Christina Aguilera’s Vocal Warm-Ups Tips

Christina Aguilera is a Grammy Award–winning singer, songwriter, and actress. She is one of the most famous musical artists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Known for singing hits that showcase powerful vocals and lyrics, her songs include “Genie in a Bottle,” “Dirrty,” “Beautiful,” and “Reflection” from Disney’s Mulan.

She has an octave-jumping vocal range. Christina’s songs range from soulful ballads to catchy and uptempo dance tracks that blend various musical genres such as R&B, soul, jazz, and pop. In 2008, Rolling Stone named Christina one of the greatest singers of all time.

Vocal warm-ups are a type of vocal exercise vocalists practice to maintain and support the vocal cords. Similar to how runners warm up and stretch their muscles before running, practicing vocal exercise warms up the singing voice and helps prepare the vocal muscles.

Vocal warm-ups can include lip trills, breathing exercises, tongue twisters, tongue trills, singing scales, and more. These exercises gently activate and stretch the vocal cords. Practicing proper vocal warm-ups can prevent vocal damage and help maintain vocal health.

Establishing a robust vocal warm-up routine is the key to having a healthy voice for many years. The benefits of regularly practicing vocal exercises include:

• Breath control: Vocal warm-ups can help you practice breath control and build better breath support. Developing strong breath control can help you hold notes longer.
• Diction: Practice vowel sounds and consonant sounds as part of your vocal warm-up. These exercises help you practice diction and articulation so that every word is clear and understandable when you are singing.
• Vocal ranges: A vocal warm-up will take you through the range of your voice, from your low notes to your high notes. These exercises will help smooth out the breaks in your voice, such as when you transition from your chest voice to your head voice.

As a Grammy-winning singer with decades of experience, Christina knows how to take care of her singing voice and how to practice proper vocal technique. Follow her vocal warm-up tips, which will help you sing better and stronger and preserve your voice for years to come:

1. 1. Create a space to warm up. Christina likes to be alone when she warms up, because it creates a safe space to work through her vocal range, without worrying about sounding pretty. “You wanna be able to be free in your own space to sort of make mistakes,” Christina says. Ideally, you should have room to sit up straight or stand. She adds, “I’ve done my vocal warm-up many times in makeup chairs, sitting down. Which preferably I don’t like because you wanna really give your lungs, and your chest, and your throat full capacity to breathe.”
2. 2. Relax your facial muscles. Stress can cause your facial muscles to tense. You want to relax your facial muscles and release tension through your vocal warm-ups. To do this, Christina thinks of something that makes her smile and then incorporates it into her warm-ups. For example, Christina sometimes warms up by singing her daughter’s name, Summer Rain, to the tune of “Ave Maria.” “And so think of, just for a few scales, somebody that makes you smile, something that makes you laugh, something that makes you feel good,” Christina says. “I immediately felt my tension ease in my forehead, my mind. My jaw relaxed.”
3. 3. Practice different warm-ups for different circumstances. The best vocal warm-ups depend on the singing situation. “Depending on what you’re getting ready for, whether it be a performance, recording studio, different songs call for different dynamics and textures in your voice that you want to achieve,” Christina says. Before she records a big ballad with hit high notes, she dedicates thirty minutes to warm up her voice, then thirty minutes to rest. “[I’ll] rest for thirty minutes if I have the luxury of that, so my voice has a moment to pull back, and then go down to the studio and hit the vocals,” Christina explains.
4. 4. Prepare to warm up wherever. You might not always have a piano available to help you warm up, so having a warm-up routine on your phone can be a great way to ensure that you can do vocal warm-ups on the go. “​​I definitely take my vocal warm-up with me everywhere I go. It's on a little speaker and an iPod,” Christina says. “It used to be [a] CD and a boombox. Find what works for you. Like putting it on your phone, because we’re not always gonna [have] access to a piano. We’re not always gonna have the access to a lot of different things.”

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