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It’s time for another How To Warm Up video, and today we’re doing a very classic vocal warm-up involving a very easy to find prop: a straw!

Learn how using a smoothie or soda straw, or even a coffee stirrer can up the ante on your vocal warm up and teach you how to calibrate your airflow so you’re not overdoing it. It’s simple, highly effective, and a great way to get your vocal cords functioning optimally. So let’s do it, shall we?

Practice the Straws exercise...

Welcome to the How To Warm Up video series!! 

If you’re like: “Ummmm, Elissa, I’ve been watching these videos for a year…” then I know the welcome sounds weird. I’m welcoming you back though, because I recently got around to re-filming the introduction video! (As you may have noticed if you’ve been following the videos for a while, they’ve had a new look in the last six months. After getting feedback that the series was...

Today’s How To Warm Up video is quick, easy, and goofy as usual. Check out my favorite warm up sequence for the articulators – namely the lips, tongue, and jaw (and a little somethin’ somethin’ for the skull too because it feels good!). If you get really good at this one, you can probably do the whole thing in under a minute. In fact, I’d like to see you try (yes that’s actually a challenge – post a video on my facebook page if you’re...

Today’s How To Warm Up video is going to be useful for a lot of us… because I can’t remember the last time I encountered a human who said: “Wow! My shoulders, neck, and jaw are SO relaxed!!”

If you’re like the rest of us, then you too have tension in your shoulders, neck, and a jaw. And guess what my friend… that’s affecting your voice. So I highly recommend you do this simple sequence of three exercises once a day to undo those patterns of...

In today’s How To Warm Up video, I’m covering a breathing technique from yoga called Breath of Fire!!

Breath of fire, which is called kapalabhati in Sanskrit (that means skull-shining breath ) is used as a technique to move energy upward in the body, or make the coiled kundalini ‘snake’ begin to rise.

Breath of fire is practiced in and out through the nose, and even though we breathe through the mouth when we’re speaking or singing (certainly on the...

We’re back at the top of the loop of the How To Warm Up video series! So today we dive back in with an exercise about how to follow our Impulses. I love using this exercise as a way to get my creative juices flowing, become really present, and practice connecting impulse all the way into speaking. I like to call the exercise “Notice What’s in the Room.” Check out this simple and highly effective technique!

Check out the Impulse Warm-Up here:

It’s entirely...

Our How To Warm Up video is longer than usual today. Why? Because it’s one of the most important exercises I teach, and I think you deserve to understand it fully! The exercise is called “Release on the Inhalation” and it’s for your breathing. It will teach you how to take an easy breath, which is incredibly important for speaking or singing without excess effort. I could go on and on about how this exercise will transform your ability to perform with confidence, ease...

Have you heard of something called a glottal attack? It sounds violent, and in fact it can be for your vocal cords! A glottal attack (also called a glottal onset or glottal stop) is when you press your two vocal cords together firmly, and then explode them apart to begin making sound. It makes a sort of clicking or popping noise… Britney Spears does it at the beginning of the phrase when she says “Oh baby baby” in this song, and every time Michael Jackson...

Today’s warm up exercise is very powerful for connecting your impulses to your ability to express yourself. It’s a simple exercise that I call “notice what’s in the room,” and it’s a way to practice being more present and expressive. Since it pertains to the first step in the whole “How To Warm Up” sequence (revisit the intro video if you don’t know what I mean), it’s a fundamental exercise that I highly recommend...

So when I say stick your tongue out, I don’t mean in the bratty way. I mean that when you leave your tongue outside your mouth while you speak or sing, it helps you release the root of your tongue so you can articulate with more clarity and ease! 

Of course, the goofiness of the whole thing is simply an added bonus. So check out this week’s How To Warm Up video and practice leaving your tongue outside of your mouth. And just for fun… if you’ve got a good tongue...