Vocal Warm-Ups for Singers: 10 Best Exercises for Protecting Your Voice

Tyler Connaghan
Music producer, Singer
09/01/25 | Last modified: 11/18/25

Not only is warming up your voice good for you, but it’s also one of the most important elements of vocal health. If you’re preparing to sing a performance, record, or do some daily vocal warm-ups, a warm-up provides the foundation for healthy, expressive singing. Without a proper warm-up, you risk straining your cords, which can lead to long-term damage over time. 

In this guide, we’ll look at why vocal warm-ups are so important, give you the best warm-up exercises, explain how to approach them correctly, and provide a few tips and techniques used by professional singers. 

Why Vocal Warm Ups Are Important

First off, let’s look at a few of the things warming up actually does for your voice:

• Increases Blood Flow – Gently circulates blood to the vocal folds, helping them vibrate more efficiently.

• Engages Breath Support – Activates the diaphragm, intercostals, and core for a stronger, more controlled singing. 

• Lubricates the folds – Phonation (the act of making sound) creates natural hydration in your vocal cords. 

• Promotes Good Posture and Focus – Helps align your mind and body for singing.

What Happens If You Skip Your Warm-Up?

I wouldn’t recommend it for a few reasons:

• You run the risk of vocal strain, fatigue, or hoarseness

• Loss of vocal agility and control

• Tighter muscles around the larynx, which limit pitch range

• Higher chance of pushing or overcompensating 

With regular warm-ups as part of your vocal routine, you can enjoy more consistent tone and pitch, better endurance for long sets and rehearsals, and long-term injury prevention.

Best Vocal Warm-Ups for Singers

The following ten exercises can serve as a roadmap for how to warm up your voice. Follow them diligently and try to make them part of your everyday routine. 

Diaphragmatic Breathing

• Why It Works: Optimizes breath control and reduces upper body tension
• Cue: “Breathe low and wide, not up and shallow” 

Proper breath support is the foundation of good singing. It’s the only way we can sing powerfully with relaxed vocal musculature. 

Diaphragmatic or “stomach” breathing helps encourage deep inhalation that expands the ribs and activates the diaphragm rather than the chest or shoulders. This helps create a steady, reliable airstream while reducing unnecessary tension in the neck or upper body. 

When you practice this as part of your vocal warm-ups consistently, you start noticing better dynamic control and vocal freedom. 

Lip Trills (Bubbles)

• Why It Works: Balances subglottal pressure and builds vocal coordination
• Cue: Flutter up and down without pushing the sound

Lip trills are one of the best low-impact, semi-occluded exercises for gently engaging your vocal cords. The exercise uses a fluttering lip motion, which regulates airflow and pressure, so the vocal cords can vibrate efficiently without strain. 

Studies have found that consistent lip trill practice expands your maximum phonation time and increases the vocal range with better control and coordination. 

Humming for Resonance

• Why It Works: Activates resonance and supports vocal fold closure
• Cue: Feel the buzz in your face, not in your throat

Humming is a great way to gently reactivate your resonance without overloading with pressure. It engages the nasal cavities, encourages forward placement, and minimizes vocal fold collision. Research shows that humming can also improve vocal clarity, making it an ideal warm-up tool, especially at the very start of a warm-up routine. 

Straw Phonation (SOVT Exercise)

• Why It Works: Balances air pressure and smooths out transitions between registers
• Cue: Sing through the straw like it’s your vocal safety valve

Straw phonation falls under the umbrella of semi-occluded voice warm-ups. Singing through a straw generates gentle back pressure, which reduces vocal cord collision and lowers phonation threshold pressure. It promotes vocal tract resistance and coordination without strain, as supported by voice research. 

Articulation Drills (Jaw, Lips, Tongue)

• Why It Works: Preps the articulatory muscles and reduces extraneous tension
• Cue: Stretch the words, don’t smash them

Articulation exercises like tongue twisters or exaggerated consonants help wake up the facial muscles and reduce strain in the jaw, tongue, and lips. They help singers improve clarity while preventing excess tension from creeping into parts of the vocal mechanism indirectly.

By warming up the articulators, you avoid getting stuck in over-tightened patterns that can inhibit healthy phonation. 

Vowel-Based Scales

• Why It Works: Encourages consistency across the range and supports healthy registration
• Cue: Focus the sound forward, allowing vowels to ring rather than shout them

Vowel-focused scales help singers stretch their range and fine-tune their placement. By practicing scales on open vowels like “ah,” “eh,” “ee,” “oh,” and “oo,” you train both tone production and articulator coordination.

Scales encourage consistent airflow and resonance when done properly. According to research in the Journal of Voice, vowel modification can help reduce fatigue and improve high note production. 

Sirens or Glides

• Why It Works: Smooths out transitions between registers and builds vocal control across the entire range. 
• Cue: Glide like a siren without any bumps or breaks

Sirens or pitch glides are helpful for connecting the registers and smoothing out unwanted breaks. By gently sliding throughout your entire range, you train the muscles involved in pitch transition to work in sync. 

It’s one of the best vocal warm-ups for developing a fluid mixed voice. 

Science backs this up. Gradual pitch glides promote flexibility and reduce muscle tension, especially during the transition from chest to head voice. 

Jaw & Neck Relaxation Drills

• Why It Works: Loosens the muscles that interfere with breath flow and resonance. 
• Cue: Drop the jaw like a drawbridge and let it hang effortlessly.

Tension in the jaw, neck, or shoulders can severely limit vocal freedom, which is why it’s so important to stretch. Stick out your tongue, gently massage the jaw hinge behind your ears, and roll your shoulders. All of these things can help get rid of tension before you sing. 

According to research, tension in the extrinsic laryngeal muscles is a major contributor to vocal fatigue and hyperfunction. 

Gentle Scales on “NG” 

• Why It Works: Supports tone placement and resonance while minimizing tension in the throat
• Cue: Let it hum between your eyes

Singing on an “NG” sound (like at the end of “sing”) helps isolate resonance in the nasal and facial cavities, which teaches forward placement in singing. It encourages relaxation, proper cord closure, and a more focused tone, which is why voice teachers all over the world use this technique.

Staccato Onsets

• Why It Works: Prevents hard glottal attacks and develops clear onset control
• Cue: Imagine each onset as a popping bubble, soft and light

Staccato exercises, like short “ha ha ha” patterns on pitch, help coordinate breath and glottal onset. They’re one of the best exercises for strengthening your control over how vocal fold vibration begins, which promotes clean starts without breathiness or heaviness.

How Long Should a Vocal Warm-Up Take?

• Beginner Singers – Aim for around 10 to 15 minutes. Focus on breathwork, light resonance exercises, and basic scales. The goal here is to gently activate the vocal mechanism without overexerting it. 

• Intermediate and Advanced Singers – If you’re preparing for demanding repertoire or long vocal sessions, you might benefit from a 15- to 25-minute session. Focus on more technical work, such as agility drills, register transitions, and articulation exercises.

Regardless, quality beats quantity. A rushed 20-minute warm-up will always be less effective than a mindful 10-minute one. You’ll know you’re sufficiently warmed up when your voice feels:

• Clear and resonant

• Flexible and responsive

• Free from tension

What to Avoid in Vocal Warm-Ups

Even the best vocal warm-ups for singers can be undermined if you’re not paying attention. Here are a few pitfalls to steer clear of during your warm-up:

Going Too Hard Too Fast

Jumping straight into belting high notes or attempting fast runs before your voice is ready can shock the vocal folds. Think of it like sprinting without stretching. It’s a fast track to strain. 

Instead, start with gentle onset exercises or SOVTs. Ease into your upper range and build into more dynamic work. 

Tension in Posture

Locked knees, hunched shoulders, and a craned neck can limit breath support and introduce unwanted tension that can impact the voice.

The fix here is simple:

Maintain a tall, relaxed posture:

• Feet hip-width apart
• Knees soft, not locked
• Ribcage lifted
• Neck long and head balanced

Check your posture against a wall if needed. Good alignment can set you up for better breath support and freedom. Which leads me to…

Skipping Breath Focus

Grounding your breath is the very first thing you should do when singing. If not, you may end up compensating with the throat or jaw, which can lead to serious fatigue.

I recommend starting every warm-up with a few minutes of diaphragmatic breathing exercises to reinforce low, steady, and relaxed inhalation. Try exercises like lying flat with a book on your belly or doing sustained “sss” sounds to build awareness. 

Vocal Cool Downs Are Just As Important

Similar to the way you wouldn’t finish an intense workout and immediately sit down without stretching, you shouldn’t end a vocal session without a proper cool down. Vocal cool-downs help transition the voice from performance mode back to rest, reducing inflammation and promoting faster recovery. 

Here are some simple cool-down drills to try (keep it around 5-10 minutes total):

• Gentle Hums: Keep your lips closed and hum softly on a comfortable pitch. Aim for a relaxed, buzzy feeling.

• Descending Glides: Use a gentle “oo” or “ee” to slide from a high note to a low one. Keep it smooth and tension-free.

• Lip Trills on Descending Scales: Trill your lips on a five-note scale and ease it back down into a rested state.

• Light Straw Phonation: Sing a simple melody or scale through a straw into a glass of water to equalize pressure and soothe out any strain you might feel in your voice. 

How to Integrate Forbrain Into Your Warm-Up

Forbrain is a bone-conduction headset that gives singers real-time auditory feedback, which makes it an incredibly powerful tool for vocal warm-ups for singers. Here’s how to use it most effectively:

• Improve Pitch Feedback: With bone conduction, you can hear your pitch more clearly, allowing you to make real-time adjustments faster than if you were hearing your voice echo back at you in the room.

• Better Resonance Awareness: By highlighting the vibrations in your mask area, bone conduction helps you feel your tone placement.

• Sharpens Articulation: Fobrain can be used with tongue twisters and consonant exercises to dial in diction

In many ways, Forbrain is like a coach in your ears. It’s great for singers who practice alone, as it offers real-time cues and self-monitoring. Try doing your first round of warm-ups with Forbrain on, then repeat them without it and see how well it reinforces muscle memory.

Final Words

Warming up should never be thought of as optional.

Start every session off with proper breath support, posture, resonance, and balance vocal warm-ups, and you’ll quickly find how much it does for your vocal health and freedom. 

If you’re looking for extra feedback for your voice warm-ups, Forbrain can help you hear your voice better and build upon your good vocal habits in a more responsive way.

Remember, your voice is an instrument. Treat it with care and it’ll give you power, clarity, and longevity in the long run. 

References

• Elliot, N., Sundberg, J., & Gramming, P. (1995). What happens during vocal warm-up? Journal of Voice, 9(1), 37–44. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0892-1997(05)80221-8
• Pinto, C., & Hijleh, K. (2021). of Teachers of Singing Realizing the Benefits of SOVTEs: A Reflection on the Research. Journal of Singing, 77(3), 333–344. https://www.nats.org/_Library/JOS_On_Point/JOS_077_03_2021_333.pdf
• Yiu, E. M-L., & Ho, E. Y-Y. (2002). Short-term effect of humming on vocal quality. Asia Pacific Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing, 7(3), 123–137. https://doi.org/10.1179/136132802805576436
• Titze, I. R. (2006). Voice Training and Therapy With a Semi-Occluded Vocal Tract: Rationale and Scientific Underpinnings. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 49(2), 448–459. https://doi.org/10.1044/1092-4388(2006/035)
• Geneid, A., Rönkkö, M., Voutilainen, R., Airaksinen, L., Toskala, E., Alku, P., & Vilkman, E. (2012). Detecting Inaudible Vocal Organ Changes Through Glottal Inverse Filtering. Journal of Voice, 26(2), 154–163. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvoice.2011.02.005
• Miloro, K. V., Pearson, W. G., & Langmore, S. E. (2014). Effortful Pitch Glide: A Potential New Exercise Evaluated by Dynamic MRI. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 57(4), 1243–1250. https://doi.org/10.1044/2014_jslhr-s-13-0168
• Shembel, A. C., Morrison, R. A., Fetzer, D. T., Patterson‐Lachowicz, A., McDowell, S., Comstock, J. C., & Mau, T. (2023). Extrinsic Laryngeal Muscle Tension in Primary Muscle Tension Dysphonia with Shear Wave Elastography. The Laryngoscope, 133(12), 3482–3491. https://doi.org/10.1002/lary.30830