Transcript
Hi. I’m Anya Singleton. I’m going to talk to you about voice practice basics.
I think the smartest thing to think about when you go to sing is to think about your posture, your breathing, and to think about what you want to accomplish for the day. I think the easiest thing to do is to take a look in a mirror, if you have a mirror in your bedroom, and really look at your posture. The best way to do that is to look sideways. If I’m looking at myself sideways, I’m going to make sure I’m not doing this or doing this. The most common thing that we tend to do as people is to put the weight on the ball of the feet or on the front of the feet, so we either lean back or lean forward. What this does is it throws off your spine. You have to think of it as if you have your spine as a straight line, and if you were to make a little crimp in that and break the flow, then the air gets stuck.
An analogy I like to use is you’re in an elevator, and you think of your mouth as the top floor, and you think of your diaphragm as where you get on the elevator; if you were to crunch it or bring it forward, the air supply would be cut off in the middle. It would be like never being able to get to the top floor. Everybody wants to get to the penthouse, right? You want to think about keeping that nice and locked in.
Once you have your posture together, I think the nice thing to do for yourself is to just let yourself breathe, relax, get ready, and then to do some of the favorite warm-ups that you have. It’s important to note that everyone’s voice is different, and warm-ups are very individualized. I can give you a couple of examples of warm-ups that would work for me, but may not work for you, because you may have a different voice. You’ll get to the point where you have 3 or 4 warm-ups that really work for you, that you know you feel good about; they do the trick. I think the next thing is to really figure out what is the best warm-up for you, and use that when you’re prepping. I think the more you feel good about what you’re about to do and the more connected you are to who you are and to the breath, the better the singing’s going to be for you.
