Congratulations on your first session.

This is a warm up sequence that you can use to help remember and practice the material from the first session. You can play it from the player or download it to have on your devices.   Remember to pause long enough to check for tension every now and then, stay hydrated, focus on moving through the material rather than perfecting things.   Ideally, you’ll use it 15-20 mins a few times a week, (4-6 times ideal; 3 times will still procure improvement). If there’s a particular thing you’re stuck on, just move on and make a note to ask me. Although you can in future expect to have the tools you need to solve particular problems, getting frustrated with something at the start often makes it harder to fix, so if something isn’t coming out right the way you intend, just move on.
Ideally, approach practice sessions with an attitude of exploration/discovery – to begin with – it doesn’t matter what it sounds like. We all want to sound good, but you will discover more, quicker, if you give yourself permission to explore freely and suspend judgement. The more you can accept whatever sounds come out, the more you will start discovering the full range of expression your voice is capable of.
Doing 15-30 mins here and there will set things in motion. The objective of the practice isn’t to sing anything by rote, but to begin developing a focus/awareness/physical understanding of what is happening-and you may feel this change quite quickly in the beginning. Of course, if you’re mega inspired, you’re allowed to sing a bit longer-but make sure you take a day off every week.
 Warm-ups.
-mmm, Ng or nn – use these sounds to buzz or hum as we did in the beginning of the session.
-aaaaaaaahh. Just make some sounds on aah, long exhalations that are nice and relaxing. Let the jaw and tongue be loose.
– ng sound like the last syllable of the word ’song’- over a slide, or five notes up and down, (again, you don’t need to worry too much about the notes at this stage-it’s more important that your awareness has a chance to develop and that you are tuning in to how it all feels and what is moving, what is releasing, where there is something that can relax or let go even more, etc.)
– lip rolls over five notes
 -Experiment going from breathy to connected and the other way around. In time you will need less and less concentration and this will be easier. This type of movement wakes up the fine muscles around the larynx and vocal cords and builds co-ordination.
-Another idea we want to start considering is the principle of less resistance=greater power. So everything we can do to reduce resistance and reduce compensatory activity of other muscles is good. Moving your head while singing an ‘aaah’ will release it from unnecessary muscle involvement and the cords will vibrate more freely.
There are many other skills that support your development as a singer -ear-training (which we can define as your mind’s ability to perceive, recall, recognise and organise pitches relative to one another) is really helpful and it’s good to start this at the same time as working with conditioning your vocal cords and releasing tension, material of this kind is available as an add on to your sessions.

 

Singing warm ups week 1

All work of this kind responds really well to training – and training that you undertake accounts for the final results far, far, far more than any notional idea of ‘natural talent’. You can build ‘natural talent’.