How to Exercise Your Voice

If your profession requires you to speak or sing a lot, then you may find that your voice becomes tired very easily. By exercising your voice beforehand, you may be able to strengthen your speaking or singing voice. Warm up your voice by breathing deeply, moving your tongue around and pretending to chew. To strengthen your speaking or singing voice, trill your lips and practice saying tongue twisters. Solfèging and saying “Mm-mm” or “Ney ney ney” are also exercises you can use to strengthen your voice.

As one of the top vocal coaches in the country, I frequently hear: “What are your top vocal tips for singers?” Well, I could rattle off a long list, and yammer on for hours. (I’m a nerd’s nerd when it comes to vocals…) And I have a long list of favorite tricks up my sleeve from more than 20 years of coaching singers… But I love a challenge – so I pretended that I had only 5 minutes to tell you my top ones and so I wracked my brain to come up with the Top 5.

One of the things I am constantly teaching my private clients is that the voice is an instrument inside your body and you have to learn how to use it to get the most out of it. It’s very “physical” on the foundational level. To have a strong voice and to have vocal consistency there are certain things you have to know and do. There are some really simple methods you can use, right now, to get a great sound out of your instrument.

And most singers even professionals, unless they’ve trained, don’t know this stuff. Heck, most vocal coaches don’t know this stuff.

So I wanted to give them to you as if I was actually giving you a voice lesson, right here, right now. Stand in front of a mirror if you can, because I’m going to ask you to watch your jaw and your head position to control movement as you sing.