Vocal Exercises to Avoid in Voice Training

Learn a vocal exercise to avoid when warming up your voice for singing with expert voice tips in this free online vocal coaching video clip.

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Video transcription

JAMES MENY: Okay. One of the most common exercises used by voice coaches or particular choir directors is the five tone scale on the vowel ah or AH. And in every choir I've ever been in to, every opera I've ever been to or show I've been to, I've seen this used commonly, which is nothing more than this: Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah. Now, for a beginning student or someone who hasn't had training that is the worst thing that you could possibly do unless you're using it for an assessment. So when people think that's training or warming you up, it's actually creating more problems than it's fixing. And the reason is, is that ah is a very open vowel. So there's a lot of room for mistake in there. You can sing ah sharp, you can sing it heavy, you can sing it light, you can sing it flat. There's all kinds of variations of ah. And if you go to a mixed\\ voice or speech level singing instructor, they're going to give you ah in the 1st lesson to find out where you'd crash. So it's not as an exercise to make you brilliant in your singing. It's to find out where the problems really lie because you can't hide anything in ah. If you do wide enough, what happens is, most people would get to this point in their scale for guys: Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, and they break. Or you'll see the strain: Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah. They don't know how to manage it.