Depending on what we were doing that day, the longest warm up would always be what the main focus of the day would be. Our vocal warm up (speaking) would consist of connecting the body to the voice, so opening up our rib cages with breathing exercises and doing tongue twisters with a physical movement such as:
How much wood would a wood
chuck chuck,
if a wood chuck could chuck
wood?
For this twister we would move around the space clamping at the end of the phrase. Sometimes Tim would make us whisper it or project. This helps ground us in the space and connect our voice to our physicality which helps with character work. We also did a lot of exercises involving the plosive sounds to warm and strengthen our mouths. If I had to run my own theatre warm up session, I would definitely include the plosive exercise and a few tongue twisters because I feel as if these are the most effective when warming up the vocal folds ready to project. We did various tongue and facial warm ups to prepare our voices for rehearsals and singing. I found the strengthening of the tongue muscle the highest in utility because it is the area that I struggle with the most. I have noticed over these past week, with the combination of singing (which is another great technique to help improve your voice) that I have gained muscle in my mouth and have a wider space now, my vocal folds feel more open and awake and my voice clearer and more defined. I found the breathing exercises useful for my voice change for Eeyore as the voice I used was a lot deeper and breathier than my own, so honing and enhancing my breath quality really helped for this role and for my future career.
The dance warm up would involve stretching our muscles and warming up our bodies making sure they were ready to receive the choreography. We would move constantly for the duration of a few songs. I found this challenging at first but familiar as I dance regularly. As we had just done a vocal warm up then moved onto a physical one than back to a singing warm up, I found it quite hard to keep my breath intact but this was useful experience because during the pirate scene there is a dance break than we go back into the song so it was good to practice singing fully when tired or out of breath. The warm up did help because when it came to learning the routine's later, I felt awake and ready.
The singing warm up included humming up and down scales, singing tongue twisters and small lyrical scale songs to warm up our vocal range. A few of my favouites were the lyrical scale songs:
Phantom of the opera
Phantom of the op ar a
Phantom of the op ar a
Phantom of the opera
Phantom of the opera
Phantom of the op ar a!
1 2 3 4 5, 1 2 3 4 5,
1 2 3 4 5 4 3 2 1
These helped me gained confidence in my singing ability and strengthened my voice. My range has also improved over these past few weeks. Sometimes we would practice a song during a warm up or sing parts of well known songs in different accents to help develop our singing style. The warm up was vital to me because it prepared my un-used professional singing voice for the rehearsals without straining it. Also, as I mentioned before, the warm ups helped with my speaking voice as it became more connected and strong. I noticed at first that I could tell who was in musical theatre because they knew all the warm ups, but as the weeks progressed if I had just walked into the warm up I wouldn't have been able to tell who was from what strand because everyone was participating and working together. This was always the aim of this project; to not be able to tell which stand each student was from. I wasn't too confident in my singing before Ashcroft and I found the warm ups challenging to do at first but after a few rehearsals I had forgotten my fear and was singing to my full ability. The warm ups helped my self confidence because it was almost like a test run before we had to sing the scripted songs which enabled me to not feel shy when practicing and therefore I could give the songs my full attention and effort. I learned a lot from my fellow peers about how to do a singing warm up and now I feel ready to lead one myself.
Overall the warm ups really helped me improve my skills as a performer and are vital to any rehearsal. I feel ready now to be able to lead myself in my own warm up as I feel as if I have received a lot of exercises to help me chose the ones which are best suited to me.
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