Are warm ups important?

 

I have now changed my inquiry idea completely and am so much happier about it! I'm still not crystal clear on the specifics of it or what I'm going to name it on the MORE form or when  I have to get specific by (soooo many questions!) but here's what I'm curious about.

Vocal health!

As someone who trained in musical theatre and who is getting more and more into voice over over the past two years, this is a huge area of interest to me. If I can't maintain the pipes properly, it might be a short lived career!

I know this is quite a broad starting point, but there's a couple of avenues I'm interested in exploring.

How do we look after our voices?

The first thing I'm majorly curious about is how do professional actors/singers maintain their voices?  Obviously there's training. We learn different warm ups and technique and how to use our voices. I'm not sure if anyone else had a similar experience when training, but I had a lot of different singing teachers, and they all had completely different approaches. Only one of my teachers really zoned in on vocal health, the dos and don'ts, vocal rest, steaming, avoiding alcohol, the dangers of dairy before a show! I've held onto this knowledge and always try to be responsible with my voice, boring as it is! 

But after leaving the little safety bubble of training, putting this knowledge into practice isn't always so straight forward. It's going to sound ridiculous, because I'm a grown woman with a mind of my own, but other people's attitudes towards vocal health began to rub off on me! I did an eight month long theatre in education tour and whilst there, the other actors I travelled with were not big into warm ups. One of my fellow actors used to roll her eyes when I would start humming scales while putting up the set. I tried to ignore this but after a few weeks of this routine I gradually warmed up less and less. A couple of quick shoulder rolls and siren maybe. I had thought I was doing everything right but the fact that I was on my own with the warm up and the hilarious eye rolls made me question myself. I have no doubt now that my voice took a bit of a beating during those last few months of tour! But the more I've worked the more it feels like I'm in the minority and that unless it's a full on West End show people are in, warm ups take a back seat. 

Assumptions

Vocal health is something I feel quite strongly about. I know some dancers who are horrified when young dancers try to go into the splits with cold muscles or have people stand on them in stretches and I'm the same way when I see or hear of people not taking good care of their voices, or at least in my eyes. HOWEVER, I know that I need to challenge my assumptions that I'm approaching this subject with. What do I currently think is 'right', 'wrong', 'responsible' or 'irresponsible', 'good technique' or 'bad technique'?  I'm faced with the question, is a warm up really necessary? Do you really need a good eight hours sleep to perform at your best? Do you really need training to learn how to use your voice?'

My gut reaction is to shout "YES OF COURSE!!!" But that could very well be my assumption. According to Bell and Waters (2018, p12) 'one of the key characteristics of a researcher is to be open-minded and to be prepared to be surprised'. So I want to consider all different points of view. 

I think I've come across many different approaches to vocal health as I don't only work with musical theatre actors. A 2019 study  (Flynn, A., 2019) found that ' Acting majors reported a higher percentage of voice -related injuries after graduation than both classical voice and musical theatre majors'. From my own experience, actors seem a lot less worried about their voices and at times that attitude has rubbed off on me. But even some famous singers such as Jennifer Hudson have claimed that they don't do warm ups before singing. Ed Sheeran said in a 2015 interview that he still doesn't warm up before his concerts. 

"Sometimes you lose your voice and sometimes you don't, and you're just unlucky if you do"

I know pop singing is a whole other ball game but to me that seems like a risky attitude to take. Conversely, some singers are very open about their dependence on voice coaches and their vocal health routines. Kristin Chenoweth discusses her routine in an interview at the Oxford Union. She admits that it's not a sexy routine by any means but necessary. 'I'm very very VERY pro education'.

Maybe it all just depends on your voice? I know I couldn't just have a cup of tea as a warm up and sound like a Disney character, unless it was maybe the old witch from Snow White...

I'm also curious about mind-body connection when it comes to singing but I'll save that for another blog as this one is fast turning into an essay...

Does anyone else question the importance of warm ups? 

Does it just depend on the your make up? Are some singers more prone to vocal injury or fatigue than others?

Has anyone been made to feel, for want of a better term, like a tit if they start a warm up in public or even around other performers? 

I'd love to hear your opinions! x

(also trying to get back into citing....here it goes):

Bell, J. and Waters, S., (2018) Doing Your Research Project: A Guide for First Time Researchers. London, England: Open University Press, McGraw-Hill Education

Flynn, A., (2019) 'Vocal Health Education in Undergraduate Performing Arts Training Programs' Journal of Voice, volume 34 issue 5

OxfordUnion (2019), Kristin Chenoweth | Full Q&A at The Oxford Union. 6 June. Available at: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukxyLZKEaSo