Vocal warm-up

How to use this vocal warm-up for singing

Tap the button and hold your lowest easy note, then your highest easy note, a few seconds each (the same check as the vocal range test). If you know your range, type it in instead. Pick 5, 10 or 15 minutes and press start. Every exercise is placed inside your range with a note to spare at each end, so a bass and a soprano get the same routine in different places. A video is sung in one key for a middle voice; here the key follows you.

Each exercise is listen, then sing: a piano-like tone plays the notes, so you need no piano, then they light up and you sing them back. The microphone only listens to show whether you're roughly on the note, in a few calm words. There is no score. Pause and skip are always there, and the screen stays on where the phone allows it. Five minutes is breathing, humming, lip trills, sirens, five-note scales and a cool-down; ten adds a chord on “nay” and a vowel scale; fifteen adds an octave leap when your range has room for one.

The routine, exercise by exercise

In this order: breath, then gentle closed sounds, then real notes, then back down. Five minutes leaves out nay, the vowels and the octave leap; ten adds nay and the vowels; fifteen adds the octave leap, when your range has room for it, and more rounds of everything.

1. Breathe. Stand loose, shoulders down. Breathe in low for four counts, so the belly moves and the chest stays still, then out on a quiet “sss” for eight.
2. Humming. Lips closed, teeth apart, a soft “mmm” on three notes up and back (1-2-3-2-1). Listen, then hum them back. A buzz in the lips and nose is good.
3. Lip trills. Loose lips, blow a “brrr” like a motorboat while you sing five notes up and down. If the lips stop, press your cheeks lightly with two fingers.
4. Sirens. Slide on “ng”, as at the end of “sing”, from low to high and back, like a quiet siren. Each one goes a little wider. If the voice flips at the top, let it.
5. Five-note scales. 1-2-3-4-5-4-3-2-1 on an open “ah”. Each round starts a little higher, a semitone or a few depending on how wide your range is, up to the top of your range; then the rounds come back down.
6. Nay-nay. A bright, slightly nasal “nay”, a twang like a witch's cackle, on the three notes of a major chord: low, middle, high, middle, low.
7. Mee-may-mah. Five notes down on one breath, one vowel each: “mee, may, mah, moh, moo”. Let the jaw drop on “mah” by itself.
8. Octave leap. Jump up an octave on “ee” and come back down through the chord. Let the top note float, don't reach for it.
9. Sighs. A relaxed sigh from high to low, like a yawn with a voice. Let it fall, don't steer it.
10. Hum down. Last one: hum five notes down, a little lower each round, until you're near your speaking voice.

Every exercise in plain steps: vocal warm-up exercises.

What a vocal warm-up does, and when to stop

It gets the breath, the jaw and tongue and the small muscles around the vocal folds moving before you ask anything of them, and it moves the voice through low and high so the change between chest voice and head voice is smoother when the song needs it. The order matters: closed sounds first, open vowels later, quiet before loud, the middle before the edges. What it can't do is add notes you don't have yet or fix a tired voice; that takes weeks of practice, or rest.

Pain, a scratch or a cough that starts mid-exercise means stop for today; a round that feels like reaching means skip it. Start at about half your speaking volume and let it grow gently; a warm-up never needs full voice. If your voice has been hoarse for more than three weeks, the NHS advice is to see a doctor; a warm-up is not a cure.

The 5, 10 and 15 minute vocal warm-up, in seconds

Roughly how long each exercise gets in each length, from the routine the page plays. Every exercise also starts with a few seconds of “Get ready”, so the totals come to about 5, 10 and 15 minutes.

*Only when your easy range spans more than an octave; otherwise fifteen minutes runs about thirteen.

Five minutes is enough before you sing at home or in the car. Ten is a proper daily routine or the start of a rehearsal, a choir or a lesson. Fifteen is the one before a gig or anything you'll sing for an hour. With two minutes and no phone: one minute of lip trills sliding up and down, one minute of “ng” sirens. Looking for a five-minute vocal warm-up PDF: the exercise names and the “5 min” column are the whole routine, and a screenshot works offline. At a piano or keyboard: play C-D-E-F-G-F-E-D-C from a note a few keys above your lowest easy note (C3 for most men, C4 for most women), sing it back, then start a semitone higher each round and come back down once it tightens.

Why lip trills, humming and “ng” come first

They are semi-occluded vocal tract exercises, SOVT for short: the mouth is partly closed, by the lips, the tongue or a straw. The air backs up a little above the vocal folds, and the folds vibrate with less effort and less pressing. The voice scientist Ingo Titze explained the mechanism (his 2006 paper on training with a semi-occluded vocal tract is the one teachers cite), and it is why so many teachers start with them: in Trinity College London's survey of singing teachers, closed-mouth exercises (humming, lip trills, sirens on “ng”) were one of the most popular answers. A buzzed “vvv” or “zzz” on a few notes works the same way, and so does singing through a drinking straw. Open vowels come after, once the voice moves easily.

“Nay” works the other way: twang narrows the space just above the vocal folds, so the voice gets brighter and carries without more push.

The vocal folds (vocal cords, never chords) are two small bands of muscle and tissue in the larynx. A warm-up doesn't stretch them like a hamstring. It gets them, the breath and the muscles that tilt and lengthen them working together at low effort before you sing at full effort.

Vocal warm-ups for female and male voices, alto to baritone

The exercises are the same for every voice; the place they sit is not. That's why videos come as “female vocal warm-up” and “male vocal warm-up”, or one each for alto and baritone. This page skips that choice: it takes your two notes and puts every round between them. If you warm up without it, start your first five-note scale a third to a fourth above your lowest easy note. The usual textbook ranges, and a comfortable first note:

Most voices fit no row exactly, and an untrained voice is often narrower at first. A man's speaking voice sits around A2 (110 Hz), a woman's around A3 (220 Hz), give or take a few notes, and that's a safe place to begin humming. Don't know your type? The voice type test takes the same two notes.

Female voices usually change gear first somewhere around E4 to F4, where chest voice gets heavy and the voice wants to lighten. Quiet sirens on “oo” or “ng” that slide back and forth across that spot smooth the change better than scales that stop at it. Male voices meet their main shift higher in their range: around C4 to D4 in a bass (a little lower in a very deep one), E♭4 to E4 in a baritone, F4 to G4 in a tenor (the usual teaching figures, after Richard Miller, The Structure of Singing, 1986). Let sirens flip into head voice or falsetto at the top instead of dragging chest voice up; that light top belongs in a man's warm-up too.

A vocal warm-up for high notes

A warm-up makes your top easier on the day. It doesn't add notes you haven't trained, and pushing for them cold is how voices get sore. What helps before a high song: lip trills and “ng” sirens that go a little higher each time, the octave leap on “ee” kept light, and narrower vowels on top (“oo” and “ee” before “ah”). Go quieter as you go higher, not louder, and stop a note before anything tightens. This page keeps every round a semitone inside your highest easy note and says so when a round reaches that far.

Vocal warm-ups for beginners

Five minutes, quiet, in the middle of the voice. Humming and lip trills are the easiest start because they don't depend on sounding good. Can't do a lip trill yet? Press your cheeks in with two fingers, roll an “r” on the tongue, or hum through a straw: all three do the same job. Don't judge the warm-up by how it sounds; judge it by whether singing feels easier afterwards. To find out more about your voice first, start with how to start singing.

Before a gig, a rehearsal or a choir

Start with the body: roll the shoulders back, let the jaw hang, stretch up, shake the hands out, and tilt the head gently side to side rather than rolling it hard backwards. Then the routine. Before a performance give it fifteen minutes or more and finish a little before you go on, so the voice waits warm, not tired.

For a choir, the routine works as a leader's plan: a minute of body, a minute of “sss” on counts, two of humming and sirens, three of five-note scales moving up a semitone on different vowels, a tongue twister, then one held chord to tune. This page reads one voice at a time, so a room of twenty is best led from a piano or a tone generator for the starting notes. Choirs often sing the five-note scale on solfège, “do re mi fa so”, which doubles as ear training.

Tongue twisters for diction, slowly first, then faster, then sung on one note and on a five-note scale: “red leather, yellow leather”, “unique New York”, “the tip of the tongue, the teeth, the lips”, “many men, many men, many, many, many men”. They wake the lips and tongue rather than the folds, so they go with the sung exercises, not instead of them.

Warming up your speaking voice, and the morning voice

Before a talk, a call or a class: hum “mm-hmm” the way you'd agree with someone; that lands near your natural speaking pitch. Then a few slides up and down on “ng”, lip trills, and two tongue twisters. Three to five minutes is plenty, and the 5-minute routine here works for speakers too. A clear voice comes less from volume than from steady breath under it and lips and tongue that finish the consonants.

In the morning the voice is lower and slower than it will be by noon. Give it longer on humming and lip trills before scales, and start lower than usual. A shower's steam is a good place for it.

Vocal warm-ups for kids and for older singers

Children's voices sit higher and tire sooner, so their warm-ups are short and playful: sirens drawn in the air with one finger, animal sounds, echoing a short tune. The singing games for kids and echo singing in Brumm Kids are made for that. Older singers do the same exercises as everyone; they need the gentle part longer, and a voice that sings through the week stays more flexible than one saved for Sunday.

Questions people ask about vocal warm-ups

What are the best vocal warm-ups?

The ones most teachers agree on: lip trills, humming, sirens on “ng” or “oo”, straw singing and buzzed “vvv” or “zzz”, then five-note scales and arpeggios on vowels. The order matters more than any one exercise: gentle and closed first, open and wide later.

What are 5 warm-up exercises?

Humming, lip trills, sirens, a five-note scale (1-2-3-4-5-4-3-2-1) and a yawn-sigh as cool-down. That's the five-minute routine on this page, with breathing in front and humming down at the end.

How long should a vocal warm-up be?

Five minutes at the least before casual singing, ten before a rehearsal, a choir or a lesson, fifteen to twenty before a performance. Longer is not better: a warm-up that tires the voice has gone too far.

Should I drink water before I sing?

Yes, but not for the reason people think. Water you drink never touches the vocal folds; it reaches them through the body over hours. So drink through the day, and sip during the warm-up because a dry mouth is uncomfortable. Room temperature is the easy choice.

Can I warm up with a cold or a sore throat?

If speaking is comfortable, hum lightly in the middle of your range and leave out the top. If it hurts to speak or the voice is gone, rest it; speech therapists usually advise against a forced whisper instead, because it isn't rest either.

Do I need a cool-down?

After a long rehearsal or a gig, two or three minutes helps the voice settle: sighs from high to low and humming down to your speaking pitch. The routine here ends that way.

What are the 8 vocal skills?

There's no standard list of eight. The skills most teachers name are breath, pitch, range, tone (resonance), moving between registers, diction, dynamics and expression. A warm-up touches the first six; the last two belong to songs.

What are the four vocal function exercises?

A voice therapy programme by Joseph Stemple and colleagues (1994), usually set by a speech-language therapist, not a warm-up: hold “ee” as long as you can on one note (F4 for women, F3 for men), glide from your lowest to your highest note on “knoll”, glide back down, then hold C, D, E, F and G (from middle C for women, an octave lower for men) on “ol”, each as long as you can.

At what age do singers peak?

There's no single age. The voice settles after puberty and keeps maturing through the twenties; heavier classical voices often reach full strength in their thirties or forties. From around sixty the folds slowly thin and lose some flexibility, and people who keep singing keep more of their voice.

Then sing something

When you're done, the middle of your range goes into Brumm as a note inside a club track with a beat and a bass. No account, no upload: the note travels inside the link. Hum a whole line there, and it becomes an instrument.

Your voice stays on your phone: the tool reads it in the browser and keeps nothing. How the site counts visits.