Professional Vocal Warmup 1 - "Opening Up The Voice"

hi I'm Eric arsenal and welcome to your a approach daily vocal warmup I'm gonna make this intro very quick yes I am a professional vocal coach slash vocal health consultant you've seen my clients and televised vocal competitions you've seen them in lead roles on Broadway and they're signed to a plethora of major record labels and now I want to share with you some of the exact same techniques that I use with my professional clients this vocal warmup consists of four videos and every single video will have annotations on the side one of these sides with intro coordination and conditioning intro is just me telling you the basic idea what we're working on as well as the benefits of whatever the exercise or technique is for nations about how to actually do it as well as common pitfalls that mini vocalists encounter and ways to troubleshoot and fix those issues and coordination is the exercise itself that's when you're ready to just get right to it especially after a few days of practice you know what you want to do that's just what you go to you just want to you know condition your voice of course this video has the additional welcome part to it and after today you never have to watch it again my advice to you is that while it is tempting to go right to the conditioning part then know that you might be one of those who think well I know how to do it watch at least for the first week watch the coordination part every single day I want to make this very clear it's not enough to just go through the motions your form and technique is everything you would do much more good for your voice by doing five minutes of quality practice than 30 minutes of rushed hurried hurry um half way practice you know what I mean so pay attention to it form is everything final thoughts for this welcome number one do this every day it is daily yeah you want to go through the whole thing every day effectively before I get any emails about it number two this is good for any genre any either sex it doesn't matter if you sing rock music doesn't matter if you sing gospel music vocal warm-ups and vocal technique doesn't necessarily work that way so it doesn't matter if you guys I want to sing scream oh I want to sing blues still do the same thing this is about making your voice healthy reliable and that's pretty much that but uh and making it more powerful so keep that in mind so without further ado let's go on to the actual lesson part of the video oh and I almost forgot if you're interested in taking one on one lesson to myself or one of my associate coaches go to a approached comm for skype lessons or in-person lessons or find out when I'll be in your city or country with my book workshop tours okay that's it [Music] we're gonna start with a body warmup and I know that some vocalists that will seem strange because your vocal cords are here your diaphragms around here but the rest of your body muscles affect your vocal cords in your diaphragm immensely we've all experienced the tight throat we hate it we we know what it feels like to not have this helping us we hate that we know about tension in the shoulders we've got to release up here and engage down here and this video is going to help you to do that the body warm-up reduces strain it improves fullness in the upper range making belting a lot easier and it helps to eliminate vocal fatigue one more special note don't let the simplicity of these exercises fool you they are really easy to do they're really easy to give but before you just brush them off as being too simple or too silly try them once if you're in the privacy of your home nobody even has to know the worst case scenario you'll waste 5-10 minutes of your life and I'm sorry because you don't get it back but the truth is it works I promise you so do this stuff and then sing a little song that you've sung a billion times before and notice how different it feels as well as how much better it sounds it works don't be fooled by the weirdness welcome it welcome the weirdness it's yours use it we're gonna release some body tension starting with the throat okay so what I want you to do is yawn yes I know it can be hard to yawn on command but I want you to try you've been yawning all your life you know how to do this and you have the ability to trigger it it's just an ability that you may not have made use of because you may not have had to but I want you to try it now and as you yawn I want you to pay attention to the inside of your throat because you can keep you on and as I talk just yawn and pay attention that's stretching feeling it's not the throat notice how your airway and your throats mixtures completely releases this is not the way I want you to sing but just as a warm-up exercise you can really release a lot of tension up here and it can also help to release diaphragm of it so I want you to get this yarn and allow the throat space to just open up use it a few more times if you want if you want to pause the video you can not we can just keep going the other thing is yes we want this to be relaxed but we want this to engage when I say this I mean the lower abdominal muscles well low chest low abdominal muscles your sides your back ribcage muscles we want to feel it down here we don't want this to squeeze and tightened up but we do want this to reflexively do it it's not something I want you to force to happen is something I want you to allow to happen so for that I wanted it to a gentle a chisel chancel call so we're gonna coffee at leas if we're clearing our throats like and I want you to be aware of what happens that is muscular region you should feel some little contractions super gentle now not so gentle with where you can't feel it but just enough again you feel it we just reminding your body this is what I want and so what I want you to do now that we're moving on to some light gentle lip rolls I want you to focus on letting the throats face stay relaxed and allowing the body to work so throat is relaxed and the body gets to work a little bit we don't need this if you relax the shoulders if you relax the neck this will join in so let's start let's make some sound with it so what we're gonna do is a lip roll in case you're not familiar instead of ah we do we're now actually gonna even do any skills right now we're just gonna take a breath let it come out lip roll try it just just where it's comfortable no particular note you don't to match mine oh just a comfortable within your speaking voice range good now we're gonna work on teaching our bodies to make the sound without engaging the neck so you're gonna feel stupid in case you're new to these videos let me just say a lot of the stuff you're gonna do is stupid at least this house for us how it makes you look but it works and when we're done you're gonna be like oh that's amazing and so just just be stupid with me for now you'll reap the benefits I promise so I want you to shake your head from side to side like you're saying no I tell my clients just think like you're in a shampoo commercial be like we got botanicals and stuff in your hair and if your hair is this bouncy it's that gentle shake it's not stiff this gentle and I want you to lip roll with this I want comfortable and see if you feel these muscles jumping in just a little bit if it'll be more subtle than the COFF but you might feel gentle contractions around the abdomen the sides in the back I don't want you to force it but you allow it to happen good now let's play with the range a little bit we're gonna go from head voice down to chest voice so from this voice down to this voice so instead of ah we're gonna go try that really gentle way to wake up your range but I want you to add the head turn thing no it's like the petrous head rub your stomach thing but distract those neck muscles and one more time okay good you'll also get used to me randomly singing stuff um it happens and it's contagious anyway let's move on so you could do that longer if you want again if it feels good then you could do more it feels good well I get sued for using that a little bit over there Tony Tony Tony song I hope not um anyway so the next thing we're gonna go to is going from chest voice it's a head voice so coin from the bottom voice up into the top and this is normally where the stress and the pressure comes where people want to start to squeeze so I got a little cure for that we're gonna hunch our shoulders really high I know it looks crazy and they're just gonna let them flop and this is gonna simply disengage those muscles these muscles that want to try to stop you when you're going up because everything is connected if you start to tense here it's gonna cause a chain reaction of tension it's just going to stop everything so we're gonna lift lift and then so just from bottom to the top from chest voice up it's ahead boys it's like going uh-huh but we're doing it with a lip roll just try that with me while I'm talking so shoulders up and you should feel like this is nothing your voice moves in your upper body does not so when you lift up tighten up you know really good tight and then just release completely this let them plop so I'm not doing this I'm not making them come down no I'm tight and tight and tightening and then I just let go I feel that plop don't do this too much I don't want you to dislocate your shoulders but just let's do it one more time reach reach is that simple that simple make sure nobody's in front of you because if stuff gets on it's embarrassing okay so let's try that again lift lift lift good last one hip sockets your pelvic floor has more to do with your singing that a lot of singers are aware of and a lot of voice teachers give credit for we tend to think of the diaphragm is being like a stomach thing and the muscles of your abdomen do help control the diaphragm the muscle of your torso will help with the diaphragm a lot and helps to stabilize it and control it for singing um and the pelvic floor is a part of that torso muscle family that helps your diaphragm to do what it has to do so if we're tight in the hip sockets or in the knees it again causes the chain reaction of tightness so a simple solution is we're just gonna do a slight Bend so the same we did the shoulder drop and then going up we're gonna you're gonna kneel down so body goes down voice goes up almost like being in a ballet class only I might not be that graceful so let's do it again again starting from down and working our way on up that's all we're doing alright even if you're sounds weak even if your voice sounds like you're starting down here and then that's okay just keep practicing it make sure you don't squeeze this alright so again alright now we're gonna go from head voice to chest voice so we're gonna start up here and then work our way down here but we're still gonna bend down why because I don't want you to think of reaching up for high notes because it's a surefire way to clinch muscles let me brace ourselves behind us when we tighten up and then participation then we just we tighten up that's exactly we do I said it wrong we tighten up in anticipation I don't want you doing that I want you to think of releasing let's just so sink to the floor for the high notes Oh let your voice go down with your body and again it doesn't have to be that strong oh that's fine but with the lip roll oh why do I like adding lip rolls engages the diaphragm in a wonderful way and balances the pressure between the diaphragm the vocal cords it really teaches them to work together harmoniously very easily any of these exercises that we did feel free to do longer if you go to this video again just continue to do the particular exercise or release maneuver while I'm talking it's that simple if you want to spend longer on any of these feel free they're very gentle very easy to do um they teach your body very foundational things don't overlook the power of a yawn don't let the simplicity fool you a yawn is powerful a gentle cough to be aware of these muscles is powerful lip rolling and doing these weird movements powerful sing the song that you always sing like when I'm when you're done with this video sing as long as you always sing something that you're familiar with something that you know how you sound and you know how it normally feels and watch how different it sounds and feels just after doing this you might be surprised and after you do that then I'll see you in the next video

Channel: EricArceneaux

Views: 14,966,046

Rating: 4.9383192 out of 5

Keywords: Eric Arceneaux vocal warmup high notes how to sing professional

Id: Q5hS7eukUbQ

Length: 13min 58sec (838 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 15 2013