VC Radio
Voice Coaches Radio #464 – Warm It Up!
Voice Coaches Radio. Everything voiceover. And welcome to this week's edition of Voice Coaches Radio. I am Josh Heller. Delighted to have you joining me as we are each and every week here from the mothership in Colony, New York at White Lake Music and Post. Hopefully everyone is doing well as we are just about through the month of January, which is crazy.
Actually, today, uh, January 29th is my half birthday. So thank you for asking. Appreciate that. It's my half birthday. So, uh, You know, I just thought I'd throw that out there. I don't know why I'm here at work. Should have a holiday for it. Imagine. But here we are. Here we are. So we're going to talk about today something, uh, something that I think is important.
It's about warming up, right? It's about warming up, getting ready for an audition, for a job, for just practice, right? Every time we, we step in front of the mic, every time we work, every time we practice, we want to make sure we're properly warmed up, right? Now, I'm not the most prolific athlete in the world.
I think we've established that. quite a bit. But even so, before I go for a run, before I work out, I'm absolutely warming up because if I don't, I'm going to be in trouble when we're done. That's for sure, right? It helps your performance, you know, not only while you're doing the activity, but again, it also helps your performance in recovering afterward, especially if you're doing like a long form read, something that's going to take a while, you want to make sure that your voice, just like any other muscle is properly warmed up.
So it is very important for vocal health, not only in getting a good products and making sure you have a good performance, but also in making sure that you're not doing any damage to your voice long term. All right. So we're going to go through some, some exercises that you can do, but I do want to tell you that if you go to voice coaches.
com to the website, right, go to voice coaches. com. You can go into the complimentary resources, eBooks and exercises. And in there, you're going to find a book called warmups and more. And that's going to go through a lot of the things we're going to talk about. today. We're going to kind of go through them quickly today because there was a bunch and we break it down into kind of three different things that we want to warm up with body, breath, and voice.
Okay. Body, breath, and voice. So the first is body. You want to make sure that you are loose, right? Your voice is not just an independent thing of itself, right? There's an entire, you know, an entire. system going on in place. We want to make sure the entire system is, uh, is working, you know, copacetic. Now, I do want to say when it comes to anything involving vocal behavior, especially warm ups and things like that, if you attempt and, uh, attempt this and have any kind of discomfort, stop.
Stop and make sure that you get that taken care of. Don't push through anything. If your voice is hurting, do not overuse it. Okay? So, Starting to warm up with the body, first thing you can do are some neck and shoulder rolls, just to kind of loosen up the neck a little bit. Right, it's going to be focused on, you know, the neck, the shoulders, the head.
You can do a face massage, um, tongue stretches, right, you're going to be using your tongue quite a bit. Tongue stretches. Fake yawning, where you're like, ehhhh, just kind of, you know, stretching out that jaw, and smiling. Right? Smiling helps loosen up some of the muscles in your face as well, and gets them ready.
And, you know, smiling's always a good thing. Smiling's my favorite. It's from Elf, I don't know if you guys saw that, but that's okay. So, that's for the body, so a few things you can do there just to start to warm up the body a little bit. Start to get a little bit more comfortable there. Then comes the breath, right?
We should be warming up the breath a little bit. First thing you want to do is just take some deep breaths. Take a few slow, deep breaths. Deep breaths, right? To make sure that the lungs are getting in that deep inhale, that deep exhale, deep breaths, also getting all that nice, fresh oxygen in there. It's going to help with nerves.
If you're nervous, right? It's going to help calm you down, going to help kind of center you a little bit as well. So certainly many, uh, uh, good benefits from that. You can do the lip trills where you try to make that B sound with your mouth closed, that's that type of feel, right? I don't know how that's going to sound on the, on the podcast, but you get it.
We were making that type of sound. rough. All right. So, and again, that's just warming up the lips, right? Then we're going to get to the voice, right? You can start out by humming, right? To loosen up the muscles, just
just to get everything going a little bit, get those resonators, move in to some vowel practice, right? You know, the A E I O and U. Well, you want to do a little bit of A e I. Ooo, write a little, i a . Lemme try that again. A e i o u I feel like the, um, I feel like the caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland, who you.
But I'm not, uh, smoking hookah right now, so I guess I'm not the Caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland. Um, but again, that can help, uh, start to get that going in well. And, uh, reading copy, right? Reading copy. Helping to get in there as well. That's a great thing to do. Then you can get into the tongue twisters, right?
To help kind of get everything going a little bit, right? Lots of benefits. Clarity, diction, strengthening the muscles that produce speech, right? These are great. It's a long, really good list of different types of tongue twisters on that website. Again, voicecoaches. com. Go to the warm ups and more, which is part of the e books and exercises where you can find some of these.
So you have some smaller ones, you know, things like, uh, sick, sticky, sick, bleh. Six sticky skeletons, easy for me to say. Red lorry, yellow lorry. Right? Witch, witch's witch. Rubber baby buggy bumpers. We've all done that one. Right? Things like that. You can get to some of the larger ones, if you're feeling, if you're feeling a little, uh, a little exciting.
Right? Six sleek swans swam swiftly southwards. Uh, a happy hippo hopped and hiccuped. Right? And then, we can get really into it if we want to challenge ourselves a little bit and do some, uh, some longer Uh, more, uh, more intense tongue twisters, right? Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager managing an imaginary menagerie.
Right? Ooh, I like that one. Or what about, um, Betty Botter bought some butter, but said the butter's bitter. If I put it in my batter, it will make my batter bitter. But a bit of better butter will make my bitter batter better. So she bought some better butter, better than the bitter butter. Put it in her bitter batter, made her bitter batter better.
So t'was better Betty Botter bought some better. That was fun, actually. That was kind of fun. Uh, this is the seash... She... The seash... She sells seashells on the seashore. I did so well on the Betty Botter and, and just crushed she sells seashells by the seashore. Or the Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
Uh, when I used to do, um, uh, singing in, in theater, when I used to do musical theater, we would do, um, you know, as, as one... Uh, as one blue bug bled blue black blood, the other black bug bled blue, um, things like that. So, so those are good, and they're, they're kind of fun, gotta be honest with you, they're, they're kind of fun to do as well.
So head over to the website, voicecoaches. com, again, you can find out more about us, but uh, you can also head into the, uh, warmups and tongue twisters, there's also some cool downs in there to do once you're done. And it goes over again, that vocal health we talked about, but it will go through those examples why we should do them, how they're beneficial and how they can help you.
Okay. And it has all those tongue twisters in there for you so you can, uh, have some fun with that. Right? Maybe it'll make you smile a little bit as well because it's amusing. And, you know, again, all of these are going to help kind of relax you a little bit too before you get started, especially if you're going into a job, you might be a little nervous, you might be a little uptight.
This can be a great way to kind of calm yourself down a little bit too. So great things to do, both beneficial for the voice itself, for the performance that you will give when you're actually using the voice. as well as for the health of it afterward, and just to kind of calm you down to make sure that you're in a better headspace when you get into it.
All right, so if you have any questions, anything you want us to discuss, let me know, josh at voicecoaches. com, that's my new email, josh at voicecoaches. com is my email, you can shoot me an email, let me know. Any topics you wanted Want us to discuss. Um, if you want to, uh, record some tongue twisters and lemme know how good you are, Adam, be happy to listen to those and maybe play them and laugh at them and you.
Um, but uh, but again, anything you want us to discuss, any questions that you might have, definitely let us, let us know. Shoot us a note, [email protected]. The best way to get in. Alright, but again, head over to the website voicecoaches. com to find out more about those warm ups and, uh, and why you should be doing them and how best to do them as well.
So thanks so much for tuning in with us this week on Voice Coaches Radio. Hopefully, don't worry, I warmed up before I did, uh, I did this podcast, so hopefully you're warming up and getting ready to do some practice on your own. Questions, comments, concerns, let us know, josh at voicecoaches. com, but until next time.
So long, everyone. Visit voicecoaches. com for more voiceover news and information.
Actually, today, uh, January 29th is my half birthday. So thank you for asking. Appreciate that. It's my half birthday. So, uh, You know, I just thought I'd throw that out there. I don't know why I'm here at work. Should have a holiday for it. Imagine. But here we are. Here we are. So we're going to talk about today something, uh, something that I think is important.
It's about warming up, right? It's about warming up, getting ready for an audition, for a job, for just practice, right? Every time we, we step in front of the mic, every time we work, every time we practice, we want to make sure we're properly warmed up, right? Now, I'm not the most prolific athlete in the world.
I think we've established that. quite a bit. But even so, before I go for a run, before I work out, I'm absolutely warming up because if I don't, I'm going to be in trouble when we're done. That's for sure, right? It helps your performance, you know, not only while you're doing the activity, but again, it also helps your performance in recovering afterward, especially if you're doing like a long form read, something that's going to take a while, you want to make sure that your voice, just like any other muscle is properly warmed up.
So it is very important for vocal health, not only in getting a good products and making sure you have a good performance, but also in making sure that you're not doing any damage to your voice long term. All right. So we're going to go through some, some exercises that you can do, but I do want to tell you that if you go to voice coaches.
com to the website, right, go to voice coaches. com. You can go into the complimentary resources, eBooks and exercises. And in there, you're going to find a book called warmups and more. And that's going to go through a lot of the things we're going to talk about. today. We're going to kind of go through them quickly today because there was a bunch and we break it down into kind of three different things that we want to warm up with body, breath, and voice.
Okay. Body, breath, and voice. So the first is body. You want to make sure that you are loose, right? Your voice is not just an independent thing of itself, right? There's an entire, you know, an entire. system going on in place. We want to make sure the entire system is, uh, is working, you know, copacetic. Now, I do want to say when it comes to anything involving vocal behavior, especially warm ups and things like that, if you attempt and, uh, attempt this and have any kind of discomfort, stop.
Stop and make sure that you get that taken care of. Don't push through anything. If your voice is hurting, do not overuse it. Okay? So, Starting to warm up with the body, first thing you can do are some neck and shoulder rolls, just to kind of loosen up the neck a little bit. Right, it's going to be focused on, you know, the neck, the shoulders, the head.
You can do a face massage, um, tongue stretches, right, you're going to be using your tongue quite a bit. Tongue stretches. Fake yawning, where you're like, ehhhh, just kind of, you know, stretching out that jaw, and smiling. Right? Smiling helps loosen up some of the muscles in your face as well, and gets them ready.
And, you know, smiling's always a good thing. Smiling's my favorite. It's from Elf, I don't know if you guys saw that, but that's okay. So, that's for the body, so a few things you can do there just to start to warm up the body a little bit. Start to get a little bit more comfortable there. Then comes the breath, right?
We should be warming up the breath a little bit. First thing you want to do is just take some deep breaths. Take a few slow, deep breaths. Deep breaths, right? To make sure that the lungs are getting in that deep inhale, that deep exhale, deep breaths, also getting all that nice, fresh oxygen in there. It's going to help with nerves.
If you're nervous, right? It's going to help calm you down, going to help kind of center you a little bit as well. So certainly many, uh, uh, good benefits from that. You can do the lip trills where you try to make that B sound with your mouth closed, that's that type of feel, right? I don't know how that's going to sound on the, on the podcast, but you get it.
We were making that type of sound. rough. All right. So, and again, that's just warming up the lips, right? Then we're going to get to the voice, right? You can start out by humming, right? To loosen up the muscles, just
just to get everything going a little bit, get those resonators, move in to some vowel practice, right? You know, the A E I O and U. Well, you want to do a little bit of A e I. Ooo, write a little, i a . Lemme try that again. A e i o u I feel like the, um, I feel like the caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland, who you.
But I'm not, uh, smoking hookah right now, so I guess I'm not the Caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland. Um, but again, that can help, uh, start to get that going in well. And, uh, reading copy, right? Reading copy. Helping to get in there as well. That's a great thing to do. Then you can get into the tongue twisters, right?
To help kind of get everything going a little bit, right? Lots of benefits. Clarity, diction, strengthening the muscles that produce speech, right? These are great. It's a long, really good list of different types of tongue twisters on that website. Again, voicecoaches. com. Go to the warm ups and more, which is part of the e books and exercises where you can find some of these.
So you have some smaller ones, you know, things like, uh, sick, sticky, sick, bleh. Six sticky skeletons, easy for me to say. Red lorry, yellow lorry. Right? Witch, witch's witch. Rubber baby buggy bumpers. We've all done that one. Right? Things like that. You can get to some of the larger ones, if you're feeling, if you're feeling a little, uh, a little exciting.
Right? Six sleek swans swam swiftly southwards. Uh, a happy hippo hopped and hiccuped. Right? And then, we can get really into it if we want to challenge ourselves a little bit and do some, uh, some longer Uh, more, uh, more intense tongue twisters, right? Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager managing an imaginary menagerie.
Right? Ooh, I like that one. Or what about, um, Betty Botter bought some butter, but said the butter's bitter. If I put it in my batter, it will make my batter bitter. But a bit of better butter will make my bitter batter better. So she bought some better butter, better than the bitter butter. Put it in her bitter batter, made her bitter batter better.
So t'was better Betty Botter bought some better. That was fun, actually. That was kind of fun. Uh, this is the seash... She... The seash... She sells seashells on the seashore. I did so well on the Betty Botter and, and just crushed she sells seashells by the seashore. Or the Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
Uh, when I used to do, um, uh, singing in, in theater, when I used to do musical theater, we would do, um, you know, as, as one... Uh, as one blue bug bled blue black blood, the other black bug bled blue, um, things like that. So, so those are good, and they're, they're kind of fun, gotta be honest with you, they're, they're kind of fun to do as well.
So head over to the website, voicecoaches. com, again, you can find out more about us, but uh, you can also head into the, uh, warmups and tongue twisters, there's also some cool downs in there to do once you're done. And it goes over again, that vocal health we talked about, but it will go through those examples why we should do them, how they're beneficial and how they can help you.
Okay. And it has all those tongue twisters in there for you so you can, uh, have some fun with that. Right? Maybe it'll make you smile a little bit as well because it's amusing. And, you know, again, all of these are going to help kind of relax you a little bit too before you get started, especially if you're going into a job, you might be a little nervous, you might be a little uptight.
This can be a great way to kind of calm yourself down a little bit too. So great things to do, both beneficial for the voice itself, for the performance that you will give when you're actually using the voice. as well as for the health of it afterward, and just to kind of calm you down to make sure that you're in a better headspace when you get into it.
All right, so if you have any questions, anything you want us to discuss, let me know, josh at voicecoaches. com, that's my new email, josh at voicecoaches. com is my email, you can shoot me an email, let me know. Any topics you wanted Want us to discuss. Um, if you want to, uh, record some tongue twisters and lemme know how good you are, Adam, be happy to listen to those and maybe play them and laugh at them and you.
Um, but uh, but again, anything you want us to discuss, any questions that you might have, definitely let us, let us know. Shoot us a note, [email protected]. The best way to get in. Alright, but again, head over to the website voicecoaches. com to find out more about those warm ups and, uh, and why you should be doing them and how best to do them as well.
So thanks so much for tuning in with us this week on Voice Coaches Radio. Hopefully, don't worry, I warmed up before I did, uh, I did this podcast, so hopefully you're warming up and getting ready to do some practice on your own. Questions, comments, concerns, let us know, josh at voicecoaches. com, but until next time.
So long, everyone. Visit voicecoaches. com for more voiceover news and information.
Before any strenuous physical activity, you no doubt will stretch and warm up to make sure that you are ready and to help prevent injuries. As it turns out, this also should be true before you perform voice over work! This week we go through some warmup exercises to help get you ready to read copy!
