5 Ways to Warm Up Your Voice and Expand Your Vocal Range

This post helps you get started, but it’s only the beginning. What would it feel like to finally reach your vocal potential and feel an actual transformation in your voice in 8 weeks? Come join the thousands of singers who have already transformed their voice and vocal health with the Cole Vocal Method™. Set your voice free in only 20 minutes a day with these transformative vocal techniques found only here! Click here to find out more.

5 Ways to Warm Up Your Voice and Expand Your Vocal Range

There are many parts and pieces to warming up your voice to expand and access more vocal range.

Accessing more range comes from the muscle patterning and breath control that you use. Whether you want to sing lower or higher, expanding the range has to do with good vocal technique practices and using the instrument to access more notes.

Warming up with methods that first decrease tension and then open up the voice is the key to accessing more range.

The Singer’s Gift Vocal Warmups are a set of warmups within the Cole Vocal Method that unlock the voice, decrease tension, and open up the range and tone for performance.

Click here to: Learn more about the Singers Gift Vocal Warmups
Click here to: Learn more about the Cole Vocal Method

Here’s a quick outline of the topics covered in today’s blog:  

• Expand Your Breath Capacity
• Open the Throat
• Reduce Accessory Muscle Constriction
• Access More Range 
• Increase Breath Control During Singing 

Let’s dive in!

1. Expand Your Breath Capacity

A key element in accessing more range has to do with expanding your breath capacity. When the breath is constricted, less air is available to support your voice and you’ll fall short in accessing range. 

Try this:  

• Wrap your hands around your lower 4-5 ribs on both sides.  
• Exhale fully squeezing the ribs.
• Breathe slowly only into the ribs avoiding lifting the chest. 
• This will help expand the intercostal muscles that constrict the ribs and limit the diaphragm movement from pulling air into the deeper triangles of the lungs where true breath support is. 
• Repeat 5 times inhaling for 10 counts and exhaling for 15 counts focusing on expanding the ribs sideways. 

This exercise overtime will expand your breath capacity giving your a better deeper quality of breath to support your voice and range. 

2. Open the Throat

One of the most important secrets to access more range is the preparation right before the note. 

When you go to sing and the throat is tight your range will be constricted.

Here is a way to open up the throat before you sing to access more range.

Try this:  

• Bring an imaginary glass to your lips as if to drink. 
• Notice how the throat slips down? 
• This is the motion you want at the top of your breath to happen naturally before you sing a phrase. This opens the throat prior to singing to access more range.

3. Reduce Accessory Muscle Constriction

Accessory muscles (also called compensatory muscles) can contrict your vocal instrument, limiting range. 

The “accessory” muscles are the muscles surrounding the vocal instrument, mainly the jaw, tongue, throat and neck muscles. 

When your vocal technique is not established, you will tend to grab these muscles to help produce sound, but this constricts the voice and limits the range. 

To experience releasing the “accessory” or “compensatory” muscles, sign up for my Better Voice Challenge where I walk you through the 8 CVM Release Sequences over 4-1 hour workshops. Learn more here. 

4. Access More Range

Another key to accessing more range is the using the right positions for the head, the chest, and the soft palate.

Try this:  

• Head position
• Chest position
• Soft palate lift 

To practice these positions and the soft palate flex inside the Singers Gift Vocal warmups. Learn more here.

5. Increase Breath Control During Singing

Now that you’ve deepened your breathing, opened your throat and aligned your body positions to access more range the final piece is how you use the air during singing. 

To improve your range, you need to control the breath during singing. When you push the air out the throat tightens and you lose all of your air on onset. 

Until you have control over their breath will end up limiting their range during singing. 

Try this:  

• Lift the chest up towards the chin. 
• Place your fingers at your chest in the center about 5″ down from the collarbones.
• Sing “Kah-ah-ah-ah-ah”
• At the moment of the first note, apply a little pressure on your chest to keep your chest raised and try not do not drop the chest at all as you sing.
• Repeat this  5-10 x to program this muscle patterning into your voice to manage your breath control to maintain access to your full range during singing.

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This post helps you get started, but it’s only the beginning. What would it feel like to finally reach your vocal potential and feel an actual transformation in your voice in 8 weeks? Come join the thousands of singers who have already transformed their voice and vocal health with the Cole Vocal Method™. Set your voice free in only 20 minutes a day with these transformative vocal techniques found only here! Click here to find out more. 

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