Your vocal exercise schedule

[wtewalt]

I tend to think of my singing schedule like a gym workout, working different parts of the voice without overtraining in any specific area. What are the different kinds of vocal training schedules/programs/routines that you use and why?

[chamcham]

I like to use the vocal workout CD from Anne Peckham's "The Contemporary Singer: Elements of Vocal Technique". Anne Peckham is a faculty member at the Berklee College of Music.

Best 25 dollars I've ever spent on a singing book.

I do the workout 6 days a week (rest on the 7th day).

On Mon/Wed/Fri, I do the Vocal Warmup + Level 1 High Voice + Advanced High Voice workouts.

On Tue/Thu/Sat, I do the Vocal Warmup + Level 1 Low Voice + Advanced Low Voice workouts.

I like it because over time it keeps opening up areas of my voice I wasn't aware of.

It uses differents vowels,consonants, and rhythms. So it's a good all-around workout.

It is 30 minutes long.

When I'm done, I work on exercises from "Singing Exercises for dummies". Generally,

Every week, I do 2 chapters at a time. This adds about 7-10 minutes to my workout routine.

So, in total, 37 to 40 minutes of vocal exercises daily.

When I'm done, my voice feels totally relaxed and flexible.

Then I move right into singing songs and working on whatever

homework my voice teacher gave me.

For me, vocal workouts alone without practicing songs is not so good.

And practicing songs without a vocal workout is even worse.

So I do both.

I'm sure you can find lots of people that do one or the other and they

do just fine. So you just have to find what works for you.

Btw, here is Anne Peckham's workout (for actual details and explanations, buy the book)

Vocal Warmup (7 minutes)-----------------------

Descending Fifth, Liptrill-Slide

Fifth Slide + Octave Slide Liptrill + OO

Five-Note Descending Pattern

Major Triad pattern

Five-Note Descending Pattern

Skipping Thirds Pattern

Descending Thirds Pattern

Level 1 Workout for High/Low Voices (13 minutes)---------------------------------

Major/Minor Triplets

Three Five-Note Scales

Descending Intervals

Nine-Note Scale

Octave Arpeggio

Descending Triplets

Three, Five and Nine-Note Scales

Single Tone Pattern

Descending Sixteenth Pattern

Octave Arpeggio with Turn and Descending Scale

Legato-Staccato Pattern

Humpty Dumpty Etude

Advanced Workout for High/Low voices (10 minutes)---------------------------------

Octave Arpeggio with Added Seventh

Minor Pentatonic Pattern

Descending Triplets Octave

Descending Minor Pentatonic Pattern

Ascending Minor Pentatonic Pattern

Five, Nine, Eleven Scale with Descending Arpeggio

Minor Pentatonic Triplets

Minor Pentatonic Pattern

Minor Pattern

Pentatonic Sixteenths

Legato Arpeggio

Interval Steps

As for the actual time of day, I generally do it as soon as my roommate leaves.

So it's pretty random.

[chamcham]

Here is a series of videos of Michael Jackson doing vocal training over the phone in 1994 before a concert.

Seth Riggs was his vocal coach. There's another thread on this forum with these lessons combined into one

video, but that video was removed from Youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DExMNdStZU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMMSR4Ad14g

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9J3X37fF8I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vslgd37emqI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bX2T67jx_lg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZVYenmqdVs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOLpjcL41-E

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Zris4q2WOY

[wtewalt]

Thanks everyone these are great answers. I've listened to the michael jackson audio before, it's pretty great.

chamcham-

wow that was a super long response. Thanks! I'll look in to that singing book it sounds good.

[chamcham]

If you also want a book more about the technical aspects of singing, try "The Voice Book" by Kate Devore.

It's 11 dollars and change on Amazon.com. The author has rehabilitated many damaged voices

and has worked at many hospitals/medical centers around the country.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Voice-Book-Protecting-Improving/dp/1556528299/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1350349088&sr=8-10&keywords=the+voice+book

The nice thing is that they get into gory details (like physiology and what's going on with all the different muscles). Plus, most chapters have a list of recommended exercises at the end. So you're left with something

concrete to work on.

Here is a link to the table of contents:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/1556528299/ref=sib_dp_pop_toc?ie=UTF8&p=S006#reader-link

It goes far beyond singing and goes into things like speech training, preventing vocal injury and how to sing depending on the size of the room and audience.

All in less than 250 pages.

Books won't necessarily solve everything. Nothing will ever replace getting voice lessons.

But those are the 2 books I'd recommended if I only had to choose two.

[wtewalt]

Chamcham-

Thanks a lot for the recommendation. I enjoy looking into the science of singing so that book seems like a good route for me. I've been looking into a good book to get lately as I've never had any type of lessons or anything like that and am mostly self taught.

I'd say that my own personal singing schedule consists of a 5-6 day a week schedule for 45-60 min at a time. I try to warm up with lip bubbles for 2-3 minutes and then some light arpeggios starting on "ng" and working into all of the vowels. After that I tend to work in some more volume with some scales with "nays" and "mums" until my entire range feels together. After that I pretty much just move into singing working on particular phrases that give me trouble. My "schedule" right now basically changes from week to week as I learn more on this forum about what I should be doing. For instance, I just learned that I've been pushing my mixed voice up to E5 instead of moving into head voice so I've been trying to learn about and incorporate some head voice exercises.