43. A simple daily voice warm-up

Welcome back! Let's kick off Season Three of the podcast with a practical voice warm-up you can use to prepare yourself for the stage or just the day.

Transcript

Yay! Welcome to season three of That Voice Podcast. And what better way to get us back in the swing than a good old fashioned voice warm up. Though if you know anything about me, you'd know old fashioned really isn't my style.

I'm Sally Prosser. You're listening to That Voice Podcast, no matter who you are or what you do, your voice matters. So unless you've sworn a lifetime vow of silence, this is the podcast for you.

If you'd like to speak with more confidence, you know, not be afraid to get out there. If you'd like to speak with more clarity, like forming your words beautifully. And if you'd like to speak with charisma and not bore the pants off people, unless that's your goal, then join My Six Week Voice Makeover and I'll get you sorted. Head to www.sallyprosser.com.au to find out more and join us. The next one kicks off on August 17th, 2020.

If you're listening after this date, then don't worry. Just head to the site and you can check out when the next one's happening. That's my six week voice makeover and my website.

Go and do that now, because hopefully this episode can still play in the background. We're up to episode one of season three, That Voice Podcast, which overall is episode 43. Can you believe it. I missed you guys. I was able to get some of my Sundays back, that's true, but I did miss you! In this episode to get us warmed up for a fantastic season we're going to warm up our voice. And as the title suggests, it's a simple daily voice warm-up. It won't take long and you can even do it in the shower. There are lots of different ways to warm up your voice.

Today we're doing what I like to call body, breath, buzz. Body breath, buzz three steps, three B's. All right. So the first one BODY you're going to check in with where you've got any tension. So some nice big shoulder rolls going backwards and then going forwards. Oh, I forgot to mention this is a bit of an interactive episode. So if you're around other people or on public transport, it could look a little weird if you're by yourself or even if you are around other people, then just go for it. Let's do this together. So big rolls of the shoulders, tilting your head from side to side, stretching out your neck. So what you want to do is check in with your body and feel where there's any tension and get rid of it. You might want to shake your legs. You might want to swing your arms.

Sometimes when I'm preparing for a live webinar or even a podcast, I look like I'm warming up to swim a swimming race. So moving your body, shoulders, neck, legs, a bit of twisting is also good. Whatever your body needs in that time. Remembering our body is our musical instrument. Our voice lives inside our body, which is our musical instrument. So we really want to set it up before we speak. So that's body.

Step number two is breath. Oxygen fuels your voice, oxygen powers your voice. So it's so important that we've got our fuel supply. It's a bit of a tongue twister, fuel supply, fuel supply. So that five times, all right, so you want your air to be low and deep, trace down the length of your ribs. I want you to find the lowest rib that you have and feel where your fingers are. That's where we want the air to go low and deep. Imagine you're breathing into your bottom, imagine your buttocks are your lungs. So we're drawing the air away from the shoulders, low and deep. And if you put your hands on your tummy, you should feel your tummy go out when you breathe in. And in when you breathe out, tummy goes out when you breathe in and in when you breathe out and you can try it on the sound shh. So breath in then - Shh. And you want to hold that SH as long as you can, till there's no more air left in your body. So we're practising the air coming in and the air going out. This is the fundamentals for a good voice. It's so important as well for controlling our nerves, getting the heart rate down, getting out of fight or flight. So body breath, we're not finished on breath just yet. The next thing I'd like you to do is let out a nice big sigh. First, just air. That may have sounded a bit creepy in your AirPods or wherever you're listening to this podcast. The next one is with more sound okay. Breath in. AHH. Put an H on the beginning. If you're feeling the air is not flowing, make it a HAA rather than an AHH.

So we're getting the air flowing and we're warming up the vocal cords, which brings us to buzz buzz, buzz. But that does not a technical term. Just how I like to refer to resonance or tone the buzzing vibrations of our voice. I've often talk about buzz and refer to a bee. But someone said to me that it's much more of a blowfly than a bee. So it's up to you. Blowfly, bee whatever you think. What we're after is nice, strong vocal vibrations that sit in the walls of our chest. So if you put one hand on your chest and this time when you do your sigh out, you're going to feel those vibrations in your chest. It's ah, nice. The next thing we're going to do is get some buzz happening in our lips.

Now, don't be freaked out by that. I do this all the time so I can do it quite easily. You do need to have moist lips to do this. So you might need a drink of water. And if your lips are tense, it's not going to work. If your lips are tense it isn't going to work. So what you want to do is relax your lips, channel your inner drunk donkey, right? Channel your inner drunk donkey and see your air is flowing out. Your vocal cords are vibrating. Your lips are relaxed. Also buzzing away. It's a great little voice warm-up.

So that's it. Body breath, buzz.

Body, get all of that tension out breath, take the air in low and deep and sigh out. And number three, buzz, get those vibrations sitting in the walls of your chest and those lips moving. So all together, it doesn't take long at all.

So right now I am rolling my shoulders, getting my body warmed up, breathing in low and deep. Ah, ah, and of course your warm-up will depend on how you're feeling. You know, it's like you have to do something first thing in the morning. You'll need to spend more time on it because your body's just waking up. But I'm recording this podcast. It's early afternoon and I've been teaching already this morning. And so I'm feeling quite warmed up. So before today I just did a couple of, and I was good to go. So listen to what your body needs, but that's the format simple as that body, breath and buzz.

Now I should mention that warm-up is available for free on my website. So if you go to www.sallyprosser.com.au you'll see a button at the top, right? That says free warmup. And this is what I go through just in video form. So if you want to see how funny I look doing it the go and grab the free warmup.

Thanks for listening to That Voice Podcast to get inside info on the episodes, as soon as they drop straight to your inbox, then leave your email at www.thatvoicepodcast.com