Try These Deep Breathing and Vocal Exercises!

Here are some examples of some exercises you can try!

Diaphragmatic Breathing (Strengthens diaphragm for optimal breath support):

Lie on back

1. Inhale, feel belly expand

2. Pause

3. Tighten your abs to exhale

4. Repeat 5-10 times

Humming (Loosens vocal cords and improves breathing)

Relax your body and facial muscles

1. Place your tongue behind your front bottom teeth

2. Produce a “hmmm” sound with your lips closed and teeth spread.

3. Hum up and down the scales or along to a song.

Lip Trills (loosens the throat and strengthens facial muscles)

Place your fingers on the corners of your mouth.

1. Slowly blow air out through your lips while simultaneously contracting and releasing these muscles with each breath. This will produce a “trilling” sound as you exhale.

2. Repeat this exercise until you feel your face become warmer and more relaxed.
   As you begin to feel comfortable with this exercise, try to add a hum to the trill. This will give your voice a richer tone and vibrato. You can also try to change the pitch with each trill, going up and down the scale.

Siren Exercise (Stretches vocal cords to warm up range)

To begin, make a continuous “ooh” sound.

1. Hold this sound for about 5 seconds before gradually go up to the highest note you can comfortably reach.

2. Then, scale back down to the original “ooh” sound.

Vowel Exercise (Warms up voice and improves breath support. Relieves mouth tension)

Begin by giving the long “o” sound as you normally would.

1. Stretch the “o” sound out, making it last about 10 seconds.

2. Repeat this exercise with the other vowels.

3. Be sure to adjust the length of each sound according to your breath control before you start singing.

Solfege and Scale Exercise (Helps memorize scales and improve vocal accuracy)

Solfege is a musical system that assigns a unique syllable to all seven major and minor scales notes. These syllables are Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Ti, Do.

1. Begin by singing Do, Re, Mi and continuing up the scale until you reach Ti.

2. After reaching Ti, go back down the scale from there until you hit Do again.

3. Sing each note as accurately as possible, focusing on correct pitch placement and maintaining a consistent rhythm throughout your singing.

4. If you make a mistake, start over from the beginning and continue practicing until you can sing each note accurately and with ease.