warm up
warm up and get ready to sing
Here I am, in my sunglasses, ready to help you warm-up your body and voice to sing. Are you ready to start work?
Here are my top tips for a successful warm-up that will help you sing your best.
Schedule
Begin by scheduling in the time to warm up and practice. Make sure you leave yourself enough time to fit in what you want to achieve - or change your practice goals for that day.
Make sure you know how many times you want to practise this week, or even just to warm up your voice. Too much or too little will affect your goals and your muscle memory.
Prepare your space
I can't concentrate in an untidy room. Maybe you don’t have this problem - but I like the room to be clean and tidy, so I have as few distractions as possible! This helps create a calm space to work and I always feel more relaxed about my work.
How are you?
Before singing, take a moment to check in with how you feel today. Do you have a headache? Are you getting over a cold? Maybe you ache from exercise? All these things may affect how you will warm up and practice. Make sure you are making realistic and safe goals for the voice you have woken up with and not overdoing it.
Stretch, and Connect
We want our voices to be produced from a warmed-up neutral body that has no tension, pain, pulled muscles, or illness. We want our whole body to feel energised and yet relaxed - so begin with your favourite stretches. Choose a few positions that you may know from yoga or pilates, like roll-downs and Downward Dog to focus your mind and body.
I ask my students to do the same stretch I do. Reach up to the ceiling and pause, then gently lower your arms back down, feeling your shoulder blades slide down their back. This with a few gentle back rotations really helps me with my shoulder tension. Be aware of your own body and what it needs today.
Start at the very beginning
Be like Maria in The Sound of Music, and begin with gentle exercises of a few notes, before working up to longer and more complicated exercises. The voice should be treated gently.
Expand
Once you have completed the gentle exercises you are ready to expand and sing higher, and lower. You want to warm-up beyond the lowest notes and highest notes of the pieces you are working on in your practise session.
Add emotions
Even though your scales and arpeggios may be without words, experiment with adding emotion and meaning. Sing a scale as though very happy, very sad, angry, in love. Spot how your voice changes. Do you have a favourite emotion? Is the scale easier in one of these emotions than the other?
Isolate
Finally, you might want to take a phrase from your pieces that needs technical work and work on it in isolation from the whole piece.
Or, you may have a favourite piece/part of a piece you sing really well and you feel helps ground your voice in the right place. You might find it useful singing this before heading into the main part of your practice.
I hope you’ve enjoyed these tips - which do you find useful? As always, feel free to comment below, or share with your friends.
food
Food for singers, advice on what not to eat, and some recipes to try
One of the greatest loves of my life is food. I love reading about it, growing it, making it, and of course eating it. This is not unusual among singers either! I have had part time jobs in cafes and restaurants to make some money to help pay for singing lessons - I’m sure you know or have been served by people working between music or acting jobs.
When I travel I love trying out new dishes and dream of coming home to recreate them, even if they never quite taste the same! I will greedily ask you what you ate on holiday, in a restaurant, or made for your dinner party.
This month which is often associated with summer holidays (for those of us in Europe), I thought it might be fun to talk about food and singing - what foods do famous singers eat? What is advised for singers to eat/avoid? And of course some recipes to try that are associated with some of our operatic heroes.
What should I avoid eating when singing?
Well, this escalated quickly - and the truth is… that there are no hard and fast rules! Know your own body, and respond to what works for you. There is no evidence that certain foods will be good or bad, only general advice linked to reflux and heartburn.
I recently ate ice cream just before singing, and it was delicious. Dairy is not an issue for me personally, but if you notice any extra phlegm that inhibits your singing, you might want to time it so you don’t have it right before singing. But don’t presume or deny yourself certain foods if they don’t cause you issues.
Reflux
Reflux can affect the quality of the voice, causing irritation and inflammation. There have been studies that link singing/professional singers and reflux, the link is not entirely clear, the linked study was with a small number of singers. You can read it here:
If you work with and are generally more aware of your body and small day-to-day differences, you may be sensitive to changes others may not notice.
If you are experiencing problems like waking with a scratchy throat, feeling burning in your throat, hoarse voice, bad breath, bloating/heartburn, you should speak to your pharmacist or doctor for advice.
Some of the causes of reflux can be:
Eating certain foods/drinks (coffee, tomatoes, fatty foods, alcohol, spicy food, chocolate)
Eating late at night
Certain medicines
Pregnancy
Smoking
Being overweight
Stress and Anxiety
So to try and reduce symptoms it is suggested you:
Lose Weight if overweight
Find ways to relax/destress
raise the head of your bed when asleep by a couple of inches to use gravity to help
Avoid food/drink that exacerbates your personal symptoms
Don’t smoke
Don’t drink alcohol
Wear clothes that are loose around your middle
You can find more information here:
Anecdotes
We’ve covered the science, we’ve discussed what should be sensible, so now we can enjoy the stories and the recipes!
It is said Pavarotti asked for three roast chickens to be available at all times where he sang. He was also famed for cooking certain pasta dishes for his friends for which there are recipes online
San Francisco opera published a recipe book called “What Aria Cooking” published by SF Opera Guild in 1974, with favourite recipes of the stars including Leontyne Price’s ‘Crabmeat Imperial Casserole’, and Tito Gobbi’s ‘Pasta alla Tito Gobbi’. I feel I need to hunt this down! There are several other cookbooks around with recipes from opera singers
Callas would collect recipes from famous cooks and hotels when she travelled, but was said to rarely if ever cook them. She ate mainly steak and salad to maintain her slimmer figure after her weight loss
Remember that what you eat will power you through your work - so balance the good and the not so good, and consult a personal trainer/nutritionalist if you wish specific personalised guidance to help you improve your fitness or lose weight.Always consult your doctor if you have any concerns and before making radical changes to your fitness and diet.I hope you enjoy trying one of the recipes below - a cocktail, pasta dish, and classic pudding for your enjoyment.
Please comment and let me know if you try one of them!
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1 and a 1/2 ounces of gin
1/2 and ounce of Dubonnet (the red version)
1/4 of an ounce of maraschino liqueur
Dash of orange bitters (optional)
Twist of orange or lemon peel, or slice of orange to garnish
Method:
Shake together the gin, Dubonnet, maraschino liqueur and bitters (if using) in a cocktail shaker with ice, until the cocktail is mixed and chilled.
Strain the mixture into your choice of glass, and garnish. Serve with a name drop of the last famous singer you made the drink for at one of your many soirées.
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This recipe is also called ‘pasta con le melanzane’ (pasta with aubergine/eggplant)
Serves 4
Ingredients:
2 Aubergines cut into pieces of about 3cm
1sp salt
4tbsp olive oil
1 small onion
2 cloves of garlic
pinch of chilli flakes
2 x 400g tins of chopped tomatoes
1 tsp sugar
350g spaghetti
small bunch of basil, shredded, plus extra to decorate
1 heaped tbsp capers
ricotta cheese or finely grated parmesan to serve
Method:
Add the salt to the aubergine chunks and set them in a colander over a bowl to remove excess moisture.
Heat 2 tbsp of oil in a casserole dish or saucepan. Fry the onion with a pinch of salt on a low heat for 10 minutes until soft but not coloured. Add the garlic and chilli for 1 minute, before adding the tomatoes and sugar. Bring to a simmer.
Cook uncovered for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Heat the oven to gas mark 7/220C fan/200 C.
Pat the aubergine dry with a clean tea towel/kitchen roll. Stir in the remaining 2 tbsp of oil, and spread it out on a baking tray and roast for 25-30 minutes until golden around the edges.
Meanwhile cook the pasta according to packet instructions, and reserve 100ml of the pasta water.
Stir the aubergine into the sauce with the basil and capers. Season to taste.
Stir the cooked pasta into the sauce, with some of the pasta water.
Divide between 4 bowls and top with ricotta/parmesan and extra basil for decoration.
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Serves 4
Ingredients:
Choose 4 ripe peaches, the best seasonal ripe peaches you can find.
200g Fresh raspberries
Lemon Juice (optional)
some sugar
100g icing sugar
Vanilla ice cream - home made or bought
Fresh almonds/flaked almonds to serve
Method:
Blanch the peaches for 2 seconds in boiling water, remove them with a slotted spoon and place in iced water for a few seconds. Peel them when cold.
Optional- to reduce the peaches browning, place them in water with a little lemon juice. This helps if you are preparing the dessert in advance.
Sprinkle the peaches with a little sugar, and place them in the fridge.
Puree 200g of raspberries and pass them through a fine sieve to remove the seeds. Mix with the icing sugar, and refrigerate.
When ready to serve, either prepare one large celebratory dish or plate into 4 bowls.
Add a bed of ice cream with the peach on top, covered in the raspberry sauce.
Use almond flakes to decorate - Escoffier suggest only fresh and in season, but shhhh, we don’t need to tell him!
Singing and Golf: what can we learn from other hobbies?
What singing tips can we learn from other hobbies and sports?
Recently we had a little spare time and decided to head to the Driving Range for the afternoon. I’m a terrible golfer and have not hit a ball for years, but it was fun to do something different, and we hope to go back more often.
I’ve picked up a few tips over the years listening to others who play, and watching golf on the tv. It got me thinking; are there any transferable pieces of advice that might also be helpful in singing?
I often have pupils who begin learning to sing with me tell me they know nothing at all about singing or how to use their body - but the truth is there are actually lots of similarities with other sports and hobbies that you could put into your singing practice.
Golf is a search for perfection, for balance. It’s about meditation and concentration. You have to use hand and brain.
Celine Dion
#1 Swing with less than 100% effort
Yes, this gets said a lot in singing. Sing comfortably within the limits of your voice. Singing at 100% is not only very effortful, it is likely to cause your voice to tire and and a handful of technical problems with your voice to occur.
#2 Play More Break
So, this is a little more convoluted. In golf, it means
the amount the ball moves left to right of a straight line in response to contours
NCG’s Golf glossary
In singing, we want the smooth legato line (latitudinal) to be mixed with feel of the voice being connected into the body (a longitudinal feel) in what is sometimes likened to a string player playing into the string, pressing through the bow.
#3 Work Hard on the Details
Singing is a wonderful, beautiful thing, that makes us feel great! But remember that mixing a little study, some exercises, and singing some repertoire outside the usual pieces you might pick can add a huge number of positives to your favourite songs.
#4 Use a Conservative Strategy
Just starting out on your vocal journey?… Put down ‘Queen of the Night’. Put down ‘Largo al factotum’… because you’ll never sing these arias?… no. It’s just not helpful to run before you can walk! It’s also likely to be less rewarding if you feel the piece you are singing is very hard work and full of technical things you aren’t yet doing.
#5 Practice Your Short Game More that your Full Swing
You know those high notes?…. yeah, they sound great! They feel great?… good! But they are rarely the most important notes in your voice, or the song. Don’t forget that you spend that majority of your time singing the other notes in your voice, and they need to be just as well sung.
I hope you’ve enjoyed these top 5, the full list I took them from is linked below, and there are definitely more comparisons!
Your singing teacher will enjoy guiding you through your lessons, happy golfing and happy singing!