Vocal Health: Before Voicing – WARM UP Your Voice. After Voicing – WARM DOWN. Here’s How, by Dory Rigopoulos Kafoure

VOCAL HEALTH
Before Voicing – WARM UP Your Voice.
After Voicing – WARM DOWN. Here’s How …
February 23, 2015

By Dory Rigopoulos Kafoure, M.A., CCC-SLP

Speech Pathologist / Voice
Coach
/ Singing Rehab Specialist

  

Did you know
that voice over actors are VOCAL ATHLETES? You use your voice more and in more varied ways than the typical
everyday speaker.

Think of it this way: An athlete would not think of running a race before warming up his muscles
to protect him from injury and allow him to perform at his best. 

Warming up the voice is the same idea.

The other important point that we most often
overlook is to ‘warm-down’ – often known as cool-down.

After the athlete runs that race he doesn’t
just sit down. He walks to prevent
muscles from cramping and allow his heart to return to a resting heartbeat.

Warming down the voice follows the same premise. After a great deal of talking, singing or making
vocally demanding sounds the muscles of the voice as well as secondary muscles
need to release and return to neutral. 

If the muscles don’t return to neutral they tend to retain some of the
intensity of the effort that was used and the speaker may begin to compensate
with this new state of normal ensuing a road of bad habits.

 

A warm-up should include breathing and
loosening up the body along with variation of pitch and loudness.

To make it
easy, you can do some of these in the shower or driving in the car. This only takes 5 minutes.

Breathing

• Do some gentle shoulder rolls and side neck stretches.
• Reach for the
  ceiling one arm at a time to open the ribcage. Bend forward with arms down,
  pausing at different levels as you roll back up to inhale and exhale. Feel the
  ribs move out to the side and to the back.
• Let your lips flap loosely like a
  horse. If you increase the speed the lip
  flaps will turn into lip trills. You can vary lip trills by gliding up and down
  in pitch or by varying volume on one pitch.

Flexibility

• To limber up your voice use ‘v’ or ‘ng’ (like ‘ing’) to glide up and down in
  pitch.
• As you ascend in pitch don’t push. Think ‘soft’ the higher you go. 
• You can also hum using glides or simple songs. Just be sure you have relaxed your jaw and
  have a space between your back molars. This is so the tongue stays relaxed and doesn’t pull to the back of the
  throat.

Volume
Level

• For varying loudness use an ‘ee’ sound. Pick a comfortable
  note. Start off at a soft to medium
  loudness, increase to medium loud and then back to soft. 
• Saying, “m-hmm” will put you at your typical
  speaking pitch. Take the pitch a little
  higher and lower from your baseline and repeat.
• Again, when you get louder
  don’t squeeze at the throat. Use your
  abdominals.

Limbering
Up the Face

• Tongue twisters work well to limber up your tongue and lips.
• Quickly repeat ‘pah-tah-kah’ for 10 seconds keeping facial muscles loose. 
• Lick your lips in a circle or roll your tongue
  forward with your tongue tip lying behind the bottom teeth. 
• Hum while pretending to chew using
  exaggerated movements to relax mouth muscles.

   

A warm-down should begin where you ended
vocally and return to natural relaxed speech:

Speaking or Singing

• If you’re a speaker, then start a little higher
  than your regular speaking voice and glide down gently on ‘ooh’.
• If you’re a singer, then start on the pitches
  you ended on and glide down on ‘ooh’. 
• Follow with several rounds of counting out
  loud 1-10 or days of the week
• Repeat some of the lip trills, tongue stretches
  and chewing while humming from the warm-ups.

Also, do an awareness scan of your body and see what
feels out of balance. If it’s breathing,
do some slow breathing. If your body is tense, then shake your arms or legs.

ESTABLISH YOUR BASELINE

Finally, establish a baseline for your voice. Why is that useful?

Once you discover your
best voice ‘warm-up’ you will know what is normal for your voice on a good day.

For example, if you warm up your voice every day and today your voice sounds different, you
can start troubleshooting and resolve the problem before your gig. 

———————-
ABOUT DORY 

Dory Rigopoulos Kafoure is a speech pathologist, voice coach
and singing rehab specialist who helps actors and voice actors with
articulation (diction), breathing techniques, accent reduction and voice
improvement. Working in this field for 34 years, she is licensed and
has a Certificate of Clinical Competence (CCC), and has done extra study
and certification in the areas of voice “which is my passion and
specialty.” With basic training in articulation, language, voice and
stuttering, she is a Lessac Voice and Body Kinisensics Practitioner,
clinically trained in LMRVT (for resonant voice) and LSVT (for
Parkinson’s voice), trained in Estill Voice Treatment, and is currently
learning Vibrant Voice Technique.

Email: vocalbest@aol.com
Web: www.DoryTheVoiceCoach.com