie Holmes Smith, who talks about how she warms up her voice when she's working with artists such as Adele.
So that's a really useful course that you can do if you are a member of the Knowledge Hub or if you're doing one of the courses.
Alexa: And where do people find the Knowledge Hub? Just on the BAST website.
Line: Yes. So if you go to the BAST website and then look up membership all the details will be there. It's six pounds a month.
Alexa: Bargain, less than Apple tv.
Line: Well, there you go. And way more useful if you want to be a singing teacher. Yeah.
Alexa: Thanks [00:41:00] Line.
Line: You're welcome. Thank you.
You ready Line?
When I think of warming up sometimes the first thing that comes to mind is Sharpe Evans in high school musical, just doing a really kind of Diva sort of sound. But I mean, what's warming up for you? What do you advise singers to warm up?
Line: Oh, yes, for sure. Uh, when you think about it, if you're going out to perform and use your voice, like we've probably referenced before, it's like being an athlete, isn't it? A vocal athlete and no athlete would ever go [00:01:00] out onto the field or onto a competition or out to even practice without getting ready, physically, mentally, and for us it's got to also be vocally. Yeah. So for sure I would be advising that.
And for me, warming up is just doing some easing in exercises. They do need to be dynamic. So not, it's not just about stretching anymore. Uh, in the old days when you went out as an athlete, you would start with stretches and then you'd go into, start doing some more dynamic exercises. But the science has said that actually you should start with dynamic exercises. So get the blood flow going, get the oxygen, get the muscles warmed up, and I think that for the voice it benefits as well.
And I remember even when I was gigging, because I didn't used to do warmups before, I would just go out and start singing and I would wonder why it took two or three songs before my voice felt like it was [00:02:00] actually ready to go.
Alexa: Can we talk a little bit more about what the science says about warming up?
Line: Yeah. The science actually, interestingly, is a bit mixed. Certainly from an anecdotal point of view, singers will report that it feels easier when they've done some warmup exercises. And there have been a few studies that show that the, uh, phonation threshold pressure, which is the minimum amount of pressure required for the vocal folds to open and get going with the glottic cycle improves when someone warms up.
But there isn't a, you know, it's not as. Uh, it's not as evident as one might expect to say that and to support that vocal warmups, an absolute must before singing. But it's a little bit like the placebo effect. You know, if somebody feels like they're in a better position to go out and start performing [00:03:00] after warming up, then go do it.
And certainly, it is not gonna do any harm if you're doing it well. I mean, you can overdo it. You know, if you push your voice too much before you go out and perform, then you might cause fatigue or potentially even injury. So it is not just about warming up, it's the quality of the warmup as well.
So there's mixed reviews with regard to vocal warmups, but it's a very difficult one to study because first of all, you've got the individuals, you've got the various vocal styles and then all the different types of exercises that come under vocal warmups. And then do physical warmups also make an impact? Do mental warmups have an impact? You can't study all of them all at once, so it can be a little bit frustrating because you only get bitsy pictures of what's going on. There have been some studies [00:04:00] that demonstrate that vibrato is improved after warmup and, that, SOVTS in particular can be beneficial to the voice in helping with agility, flexibility, range.
But the evidence isn't as strong as you might expect because I think from a logical point of view most of us as singers feel that a warmup seems to be the right thing to do. I think it also depends on how much you sing. Anyway, there's a bunch of papers that we'll pop into the description so that anyone who wants to go and read them can, uh, can see what we've been reading.
Yeah. So. I find it a bit surprising. Well, I did, when I first started looking into it the fact that there wasn't such an obvious correlation between vocal warmups and better singing as, uh, as you might think.
Alexa: But you would still encourage singers to, to be involved.
Line: [00:05:00] Yeah. And, and I think also, it is got to be individual. So I always say to the individual, here are some ideas for warmups. Here are some ideas for how long your warmup should be. Here are some ideas for how, close to your actual performance you should do the warmup experiment, try to see what works for you, and understand that you might, you know, only require a couple of minutes. We might require 30 minutes. It just depends a little on your physiology, a little bit on what kind of genre you are in, what you, what the de vocal demands are of, of the, the performance, what kind of health you're in as well, state of health. All of these things will factor in.
Your hydration. You know, if you, if you're dehydrated, it's. Probably gonna tie your voice out to, to be, uh, warming up for too long. [00:06:00] Some people who have reflux find that they have to warm up for a lot longer before their voice is ready. Yeah. So it's very individual and so I usually give people some guidelines and then tell them to go and experiment.
Alexa: You mentioned earlier about how a vocal warmup, when it's not working for you, could actually be quite tiring for the rest of your set or whatever you are doing in terms of vocal task. So when you are asking singers to experiment, how do we know when we've hit a really good exercise or SOVT or scale pattern for ourselves that we may want to include in the future?
Line: Well, it'll be a little bit related to what are you observing? Is your range there? Do you feel as though your transition is nice and easy? Does it feel effortful in any way? Is your voice conking out? So it's probably a combination of what are the positives and what are the [00:07:00] negatives? And certainly if you're losing your voice, if you're losing range, if it feels much harder than it normally feels, if you are getting a husky tone or hoarse or rough tone or there's some sort of quality change in your sound, then either you need to pull back and do less or change the exercises.
Alexa: It is probably quite good to recognise also that your warmup might change from day to day. Sometimes I'll go and pop a straw in water and I'll think, oh, you know what? This is not the one today. I need something else. So it's just, again, listening to your body, listening to what your voice actually needs, and finding the right pressures and SOVTs and directions and things that actually your voice needs that day.
Line: Yeah, and of course if you've been using your voice a lot or you are recovering from a respiratory infection, or hormonal changes have shifted your body [00:08:00] and your physiology, then yes, you might find that certain exercises don't work as well on some days or weeks than others. And also you need to think about what you are going to be using your voice for coming up. If you need to belt a lot, then you are going to need to do different set of exercises to if you are doing a little acoustic set, you know, with half an hour.
Alexa: We spoke with Nic Redman on the podcast a little while ago, now, she's the author of On the Mic and she does a lot of recorded voice work and she was talking about how she warms up and how she gets some of these kind of public speakers to warm up. So it's not necessarily just for singers, is it? So you do a lot of recorded webinar work and course recordings for the L5 and what not, so how do you prepare your voice for that? Do you encourage us teachers to do a certain warmup as well?
Line: I actually even encourage [00:09:00] singing teachers to warm up before they start teaching. My usual go-to is straw, so I'll grab the straw. I did it today actually, 'cause I had to do a whole lot of lectures for L5, and I just got the straw out and I start to do some revs.
I start usually with sort of shorter range of movement, and then I get a little bit long, wider. Then I might do a scale, siren, do it on a melody, and I also like to do prosody exercises where you are using syllables, just making sounds. Ingo Titze teach us one where you use the voice of Papa Bear and Mama Bear and Baby Bear.
So you can actually read out a little passage and when you're on the straw, you'll be doing...
and so you are using your voice in a wide [00:10:00] range. And I'll use that exercise actually for people who are public speakers as well. And I'll get them to read out in syllables through the straw, their speech that they're going to, um, to make as well. And then I might go onto a song and depending on how good my voice is feeling, or depending on whether I choose something like somewhere over the rainbow, which is an octave jump at the beginning and just do a little snippet of the melody.
Maybe change key going up in semitones, or if I feel like it can't cope with, you know, such a big jump, then I might go for something like Amazing Grace, which is the perfect fourth. Then I'll start doing other SOVT kind of exercises like a lip trill or tongue trill. And actually I like to do the lip and the tongue trill together.
So that's basically what I'll do when I'm getting ready to talk on camera. Some [00:11:00] people will do things like tongue twisters as well, so articulation exercises, I probably should. It's just that usually I just wanna get on with the job, so I just get my voice to a place where it's sounding okay and not sort of dragging down too much, uh, sitting at a nice pitch and feeling comfortable.
Alexa: You mentioned time earlier about it might take us between five and 30 minutes to warm up. Does the science say anything about an optimum? Is there any red flags with it being a little bit longer or does it mean that you are really efficient if it's only five minutes?
Line: Well the science is very generic and will say anything between five to 15 minutes.
I think as I mentioned earlier, if you are getting signs like loss of voice or vocal fatigue, gloss of range, et cetera, then you need to make some adjustments, whether it's to reduce the amount of time that you are doing [00:12:00] your warmups for or the type of warmups you're doing. Sometimes I work with gigging singers who are singing, you know, pretty much every day of the week and they don't really need to do much in the way of warmup.
It might just be just a few lip trills and a couple of sounds that are gonna get them ready, you know, immediately to start singing. But 'cause they're singing every day, they're not needing to do as much in the way of warmups.
Alexa: For the singer who finds their warmup is actually just really taking them a lot of time, are there any things that we should be concerned about there?
Line: Well, I guess you could look at: what's your state of health? What's your hydration? Have you got some sort of allergy that your vocal folds are working against with mucus sitting on them? Uh, hormonal shifts, like for instance with females who are still menstruating, they're coming up to their period, quite often the vocal folds will [00:13:00] swell and singing and vocalising starts become more effortful. And in fact, it might even change the transition points up to a tone, if not more. So, yeah. Thinking about other things that might be influencing it, as well as obviously looking at what are the actual exercises that you're doing and are they the correct range? Uh, are they the correct sort of sounds for you and your voice and what your needs are? So they were some of the things that I would consider. Yeah. Is there something I might have missed out?
Alexa: No, I think that's what I would be considering. Yeah, just looking back, what's happened in the last 24 hours, maybe 48 hours? Did you go to bed late? Is there that reflux possibility that we spoke about earlier? So your voice isn't feeling that great in the morning? Yeah, I think, I think you covered it there ,Line.
For the teacher who does shorter lessons, maybe they're [00:14:00] working on 30 minute sessions, for some singers who come in and therefore find that it takes them 15 minutes to warm up, that's, that's half of the lesson gone.
Of course, they could warm up before they come if they're confident enough on what to do and what works for them. But how would you advise a teacher who is leading warmups in those shorter classes to get a good enough warmup in so that their singer can then go on to some of their goals and technical work?
Line: Yes, that can be quite problematic. Uh, 'cause it does take up a lot of the lesson. I suppose the advice there would be spend five or six minutes on the usual SOVTs and then gradually work them into melodies and so that you are actually working towards a song rather than just on the exercises. That could be one way of, helping a student feel like, you know, that not spending all the lesson on warming up.
Alexa: [00:15:00] Yeah. And following on from what you said about, getting into melodies, there have been times where I've done a bit of a wombo combo doing some physicality, which we'll talk about in a sec. But whilst putting an SOVT on the song immediately, so you're kind of getting a run through of the song as well. You're rehearsing it, but you're getting your voice moving and as you say, it can feel like you're spending a little bit more time on the art craft rather than the, than the prep.
Line: Hmm. Yeah.
Alexa: So physicality then that's part of our warmup. It's not all to do with localizing it at the voice. So what sort of physicality, movements, stretches would you be encouraging us to try out?
Line: Yeah. Well, as they say, singing is a whole body experience, so warmups, uh, physical warmups that are going to help support what you need for singing. So I literally start at the top, you know, thinking about neck and [00:16:00] shoulders, chest the side, you know, the side, so the flanks. So even warming up the arms, like getting them moving and doing like wind windmill actions or things like that is really good because it gets the oxygen going throughout the body, and that's going to benefit the voice as well.
And then making sure that we're not missing out the spine and the hips and the knees and the feet. All of this is part of helping to support the voice getting moving so that also you're not stiff when you are singing. There's nothing worse than somebody standing there, like a stiff board as they sing. So getting movement in, uh, from a physical point of view, it's going to help with the heartbeat, it's gonna help with the oxygen flow, it's gonna help connect, you know, all the body together. So we're thinking about not just doing the voice, but also [00:17:00] physically warming up as well.
And I'll do what you were talking about, which is actually do a combination. So someone might do lip trills while they're doing, uh, shoulder raises and drops or neck exercises where they're actually stretching their ear down to their shoulder while they're doing the lip trills, so you can do certain exercises quite easily together.
Alexa: I love listening out for the cracks when people roll their shoulders and they, they have some lovely little crackly chicken bone rattles.
I love it. Bit of a weirdo.
Line: Maybe you should have been a chiropractor.
Alexa: Yeah, I think you, you might be onto something there.
Pelvic clocking is another one that we might look at. So making sure that we aren't sticking our bums out, trying to be a Kardashian, but also not slumping down either and being into a gormless posture.
Uh, so finding our [00:18:00] balance and the, the distribution of weight on the feet can be quite nice as well in terms of movement and, and posture, really checking in.
It's also a really great way for us to check in on our tensions of the day and we might start seeing patterns. So my left side is always a bitch to me, and I've been saying it's my pillows for ages. I said it in the podcast with Genevieve Tawiah, have I done anything about my pillows? No. So it is still there, but every time I roll my shoulders or do my neck rolls or head turns. I know that's my area of tension. So we can maybe focus a little bit of movement in that in our vocal exercises as well, or whatever we might need.
Line: Yeah. If we've got tension somewhere in the body. Eventually it will end up causing tension around the voice as well, so everything's connected. And so the the less tension that we have and the more energy we have even, you know, kinetically, the more benefit that will be for our voice.
Alexa: You mentioned earlier [00:19:00] in the chat about will a mental prep help us? So what do you mean by that?
Line: Well, for instance, if you get anxious or worried when you go to perform, taking time out to actually prepare mentally and get into a relaxed state, engaged in what you're about to do, eliminating that anxiety so that when you go on stage, you're not taking that and undoing all the amazing stuff that you've done in the vocal prep and the physical prep because when you go on stage in a state of anxious anxiety, it's going to cause tension in your body.
So we need to do a mental prep as well, and get ourselves ready for what we're about to do, whether it's visualising, whether it's doing, um, breath management exercises, whether it's meditating, whatever it is, it's just supporting. I like I said earlier, [00:20:00] everything that the voice has to do. So if we have any tension, we wanna get rid of it, whether it's physical or mental.
Alexa: Hmm. It's quite good also for when you have a client who's coming in straight from a rehearsal or work or you are in an institution and they've literally just run from maths class or a dance class. Just to refocus where we are and as you say, set that intention and think, okay, what, this is a new room, this is a new session. What am I here to do?
Equally, when we spoke to Dr. Shannon Coates about neurodiversity in the studio, it's taking that time for students who might need a little bit more of that grounding in, in the beginning of the lesson. Is the lighting okay for you today? Is it too cold, too hot? Is there something you wanna look at over here first, do you want to involve this toy?
Or whatever that might be, just so that they feel set up in a nice space as well.
Line: Hmm. Yeah. And, and this goes probably [00:21:00] beyond warming up and it is, but it is to do with preparation. It might be that you start to practice in the environment that you are going to have to perform in, so that you can start to either desensitise yourself to.
The anxiety that, that might provoke or just get used to what kind of movement you can and can't do. Um, how the space is filled acoustically, and, you know, what, what will it be like in a place where you've never performed before? So I guess that could be part of your preparation and warmup as well.
Alexa: We know the impacts of singing can be really positive a lot of the time because we are singing on the exhale. So it's that long drawn out exhale that we have when we're singing. So the breath work that we do, I for the calm and for the mental tension that we might have is actually also that second part of the wombo combo where we are [00:22:00] setting up breath and the body for the singing task as well.
Line: Yeah. And there's a whole lot of different breathing exercises that you could be doing. Anything from the extended SS sound. To counting one to 10 over and over, and learning how to just take an inhale when your body needs to take an inhale in a relaxed way. There's so many different types of, uh, breathing exercises out there, and all of them I think, are beneficial.
So you just need to find out what suits you and what's, what's something that you can do easily and, um, and as part of your routine.
Alexa: What are some of the vocal exercises, scale patterns, directions that you like to encourage singers to experiment with?
Line: Well, at the start I usually get people to make sounds without really thinking about scales.
So for instance, I usually get somebody to start off with the straw. So it might [00:23:00] be one of these little ones, uh, or two of them, depending on the condition of voice, might be one of the larger ones that might be into water, might not be. I happen to use Mindy Pack's Voice Staw combo. So I'll start off with revs, so, mm, just to get the vocal folds starting to flow there, and to oscillate. Might do some. Uh, rising revs, so.... Might do some short medium and long glides so.. And medium... and then longer .... reverse laugh, which I got from chris Johnson, [00:24:00] and then I might start doing some sirens. So starting from the lower end, going right through the range, quite often the voice will cut out near the top and I always encourage the singer to go through that, and after a while, that will start to, um, to iron out.
Mm.
So for me that's quite an effort- end of the day, partly, 'cause I've been talking all day as well, so you wanna go throughout your range and then I might go to scales. So I might do something like the extended arpeggio. Then I might do something like a broken arpeggio, [00:25:00] might do, uh, even some sustain as well. And sometimes the sustain can start to help encourage vibrato as well. And I'll just go through the range. So all the usual scales, I tend not to do the shorter scale, so like the five note,
I think that's just a little bit early to be doing those shorter, smaller increments, but when the voice is warmed up, I might do something like... and try encourage vibrato. So right now my voice isn't, doesn't really wanna do vibrato. I think my vocal folds are quite stiff from having, you know, worked all day, talked all day. So, [00:26:00] it might take me about another three or four minutes to get my voice to a better place. And very quickly, I'll then get onto sounds.
So lip tril, tongue trill, which is one of my faves. And there, I'll start, probably start with a, an extended arpeggio.
Because you're getting the double whammy of, of back pressure from the lips and from the tongue. Yeah. So that's a very cool one to do. Not everyone can do it because some people can't do lip trills, some people can't do tongue trills. Uh, but if you can, then that's a great one, a great sound. To get, uh, going on a warmup.
Alexa: I like to involve the tongue, uh, in an SOVT as well, if possible. Uh, even just to get the tongue warming up and, and mobile in, in case we don't get to do tongue twisters or tongue twisters aren't [00:27:00] part of that routine for whatever reason. So like a puffy cheek and then wiggling the tongue up and down, or doing an er y ya, just so that it gets involved, doesn't feel left out getting FOMO.
Line: I have to admit that, uh, I don't do tongue twist as much these days, but it probably is something I should remember to put in. And also it might be just massaging the articulators. Another of my favourite tools is the vibrator.
Alexa: I bet it is, yeah.
Line: For various reasons. All vocal, of course. Yeah. So I'll do an exercise where I'll just get the signature, put the vibrator on the side of the larynx and then hum.
So you're getting the vibration of the M sound on the vocal folds and of the vibrator, [00:28:00] and it's kind of like a little massage. Quite good if you've got lots of mucus. And also you can use the vibrator to help release any tension that you might have around the throat or the extrinsic muscles that sit out outside of the larynx. So I might get someone to hum mm as the massaging the extrinsic muscles. So it's a combination of warming up and also releasing tension.
Alexa: Just out of interest, when you whack out the vibrator and you're like, let's have, have a bit of this, like how do you, how do you introduce that to them? Is there any weirdness?
Line: Well, I'm very clinical in the way that I approach these things. Yeah. So also, yeah, it is. It's a sex toy. But, and then I'll explain why it's useful and I'll, that's how I overcome any [00:29:00] embarrassment is I just talk about the benefits and from a vocal point of view, uh, clinical standpoint. Yeah, I, I don't get really that embarrassed about stuff like that these days.
Alexa: No, you've got a nursing background, so I can't imagine. I reckon that's done, that's helped. Yeah.
Line: Um, gosh, some of the jobs that I've done so it just reminded me of a job where I used to do all the STD screenings for prostitutes and I got to hear some very interesting stories and I realised that there wasn't very much for me to get embarrassed about compared to what was going out there in the world.
Alexa: Line, I've said this before. You've lived so many lives. I'm gonna need to hear some of the stories from that job.
Line: There's a few interesting ones. Probably not fit for the podcast though.
Alexa: We'll have to set up a side podcast. Line's
Line: weird jobs
Alexa: In terms of what you do after you've [00:30:00] done sots and straw, straw work and gliding and all of that stuff. What? What's the next stage for you?
Line: Oh getting as quickly as possible to the sounds, I would say. Yeah. The other one I like to go from say, straw into lip trills or some other kind of similar SOVT, like a V or a. One of my big favourites is the creaky M sound. Mm. But making sure that it's happening at the vocal fold level.
So maybe get the singer to start with HUH, so they bring the vocal folds together and then into the m mm as opposed to the M that sits more on the front of the lips.
Alexa: And do you find that you can also do that for the whole range? Can you put that karate chop in for the upper part of your voice as well as the lower?
Line: Well, the karate chop or the sound is always done at the lower chest [00:31:00] range. So it's all about just setting up the vocal fold closure. We don't want the HUH to follow pitch. Yeah. So it's functional in terms of closing the vocal folds and then we create the sound and the pitch. So yeah, we don't want the HUH aspect of it to be changing pitch.
Alexa: When would you start to work into consonants and vowels?
Line: Probably once I've done the MM sound, we've got a m then it's very easy to move into a mum. So I might then, I might be doing sort of like a long scale on that. Mm.
Then it's really easy to go to a... and then off we go into all the other various combinations that you can have, depending on where it is that you are going. So if I'm working a singer to a [00:32:00] belt quality, then I'll probably want to be moving fairly rapidly into sounds like NAYs or NAEs, uh, where you're getting a little bit more of that belted quality and yeah.
So I'll, I'll move quite quickly into sounds. Maybe spend three to five minutes on SOVTs and physical warmups. So either working on the developing exercises, you know, moving forward from there to correct whatever's going on, or moving the voice towards where it needs to be in order to be able to perform.
Alexa: For singing teachers who are working in groups, whether that's a choir or maybe a stage coach class, how can they lead a warmup that is suitable for all of those different ages and abilities?
Line: Well, it's very challenging, very challenging especially if you've got young voices and teen voices and adult voices all in the same room.
[00:33:00] But you can start off with the physical exercises, breath management exercises, the lip trills, and the straws. In fact, I did a workshop with the rock choir leaders teaching them how to take straw exercises. And we did some experiments with the various groups that they had there of what they sounded like before and after doing straw exercises. Really quite phenomenal to hear the difference in the sound. There's no reason why you can't do that in their parts as well. So it might be that we do a few exercises running through scales or sirens. Sirens is a little easier because that's kind of random. You can start wherever is right for your voice. Maybe you do some scales where you start in the lower end and then as you start to go up the different keys, then the other voices start to join in. And then maybe the [00:34:00] lower voices will drop out as you get higher. So that's the way that I tend to work with groups. And then when you are working into song, there's no reason why they can't do the straw exercises or literals or SOVT exercises within the context of singing the songs. So they might do it in their various different parts as well. So that could work. And you could also put people into groups, you know, work with the sops, work with the altos, work with the tenors, work with the basses, uh, and you could also do things like call and response where you do certain exercise and then they repeat it back. Either the same octave or a lower or higher octave, depending on where you are. Yeah, so there's a variety of different ways and it will still be beneficial.
Alexa: Sometimes you might get a student who comes back into the next session and you ask about their practice and they say, yeah, I put it into my [00:35:00] warmups.
When you may have been doing something that's targeted for developing a register or articulation, whatever, how can we help students to understand the difference between. A vocal exercise for progression and developing a particular area of technique versus what's getting them prepared for that task or for a song, but when we are using the same sort of things, SOVTs and certain scale patterns.
Line: Well, I think it's just helping them recognise that the warmups are going to be more gentle generally going to comprise of these SOVT type exercises. Uh, so the straw, the lip trill, tongue trill, um, V and siren sounds like NNG, creaky m the puffy cheek OO, you know, those kind of exercises. They're very [00:36:00] specifically targeted towards warming up, and that when they start to combine consonants and vowels or sing lyrics, now that's working towards development. So I think it's mainly just being able to educate them on which exercises are deemed warmups and which ones are developmental.
Alexa: And just intention as well, isn't it, in terms of what, what are you doing this for? You are doing it to warm up or I'm doing that to target this particular area. So having a clear idea of what actually you are using it for can sometimes be quite helpful to, to categorise them.
Conversely to the warmup then is the cool down.
So do you encourage singers to, to cool down at the end of the day or singing task? I.
Line: I do for some bizarre reason. I used to call it the warm down until one day I heard someone calling it the cool down. I went that's makes so much more [00:37:00] sense. But anyway. So yes I do because I. We want to reset everything and just get it back to a balance.
You don't want to go to sleep on tension. So if you've been out performing, you know, for a few hours, maybe talking, maybe stressed about, you know, the performance, et cetera. Maybe you've had a fight with your keyboard player, or is that just me? Then you want to just get rid of that tension. Or maybe you've been, singing very belty songs, so your voice has naturally being more tense and stressed and we want to relax it and reset it. So you want to make sure you go to sleep on a nice reset, balanced voice. But we probably won't spend as much time on cooling down as we might on warming up. It's just maybe, I don't know, two or three minutes of, uh similar exercises.
So you could [00:38:00] do the lip trill, tongue trill, could get your straw out and just wind down to a more neutral place. So instead of thinking about winding up, you know, we're winding down so that maybe you start with top down exercises, getting into the revs, and staying there and not really doing much in the way of wide range glides or anything like that.
And another favourite of mine is the reverse fry, which is, comes from, uh, speech and language therapy. So you are actually sucking in the air over semi-close vocal folds...., so basically I'm sucking the air in over my vocal folds rather than pushing the air out. And that's a really good way to relax the intrinsic muscles and just reset the vocal folds.
Yeah.
Alexa: And any excuse to get the vibrator out again?
Line: Yes, you could do that too. [00:39:00] Release tension around the throat area. Yes.
Alexa: It's also a good time for a reflection. How did we feel that was, what do I wanna work on next time? I know from like the writing world, if you set yourself what, a goal for next time what you, what you intend to do, then you can pick up where you left off.
So if you think next time I'm gonna try it with this sound or this song or apply it here, then at least you can sort of meet yourself back to where you were when you're finished.
Line: Yeah, that's a lovely idea.
Alexa: Thanks Line for that. So is there anything else you want us to know before we go and apply those warmups and cool downs?
Line: Well, if you are a member of the Knowledge Hub or if you join our foundation or L5 course, then you'll get my 14 lesson warmup course that not only goes through each of the exercises, but demonstrates them and gives you some backing tracks as [00:40:00] well for male and female voices so that you can be accompanied with these exercises on the scales.
And three really cool webinars that we did with Ingo Titze who's a voice scientist talking about the science behind vocal warmups. Uh, Josh Alamu, who talks about how he warms up the artists that he's working with on tour, and Katie Holmes Smith, who talks about how she warms up her voice when she's working with artists such as Adele.
So that's a really useful course that you can do if you are a member of the Knowledge Hub or if you're doing one of the courses.
Alexa: And where do people find the Knowledge Hub? Just on the BAST website.
Line: Yes. So if you go to the BAST website and then look up membership all the details will be there. It's six pounds a month.
Alexa: Bargain, less than Apple tv.
Line: Well, there you go. And way more useful if you want to be a singing teacher. Yeah.
Alexa: Thanks [00:41:00] Line.
Line: You're welcome. Thank you.
