Top 5 ways to get your voice ready to sing again
We asked our resident vocal coach, Hayley Shay from Let’s Act, for her top five tips for getting back into singing after having a year or two away from rehearsals.
1. Breathing
Breathing is very important when singing as you need to sustain notes and also keep supported so you are not causing any vocal strain! Good exercises to do for this is to firstly making sure we are using intercostal diaphragmatic breathing (Expanding the rib cage outwards to ensure maximum space and capacity). Place your hands just below your rib cage and breath. When breathing, look at your hands to see if they are moving out when breathing in and moving in when breathing out.
2. Warming up
A warm up is essential to get your voice ready to sing! Lots of warm ups are available on YouTube! I would suggest scales on a hum to start with to increase internal resonance which really helps you find your voice and arpeggios are fabulous with leaps and transitions from your head voice to your chest voice.
3. Sirening
If you haven’t sung in a while, you may find that you have lost some of your higher and lower range. This is natural as your voice needs to become adjusted again. Sirening is a fabulous way to improve your vocal range and works fabulous as a quick warm up! Just as it sounds, you are going to move from the bottom of range to the top of your range on a ‘ng’ sound. You have free reign to play around with all different types of notes! This exercise is fabulous for transitioning from the head to chest voice also!
4. Don’t push yourself
As a performer, it is easy to push our vocals to perform the song. This is not good for you if you haven’t sung in a while. Keep yourself in a relaxed state and don’t push the voice too hard otherwise you may cause damage to your vocal chords! Ease into it and enjoy it!
5. Enjoy yourself and have fun!
Don’t get nervous if you haven’t sung for a while! You will be surprised how your voice picks up! Just have an amazing sing song and enjoy yourself!!!
Hayley Shay, DSP Committee Member
Hayley Shay is a Singing and Acting Teacher and Admin Assistant at Let’s Act Drama School. She also teaches private singing lessons, ranging from Grade 1 to Diploma, and has a 100% pass rate.