Vocal warm-up practices and perceptions in vocalists: a pilot survey

Abstract

Vocal warm-up exercises are believed to contribute to the prevention of vocal fold injury in professional voice users. Professional singers and students of singing consider a regular vocal warm-up regimen essential. There is conflicting information in the vocal pedagogy literature about the most effective and widely used vocal warm-up exercises and the optimal frequency and duration of vocal warm-up sessions. The goal of this current study was to investigate the characteristics of vocal warm-up regimens in the singing community using a survey. One hundred seventeen participants completed the survey. Participants included voice students from undergraduate, masters, and doctoral music programs and professional singers. All participants reported using vocal warm-up prior to singing. Vocal cool-down was used following singing in 22.2% of the participants. The majority of participants (78.6%) used warm-up sessions of 5-20 minutes in duration. Despite using vocal warm-up, 25.6% of participants reported experiencing voice problems. The investigation of gender and education on frequency and duration of vocal warm-up sessions revealed that females warmed up significantly more frequently than males. There was no significant difference in duration of warm-up sessions between males and females. However, females tended to employ longer warm-up sessions than males. Education of the participants did not appear to have any significant effect on the vocal warm-up practices. The most commonly used singing warm-up exercises were ascending/descending 5-note scales, ascending/descending octave scales, legato arpeggios, and glissandi. Findings suggested a belief among singers that warming up improves voice quality and assists in prevention of vocal injury. Future studies are planned to investigate the effect of voice classification and singing styles on vocal warm-up practices.