Vocal Warm-Up Exercises: What Each One Does, and How to Do It

Warming up is the part of singing everyone agrees on and almost nobody explains. Singers are handed a lip trill and a siren and told to do them before they sing, and most do, without knowing what either one is for, which is why so many warm-ups are either too short to do anything or long enough to tire the voice before the real singing starts.

This guide explains what a warm-up is physically doing, walks through each kind of exercise and what it trains, and covers the two things most warm-up advice leaves out: what to do when the voice is tired or sick, and how to cool down afterward. Every exercise is demonstrated by one of our voice teachers, and every one of them can be done at home with no piano.

What a warm-up is actually doing

The vocal folds are two small bands of layered tissue, a muscle body under soft, pliable cover layers, moved by the muscles of the larynx around them. Cold, they are stiffer, they close less cleanly, and they need more air pressure to make a sound, which is why the first notes of the day feel effortful and a little rough. A warm-up increases blood flow to the folds and the muscles around them, gets the folds closing evenly along their length, coordinates the breath with the sound, and reminds the throat and jaw that they do not have to help.

It also does something less obvious: it moves the voice through its registers before a song asks it to. Asmi D. builds a whole warm-up around that idea. Lip trills first, to connect the breath to the sound, then an exercise for each of the three areas the video names: a “ya” pattern that finds the resonance of chest voice, an “oo” or “ah” five-note scale that opens head voice, and octave slides that cross the passaggio, the transition zone between the two, so the voice learns to pass through it without a bump. The audible flip an untrained voice makes there is what singers mean by the break. Fifteen minutes, and the whole instrument has been visited.

Skill video  ·  Opening Your Three Vocal Registers with Lip Trills

Asmi teaches voice on Tunelark. View Asmi’s profile

That is the shape of a good warm-up in general: gentle to demanding, low to high, each exercise asking a little more of the voice than the last. The sections below take the pieces one at a time.

Body and face first

Find Your Music Teacher

Most warm-up routines start at the lips. The better ones start a little further back, because the tongue and jaw are where singers most often hold tension, and a tense tongue makes every exercise after it harder.

Gabrielle G. calls the tongue the mafia of the mouth: it is involved in everything, and it is far bigger than it looks, rooted well down in the throat. Gabrielle’s stretches use a square of gauze to hold the tip while the tongue is pulled gently forward and to each side, with a little sound sent through at the same time. It looks odd and it works. The moment to pay attention to is when the tongue wants to pull back as the pitch goes up, because that retraction is the tension that will show up later in the high notes.

Skill video  ·  Tongue Stretches

Gabrielle teaches voice on Tunelark. View Gabrielle’s profile

Louise G. works on the same problem from the other side: getting the tongue to move without the jaw moving with it. The exercises are consonants, k and g and a “guy” and “gala” sequence, done with the hands on the cheeks so the jaw stays put and only the back of the tongue rises and falls. If the jaw cannot stay still through them, that is the tension the exercise is there to release.

Skill video  ·  Jaw and Tongue Release

Louise teaches voice on Tunelark. View Louise’s profile

Sarah R. uses the tongue trill, a rolled r released on a long sliding breath. Breathe in for four counts, suspend the breath with no gripping, then let the trill run until the air is gone. The trill is a test as much as a warm-up: it will not sustain if the tongue is tense or if the breath has crept up into the chest and shoulders, so it tells you both things at once.

Skill video  ·  Tongue Trills

Sarah teaches voice on Tunelark. View Sarah’s profile

Lip trills

Lip trills (also called lip bubbles or lip rolls) are one of the most widely taught warm-up exercises in singing, because they do so much at once. The buzzing lips partly block the air, which creates back pressure at the folds. That back pressure lets the folds vibrate with less effort, so a singer can work through the whole range, including the notes that feel hard, without the strain that open singing on those notes would produce. Lip trills also force the breath to stay steady, because the moment it wavers, the buzz stops.

Asmi’s step-by-step is the place to begin if the trill will not come: lips relaxed and loose in a slight pout, air released forward, and, if it helps, a fingertip at each corner of the mouth lifting the cheeks. Then the trill on a descending five-note pattern, one key at a time, without rushing. Expect the nose to itch the first few times. That is the vibration carrying forward into the bones and tissue of the face.

Skill video  ·  How to Do a Lip Trill

Asmi teaches voice on Tunelark. View Asmi’s profile

Once the trill is reliable, Sami S. uses it as a siren, sweeping from the bottom of the voice to the top and back, deliberately passing through chest voice and head voice. The reminder throughout is that the effort comes from low in the body: if a squeeze appears at the throat as the pitch climbs, relax the shoulders and jaw and send the work back down. Then the same trill on a structured pattern, moving up by half steps, and finally on an “ee” vowel, which brings the tongue forward and is the next step in difficulty.

Skill video  ·  Lip Trill

Sami teaches voice on Tunelark. View Sami’s profile

Sol L. shows where a lip roll can lead: a descending interval on the roll to smooth the voice, and then a short riff moved up by half steps, slow at first and faster as it becomes clean. That is the two ends of a warm-up in one video, the gentlest exercise and one of the most demanding.

Skill video  ·  Lip Roll + Riff/Run

Sol teaches voice on Tunelark. View Sol’s profile

Humming and the ng

Humming is gentle enough to use on a cold, tired or slightly strained voice, which makes it the safest starting point when a lip trill feels like too much. A closed mouth creates the same kind of back pressure as the trill, and the vibration sits forward, in the lips and the nose, which is where a resonant sound lives.

The ng, as in the end of “sung,” is the hum’s more useful cousin, and Jay H. makes a whole exercise of it. The back of the tongue seals against the soft palate while the tip of the tongue stays down behind the bottom front teeth, and the soft palate lowers so the sound comes out through the nose. Say the end of the word “sung” and hold it, and that is the shape. In it the folds settle into a position that is efficient and easy on the voice. Jay’s comparison is a thumb over the end of a hose: the same amount of water, focused, travels much further. The exercise is a five-note scale on ng, up by half steps and back down, kept light the whole way, with the rule that if a note is not comfortable you drop out and come back in when the scale returns to your range. Nine minutes long, and meant to be sung along with.

Skill video  ·  NG Exercise

Jay teaches voice and guitar on Tunelark. View Jay’s profile

The breath that drives all of these is its own subject, covered in Breath Support for Singers. Humming and the ng both belong to a family of exercises called semi-occluded vocal tract exercises, or SOVT, which Grace M. introduces here. Any exercise that partly closes the mouth, a lip trill, a hum, an ng, a straw, or Grace’s “puffer fish” with the cheeks full of air, counts. They all do the same thing: build pressure in the mouth so the folds can find their placement without being asked to close hard. Grace’s video pairs the puffer fish with the ng and shows how to take either one through scales, arpeggios or any pattern you like.

Skill video  ·  SOVT

Grace teaches voice on Tunelark. View Grace’s profile

Scales on vowels

With the voice warm from trills and humming, open vowels build resonance, range and consistency. Each vowel shapes the space above the folds differently, and moving through them on scales trains the voice to keep its placement while the color changes.

Liz T. uses a pattern sung to the words “I love to sing”: root, octave, fifth, third and home again, moving down and then up by half steps. Four words cover five notes: “sing” lands on the third and slides down to the root, so it is sung as si-ing. Two things to hold onto in it: the sound stays bright and forward rather than in the back of the throat, and a smile is part of the exercise, because lifting those muscles brightens the sound, which many teachers find helps a singer stop drifting flat.

Skill video  ·  I Love To Sing

Liz teaches voice on Tunelark. View Liz’s profile

Kelly G. works on the vowels themselves. Spoken English is full of half-vowels and slides, and singing them the way they are spoken tightens the throat. Kelly’s example is the word “myself.” The “my” is a diphthong, an ah that glides into an ee, so the way to sing it is to sustain the ah and close to the ee only at the very end of the note, then move on to the eh of “self.” Sing those vowels on their own first, then put the consonants back, and the word opens up.

Skill video  ·  Pure Vowels

Kelly teaches voice on Tunelark. View Kelly’s profile

Mikayla R. uses a staircase, a vowel scale with a second job. On an “aw,” with the jaw low and loose, the voice steps down four half steps and back up three in one breath, then moves to the next key. Half steps are unforgiving, because a small tuning error is audible immediately, so the exercise warms up the lower voice and trains the ear at the same time, which is why it also appears in How to Sing in Tune.

Skill video  ·  Staircase

Mikayla teaches voice on Tunelark. View Mikayla’s profile

The tendency to watch for in any vowel scale is the vowel spreading as the pitch goes up. That spread is one of the most common causes of throat tension, and it is one of the things a teacher corrects in real time that is hard to catch alone.

The siren

The siren, a slow, continuous slide from the bottom of the range to the top and back, is the exercise for the passaggio, where most untrained voices flip or tighten. Get to Know Your Voice explains the registers and the break; How to Expand Your Vocal Range Safely builds on the siren to widen the top. Done slowly, the siren teaches the voice to pass through that point rather than jump over it.

Samantha L. does it on the same ng, as quietly as possible. Quiet is the point: if there is a gap or a bump in the slide, the fix is less air and a softer sound, not more push, because the aim is to warm the whole instrument and make every transition smooth.

Skill video  ·  Siren Warm Up Exercise

Samantha teaches voice on Tunelark. View Samantha’s profile

Onset and staccato

Every note starts somehow, and how it starts is called the onset. A hard onset slams the folds together; a breathy onset lets air through before the sound arrives. The one to build is the gentle onset, where the folds come together at the same moment the air arrives.

Simona D. finds it through vocal fry, the light creaky sound the voice makes with almost no air. Start in the fry, then let the sound open smoothly into an “ah” with no push and no burst of air. Simona’s video makes the distinction audible: this, not this.

Skill video  ·  Soft Onset with Vocal Fry

Simona teaches voice on Tunelark. View Simona’s profile

Staccato exercises, short detached notes at a moderate speed, build agility and breath coordination and are a good way to wake a sluggish voice. Stephanie D. uses a “ya” pattern, thinking of the word “yucky,” to bring out the chest register, with staccato added to sharpen it, and a “who” going up the staff to invite the head voice in at the top.

Skill video  ·  Singing Exercises

Stephanie teaches voice on Tunelark. View Stephanie’s profile

When the voice is tired, sick or on the road

Most warm-up advice assumes a rested voice in a quiet room. The mornings that need a warm-up most are the other kind.

For a voice that has not sung or spoken all day, Francisca M. uses a one-minute reset: big sighing slides on an open vowel, up and over the top of the range, on any vowel or on a lip trill or tongue trill. Nothing is being perfected. The folds are being woken up.

Skill video  ·  Quick Vocal Warm Up to Wake Up a Tired Voice

Francisca teaches voice on Tunelark. View Francisca’s profile

For a breathy or thin voice, Gabby P. gargles. A small sip of plain water, the tongue out of the mouth, and octaves gargled rather than sung. The before-and-after in the video is the argument: the speaking voice drops in pitch and gains resonance immediately, because the throat has released and the voice has settled back to where it sits when nothing is gripping it. It costs nothing, needs only a water bottle, and works in a car, backstage, or before an audition.

Skill video  ·  Water Gargling

Gabby teaches voice on Tunelark. View Gabby’s profile

The daily care that keeps a voice out of that state is in Vocal Health for Singers. When you are actually sick, the rule most voice teachers give is the same: a head cold with a clear throat is fine to hum and trill through gently; a sore or swollen throat is a day off. Singing on swollen folds is how short illnesses become long problems.

Cooling down

Almost nobody teaches this, and Gabrielle’s view is that a cooldown can do as much for the voice as a warm-up, because it starts the recovery instead of leaving the voice where the last high note left it.

The principle is the reverse of the warm-up: light, slow, and working from the top of the range downward. Gabrielle’s three steps are hooty, bird-like “coo” slides from high to low; a gentle massage of the cheeks and jaw, working downward; and bubbles blown through a straw into a couple of inches of water on descending five-note patterns. A little vocal fry to finish settles the folds back together.

Skill video  ·  Vocal Cooldown

Gabrielle teaches voice on Tunelark. View Gabrielle’s profile

How long, how often, and in what order

Before a practice session, ten to fifteen minutes is enough, and five minutes is the floor on a light day. Before a performance, twenty to thirty, still starting gently. More than that tires the voice before the singing begins.

A workable daily routine, in the order the exercises above appear: a minute of tongue and jaw release, two or three minutes of lip trills through the range, a few minutes of ng or humming on five-note scales, vowel scales in the middle of the voice, a slow siren or two through the break, and a few staccato patterns to finish. Sirens and vowel work move up the voice gradually; nothing goes to the top of the range cold.

On a tired day, replace the middle of that routine with Francisca’s sighs and Gabby’s gargle, keep everything quiet, and stop early. On every day, spend two minutes cooling down when the singing is over. How the warm-up fits into the rest of a practice session is the subject of The Voice Practice Routine That Actually Keeps You Singing.

How to Find a Voice Teacher on Tunelark

A warm-up is the part of singing a teacher personalizes most. The exercises are the same everywhere; which ones your voice needs, in what order, and what to listen for while you do them is the part that changes from singer to singer. To get started:

1. Browse our teachers and filter for voice.

2. Read bios. Look for teachers who describe how they build technique, not only what they have performed.

3. Book a trial lesson with one whose approach makes sense to you.

4. In the trial, ask what your warm-up should be. The answer will be specific to what the teacher just heard, and it will tell you a great deal about how the lessons will run.

Most teachers in the videos take new students now, and each video links to the teacher’s profile.

Frequently Asked Questions

Looking for an online voice teacher? See our full Online Voice Lessons page for everything you need to know about getting started.

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About Jennifer Heath

I'm Jennifer Heath, VP at Tunelark and a lifelong singer. I joined the company in 2020 and oversee much of what makes Tunelark work for our students and our teachers. That includes hiring, training, and supporting our instructors, customer and student support, marketing, and the day-to-day operations of the business.

I started voice lessons at age 7, sang with professional choirs that toured internationally through my teens, and performed solo at competitions and community events across Texas before stepping away in my twenties to study other interests, including business management. I haven't performed professionally in years, but I'll happily take the microphone at a karaoke night. Music has been in me every day of my life. Being able to spend the last six years working inside an online music education company, while traveling the world full-time, has been a perfect fit.

I believe deeply that music belongs in every life. For the self-expression, the discipline, the comfort, and the simple joy of it.

The Tunelark blog is where we share what we've learned about online music lessons: how to choose an instrument and a teacher, what to expect from your first lesson, how the major platforms compare, and how to keep music going through the busier seasons of life. Practical, honest writing you can act on.