At drama school, the idea of warming up the voice and body was very normal. Before that, I think I’d only heard of warming up in the context of sports.
There is a bit of a belief sometimes that if someone is warming up they aren’t good enough to just do the thing.
It would be great if we didn’t believe that.
Actors warm up to free and flex their voice because they are about to use it.
The reason I think we should all have voice warm ups is because we all use our voices to do things in the world. Sure it’s not in the context of a performance, but we still use it.
Your voice warm up doesn’t need to be fancy. Here’s a really easy way to warm your voice up:
Step 1: Choose your favourite song
Step 2: Do a lip trill along with your song. Follow the melody as precisely as you can.
There you go- you’ve warmed your voice up!