The Arts Unit Creative Teachers
The importance of vocal warm-ups
Why have warm-ups?
It is tempting to forego warm-ups and get straight into the rehearsal of repertoire, but while singing is a natural and spontaneous activity, the way we produce sounds when we sing is very different from how we talk, so this must be worked on.
Often students have learnt 'bad' vocal habits (reinforced by their everyday talking), which may inhibit the ability to produce an open, warm, uniform sound.
Warm-ups help students adopt 'good' default singing habits and focus.
In singing we:
breathe more deeply (into the diaphragm) and breathe deliberately
open our mouths wider (vertically and relaxed)
attempt to match the ensemble's overall vocal timbre (uniform vowels).
Getting your choir to blend is important. Your students should not only sing in tune and in time (and at an appropriate volume) but also produce the same vowel sounds on sustained notes.
The 5 pure vowel sounds
The 5 pure vowel sounds are:
a – ah (star)
e – eh (stair)
i – ih (steer)
o – orh (song)
u – ooh (sue), lips forward.
In singing, the body of a sustained note (the pitch and tone) is usually sung on one of these 5 pure vowel sounds.
To develop these vowel sounds during warm-ups, we often precede each vowel with an 'n', beginning each note with a gentle forward flick of the tongue opening up to an open, relaxed mouth:
a – nah
e – neh
i – nih
o – norh
u – nooh.
In-between vowels, the schwa and diphthongs
In-between vowels
There are slight variations of these pure vowel sounds that live in between. We can adjust the pure vowel sound to ensure the word sounds natural to the listener by slightly adjusting the tongue placement or mouth/throat opening. For example, feel the changes inside your mouth as you toggle between 'orh' (as in 'song') and 'awh' (as in 'saw') or 'ah' (as in 'star') and 'aah' (as in 'sat').
The schwa
The schwa is a neutral vowel sound – 'ehr' (for example, bird). The schwa has a rather closed sound. If the word 'the' is sung on a sustained note, it is often useful to pronounce it as 'thee (thih)' if it precedes a word beginning with a vowel or as 'thah' if preceding a consonant to give it a more open sound.
Diphthongs
Some vowel sounds contain a blend of 2 pure vowels. These are called diphthongs. A few examples of these include ah-ih (by), eh-ih (bay) and orh-ih (boy). Usually, on sustained notes, the singer should hold the first vowel sound of a diphthong and quickly flip to the second vowel just as the note ends.
Exceptions, the schwa and diphthongs
Duration: 12:28