Warm Up Routines Before a Choir Rehearsal

Why Ten Minutes Is Worth It

Most community choirs rehearse for two hours at most, often in a church hall with a piano that has seen better days and a room full of people who have come straight from work. It is tempting to launch straight into the first piece, particularly when the concert is only weeks away. Resist that urge. A short, well-chosen warm up does three things at once: it loosens the body, it wakes up the voice, and it tunes the ear to the sound you are about to make. Ten minutes is usually enough. Fifteen is generous. What matters is that the routine is consistent, so your voice learns what is coming and settles into it quickly.

A good warm up is not an athletic feat. It is a gentle invitation. Think of it as warming the engine rather than revving it.

Begin with Body and Breath

Before a single note, release the areas that hold tension. Shoulders creep upwards when we are concentrating, and a raised shoulder pulls the larynx into a less comfortable position.

• Shoulder rolls: five forwards, five backwards, slow and deliberate.
• Neck releases: let the head fall gently to one side, breathe, then the other. Never roll the head in a full circle.
• Jaw and face: massage the jaw hinge with your fingertips, then chew exaggeratedly a few times. Blow a raspberry to loosen the lips.
• Spine and ribs: stand tall, feet hip-width apart, and place your hands on your lower ribs. Breathe in through the nose for four counts, feeling the ribs widen, then out on a soft "sss" for six or eight.

That last exercise is the most useful of all. It teaches you to release breath steadily rather than dumping it all on the first word of a phrase. Do it four or five times, and keep the shoulders still while you do it.

Humming, Lip Trills and Sirens

Humming is the safest way to bring the vocal folds together, because it uses very little air and keeps the sound resonant rather than pressed.

Start on a comfortable pitch — roughly the note you would use to say "mm-hmm" in agreement — and hum gently with the lips closed and the teeth slightly apart. Feel the buzz in the face, not in the throat. Then slide the hum up and down a fifth, like a slow siren, keeping the volume even. Repeat five or six times, never pushing the top of the slide.

Lip trills come next. Blow air through relaxed lips to make a horse-like flutter, and add pitch once the flutter is steady. If trills are difficult, hum first and then let the lips buzz loosely on the same breath. The "ng" sound, as in "sing", works the same way and is excellent for choirs singing close harmony, because it encourages a blended, unified vowel.

Sirens and yawn-sighs follow: slide from your lowest comfortable note to your highest and back on a single breath, then sigh downwards from a high, light sound into a relaxed low one. This stretches the range without straining it.

Scales, Intervals and a Little Ear Training

Now the ear joins in. Keep everything on a neutral syllable such as "mee", "moo" or "no", and change the vowel occasionally so the choir is not practising only one shape.

• Five-note scales: up and down on doh-re-mi-fa-so-fa-mi-re-doh, moving up a semitone each time. Stop before the sound becomes thin or shouty.
• Descending scales: so-fa-mi-re-doh, then fa-mi-re-doh, then mi-re-doh. Descending patterns are harder to keep in tune, and most choirs need more of them.
• Intervals: sing a major third, a perfect fifth, then a minor third. Ask the choir to sing the lower note first, then find the upper one — this builds the inner hearing that part-singing depends on.
• Rounds: a simple four-bar round at a slow tempo pulls the group into listening to each other rather than to the piano.

If your choir uses recorded accompaniment or a starting pitch from a tuning fork or app, use it during the warm up too. Consistency of pitch reference saves a great deal of rehearsal time later.

Tuning the Warm Up to the Repertoire

This is where a warm up stops being generic and starts being useful. Spend the final few minutes working on the shapes your music actually requires.

If the programme opens with a Latin piece full of bright "ee" and "eh" vowels, warm up on those vowels and on crisp consonants. If you are singing a gospel number with a big chorus, work on a descending pattern that lands on the tonic so it feels secure. If the sopranos have a sustained high line, give them gentle high humming in short bursts. If the basses have a long low passage, let them hum down into their lower register without forcing.

A choir singing unaccompanied repertoire should spend more time on intonation exercises; one singing with a piano can afford a little more blend work. Two minutes of specific preparation is worth twenty minutes of general scales.

Finishing Well and Looking After Your Voice

End the warm up where you began — with a hum, a gentle sigh, and a slow breath. Then drink some water. Keep a bottle with you through the rehearsal and sip regularly; dry vocal folds tire quickly and are more prone to strain.

Avoid shouting over the post-rehearsal chatter in the pub, and don't clear your throat sharply — swallow or sip instead. If your voice feels tired the next morning, keep the following rehearsal's warm up shorter and lighter rather than skipping it altogether. A brief, kind routine before every rehearsal will do more for your singing than any amount of last-minute pushing, and it will help your choir find its collective sound far faster.