Matt Posted May 19, 2011 Share Posted May 19, 2011 Took a class in drama/speech today, in preparation for a lecture. He was doing very basic exercises with us, beginning with the whole lying on the floor to relax stuff. I was thinking that this is very simplistic stuff, but I kept quiet and did the exercises. Then it was projecting VVVV and ZZZZ etc at the opposite wall. Still very basic, but I noticed that the warm up was helping. The other participants weren't quite getting the hang of things, blowing through open vocal folds etc, which demonstrated that my theoretical knowledge, and my very sporadic and occasional vocalizations, were giving me a head start on them. Finally, we went out into the large university building, and we stood at different places about 20 yards from each other and read aloud from a play. Since my voice had shown to be the strongest while we were in the smaller room, I was stood on a balcony the furthest away. My voice was huge! I never get the chance to be loud and Im always lazy with warm ups, so this opportunity to whack away was exciting. I was booming away so loudly, lecturers were coming out of the seminar rooms and complimenting us. Huge as it was, I still had quite a bit left if I wanted, and without the slightest strain. My chords were buzzing away, my head was resonating like a church bell and I felt I could almost have shattered windows. But what a difference doing a proper warm up makes! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VideoHere Posted May 19, 2011 Share Posted May 19, 2011 matt, what specifically do you warm up with? the bubbles and all that? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Posted May 19, 2011 Author Share Posted May 19, 2011 we started off with relaxation, clenching/relaxing different muscles around the body. Then breathing lying down. Make sure chest wasnt rising. Then breathing standing up, hands on diaphragm, making sure sides were moving out. Then exhaling on a voiceless HHHHHHHHHHHH Then exhaling with tone on ah, oh, oooh, eh, ay Then clenching facial muscles and relaxing, including tongue curling and 'fluttering the tongue'. Then plosive consonants, voiceless ones first, p, t etc Then voicing them, b, d etc Bit of lip trills here Then MMMMM and NNNNNN standing on all four with face pointing towards the ground to feel resonance Then vvvvvvvvvvvvv zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz Then all of those consonants and vowels loudly at the opposite wall That was pretty much it, but we spent maybe 40 mins doing all those warm-ups. Then reading text loudly from a play towards each other across a room Then reading the same text in the much larger aula. Nothing magic at all, but a complete warm up without rushing anything. I was so warmed up, it felt like my volume was without limit. The only volume limit was my mental volume button to set an appropriate volume level. It also felt like if I took lessons seriously and regularly, I could do some serious singing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Posted May 19, 2011 Author Share Posted May 19, 2011 Having spent a little time on twang recently gave me some extremely useful, practical knowledge, btw. Listening to the others, it was immediately obvious how much a lack of it was causing them problems and how important it was for me to keep tight vocal folds Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VideoHere Posted May 19, 2011 Share Posted May 19, 2011 that's pretty cool matt, thanks for sharing.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Posted May 19, 2011 Author Share Posted May 19, 2011 It was a lot of fun! I was seriously hitting Dio roar volume, (though, of course, not his range). And that power wasnt a physical effort, it was just a mental decision what volume I wanted. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ronws Posted May 20, 2011 Share Posted May 20, 2011 It was a lot of fun! I was seriously hitting Dio roar volume, (though, of course, not his range). And that power wasnt a physical effort, it was just a mental decision what volume I wanted. Singing is mental. All you have to do is get out of the way of yourself. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Posted May 20, 2011 Author Share Posted May 20, 2011 True. What happened here is everything got nicely aligned with a proper warm up, and then the body just did what the mind wanted it to do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chillwynston Posted May 20, 2011 Share Posted May 20, 2011 Its amazing isnt it, when your voice is warmed up, it feels really loose and elastic.. I need to warm up a lot due to allergies, the difference between a non warmed up voice (cracky, croaky and dry) to a mega warm voice (open, rich, eleastic) is much like any muscle.. Ha, good for you, you realised what you can do with it, now go make millions!!! :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VideoHere Posted May 20, 2011 Share Posted May 20, 2011 True. What happened here is everything got nicely aligned with a proper warm up, and then the body just did what the mind wanted it to do. warming up can sometimes take a lot longer than you want it to, and i gotta learn not to rush it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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