Arts & Entertainment, Music
Warming Up
Lesson time 09:02 min
Your vocal cords are like any other muscle—you must stretch and warm them up before a performance. Let Christina walk you through the vocal warmups and exercises she uses to get ready for the show.
Students give MasterClass an average rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars
Topics include: Warm up exercises • Posture
Teaches Singing
Christina teaches you her unique vocal techniques in over 3.5 hours of voice lessons and exercises.
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Your vocal chords are kind of like-- well, they're like any other muscle. You know, if you train it, if you exercise it, if you practice, it's going to get stronger and build. You also want to make sure you don't overdo it and you cause a strain or you cause weakness and overexertion. At a certain point when I was on tour, I took my first vocal lesson because I was like, I need to know how to preserve my voice-- you know, how to warm it up. I have no clue how to do this. So I met with Don Lawrence out of New York. And he gave me this vocal warm up tape that I could take on the road with me, travel with it. And I've used it ever since. Like since I was 16 years old, I've had this vocal tape. OK, start from here, Christina, in soprano on "ooh." [SINGING SCALES] I found that, you know, the actual lessons portion of it, you have to be careful with because you don't want to-- I mean for me, singing is just so pure. And it's just such an innate thing I have to do for myself and my soul. So making it anything too contrived didn't really flow with me, didn't really help me in any way. And the stuff that I used to love singing when I was little was like, you know, blues and soul and your Etta's and your Nina's and your Billie Holiday's. Those were the songs I would sing-- old time rock and roll, even Bob Seger at certain gigs of mine when I was really young. And those are songs that really is just-- those things come out of raw emotion and love and just being natural and from the heart. That doesn't really require, you know, just this note has to be perfect. And this note has to be that. It was only later on, when you're working so much that your voice needs a little bit of help to just stay warm when you're just on the go constantly using it like that. [SPEAKING ITALIAN] [PIANO SCALE] [SINGING SCALES IN ITALIAN] Another thing I was kind of taught was your throat has a ton of muscles in there. And even if you're in a place where it might be very soft-- and, you know, sometimes you're a little embarrassed to be like [SINGING SCALE] wherever you are. And you don't want to be drawing attention to yourself or even if you have a strained or a sore throat. Sometimes, it's just good to just-- if you have a memory of already knowing what your vocal warm up feels like-- not just sounds like but just feels like when you do it in your throat-- you can actually exercise those muscles without doing anything verbally. Or, you know, you don't have to actually sing in order to warm up your voice. Even a little bit of throat opening, muscle contractions, and things like that-- almost do it in your head, but don't even sing out. Sort of contract your muscles in the way that you're thinking in your head about some of your vocal warm ups. And that even helps, I mean, mentally to listen to the vocal warm up in a headphone or in the car or whatever that may be and just expanding your throat and your mu...
About the Instructor
Christina Aguilera teaches you how to expand your range, find your voice, and master the techniques that have earned her five Grammy Awards. In her first-ever online singing class, you’ll learn warm-up exercises, breath control, vibrato, her signature growls, and hear Christina break down her biggest hits. You’ve never had vocal lessons like this before.
Featured MasterClass Instructor
Christina Aguilera
Christina teaches you her unique vocal techniques in over 3.5 hours of voice lessons and exercises.
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