What are vocal exercises, and why do we do them?

Honestly, I don’t know that these two questions were ever practically answered for me when I was taking voice lessons either in high school or throughout college. I just warmed up because I was told by my teachers that I was supposed to. But the problem was that most of the time, singing felt easier when I wasn’t warmed up and my voice was still “fresh”. I knew that was wrong, but I didn’t know why at the time. Looking back, I now know that the reason is because my warm-ups didn’t really “warm me up”. Instead, they just ended up vocally tiring me out and reinforcing poor technique and vocal habits. 

Many of my teachers were absolutely amazing singers and wonderful people, but the warm-up routines we did, most of the time, didn’t work for a singer like me, as I didn’t know what I was supposed to feel or how to warm up in a way that didn’t just completely fatigue my voice. Many of them would have me warm up by singing musical scales, starting low, and progressively singing higher by a half step with each pass of the exercise until I physically couldn’t go any higher without yelling, straining, or my voice cracking. Then, we’d move onto the next exercise doing the exact same thing on a different word or syllable combination. At some point, I realized that this would sort of be the equivalent of running in order to warm up for running. Singing scales or patterns can be great for developing a singer’s pitch and intonation, but focusing on smooth full range of motion exercises is a much better way actually warming you up and allowing your vocal range to grow larger over time. 

So what exactly is a warm-up? It does two things: 

1. It increases blood flow or circulation to the muscle groups you use while singing. This allows your voice to produce more strength and gain more flexibility as well as decrease the chances of vocal injury.  

2. A warm-up should provide stabilization and muscle memory for different ranges of your voice so that when it’s time to sing in those ranges in a real song, your body is prepped and already knows exactly how to produce those sounds in a healthy and sustainable way.

With that being said, we’ve put together a list of vocal exercises that are designed to help you progress vocally by knowing what to feel and what to aim for, how to use each set of exercises to gain maximum vocal growth and ensure that you are developing muscle memory so you can apply what you learn in the exercises to the songs you sing.

The end goal of these vocal exercises is not executing them perfectly, but rather doing them with as close to perfect technique as possible on a daily basis to build strength and flexibility. The physical growth that you see from day to day might be small, but over the course of weeks and months, those progressive enhancements will drastically transform your voice. With consistency, these exercises will lead you to an expanded vocal range and increased vocal power. Now, let's jump into those exercises and begin your journey of vocal growth.