Vocal warm ups for podcasters, audiobooks and video content creators

Jul 10

After producing thousands of hours of podcast content and working with content creators at every level, I can tell you this: most vocal problems in recordings are completely preventable. That throat clearing, those relentless ummms, the weird clicking sounds and mouth noises that make you cringe during playback - they're all symptoms of skipping a few simple warm-ups before hitting record.

Professional voice artists never record cold. Neither should you.

Breathing: The Foundation Everything Builds On

Before touching that record button, establish proper breathing technique. Sit at the front of your chair with your back straight and feet planted firmly on the floor. This isn't just posture advice, it's about creating optimal conditions for breath control.

Breathe in slowly through your nose, focusing on expanding your belly rather than lifting your shoulders. Your diaphragm should do the work, not your chest. Three conscious breaths like this will relax your entire vocal system and prepare you for recording. It will also help you keep your pace nice and slow when you begin.

Warm Up Exercises:

These might feel ridiculous, but they're used by professional voice actors and vocalists for a reason.

Bubble Lips with Siren Sound - Inhale through your nose, then exhale slowly while letting your lips move uncontrollably (kind of like you’re a horse) and creating a siren sound that moves through your vocal range. This combines breath control with vocal cord relaxation. If your breath runs out quickly initially, that's normal. Your breath control will improve with practice. If you need a visual example of this exercise, I have a YouTube video that shows you how it’s done.
Vocal Projection Exercise - I suggest sitting back from your microphone for this one (or make sure you haven’t started recording) becdause it’s a loud one. I want you to repeat "ha ha ha ha" in a loud, clear manner. Engaging your diaphragm to project your voice here is the key. You don’t want to be shouting from your throat. The projection should feel like it comes from much lower in your body. This awakens your vocal chords and helps you understand your voice's range and power. It might sound aggressive, but it's incredibly effective for vocal preparation.
Clean Siren Exercise - Similar to the bubble lips exercise, but focus on a smooth "ah" sound that transitions through your vocal range. This allows your vocal chords to warm progressively without strain. Again, the YouTube video may help you visualise this exercise properly to ensure you’re doing it correctly.
Tongue Twisters for Articulation - "Red leather, yellow leather" repeated as quickly and clearly as possible serves dual purposes: it warms up your facial muscles and prepares your mouth for precise articulation. Your pronunciation clarity during recording will noticeably improve after this simple exercise. I suggest starting slow and really over-articulating each word before you start trying to do it quickly. Once you’ve mastered the slower pace, start increasing the pace. It could be useful to look at yourself in the mirror when you’re doing this one to firstly appreciate how ridiculous you are, but also to check if your mouth is opening wide enough to articulate the words.

Pre-Recording Foods to Avoid

Avoid dairy products and chocolate before recording sessions. I know that’s sad, but they create mucus that affects vocal clarity. If you're feeling unwell, postpone recording rather than trying to push through with compromised vocals.

During recording, if throat sounds occur, pause calmly, swallow, and resume. Never attempt to clear your throat on microphone - it's harsh on your vocal chords and we want to keep them nice and healthy. The more you clear your throat, the drier it will become.

Stay hydrated throughout your session. Keep water nearby and sip regularly to maintain vocal moisture and clarity.

These warm-ups transform amateur-sounding recordings into professional-quality audio. The difference isn't just technical, it's about confidence. When your voice feels prepared and sounds clear, your content delivery improves dramatically.

Next week, I'll be covering advanced vocal techniques for managing your speaking style and optimising your recording environment for maximum vocal performance.

Questions about implementing these techniques into your recording routine? Book a consultation to discuss your specific vocal challenges and recording setup.

Transcript:

[00:00:00]
[00:00:07] Today we're gonna go through how to warm up your vocals. For recording, so this is for actually podcasters more than anyone else, or people that are doing voiceovers for audio books and things like that. This is not vocal warmups for singers, although we could do that at a different time. This is mostly just for people who really don't warm up properly before they start talking, and it impacts the way they actually sound when they do start recording their podcasts.
[00:00:37] And videos and audio books and all those things. I've had a lot of people that comment on YouTube videos and when I have consults with people as well where they're like, Ugh, I really struggle to listen to myself and when I'm editing, if I edit myself, I've got all these like weird little sounds and I've.
[00:00:55] Clearing my throat all the time and I've got this, all these like gross [00:01:00] sounds, there are a lot of things that you can do to actually fix that before you start recording. Meaning that in post-production you don't have to do so much and you will actually sound a lot better. So we're gonna go through a few things that you can do to help yourself improve in this area and give a much better delivery of the content.
[00:01:19] That you're trying to produce. So first of all, when you start to record or just before you start to record, I want you to breathe. And the reason why I want you to breathe is because a lot of the time, once you hit that record button, you're like so amped up and excited, or you're nervous and then you're talking too quickly because you wanna get all these words out and you're just, you're just not breathing.
[00:01:42] Like now you can hear, I'm talking fast as an example for you. If you take the time before you start and you do some deep breathing, you're going to have a much more pleasurable experience in that first few, um, moments of recording. So I want you to put your feet on the floor. You can stand up if you'd like, [00:02:00] but if you wanna sit down, that's fine.
[00:02:01] I like to sit at the front of my chair so that my back is straight. And this is something that I learned from the days when I was in choirs and I would always be sitting at the front of chairs. I feel like I can never sit at the back of a chair now because I was in choirs for so many years. So sit at the front of the chair so that your feet touch the floor.
[00:02:21] Once your feet are in the right position there and your back is straight, I want you to breathe in through your nose. A big deep breath in through your nose
[00:02:32] and then out,
[00:02:38] okay? I want you to do three of those. So big deep breath in through your nose.
[00:02:50] Now, what I want you to do as well is focus on what your shoulders are doing. If your shoulders are rising, it means that you're not breathing deeply, you're actually breathing [00:03:00] shallow. So I want you to keep your shoulders down, breathe from your belly in through your nose, and the focus is using your diaphragm.
[00:03:07] So you breathe in through the nose. You're keeping these shoulders down, and your belly should actually be the thing that expands. Okay, and then hold that and then read out. So three times belly breathing, feet on the floor, close your eyes. Once you've done three of those belly breaths, you're going to feel more relaxed, straight up.
[00:03:31] And that's the first thing that you need to do. Find a way to stay calm and relax just before you hit record. 'cause that's when most of the energy, the excitement, the nervousness really is. Okay? So once you've done that, now the next thing I want you to do is kind of silly. All right. It is silly. You are gonna feel like a big dumb idiot, and that's okay.
[00:03:52] You need to, okay. This is about warming up your actual vocal chords. So if you don't do this [00:04:00] and you go from typing away and and preparing your script and whatever, and then you go to record like your video or your audio and you don't do any of these warmups, then you're going to have more instances of this, these sounds and this needing to clear your throat and then.
[00:04:16] All this extra saliva and things that I was talking about at the beginning. If you warm up your vocal cords first, you will have a much cleaner, crisper sound to your voice. Okay? I want you to do this exercise, so you're making your lips do this thing. This is a breathing exercise as well as a vocal exercise in one.
[00:04:37] You breathe in through your nose, then you blow out as slowly as you can. Through this thing while also doing a scale, a like siren as they say, you breathe it through your nose. This is an example, breathing through your nose, okay? And then[00:05:00]
[00:05:06] do that. Okay, so a couple of times and. Each time some, maybe the first time you do it, you'll be a bit like, and then you'll conk out. Like you won't be able to keep going. The lips won't keep moving. That's just breath control. You haven't been able to control the breath enough to keep the movement going through the lips.
[00:05:28] Uh. As well as doing the siren, so you'll get better at it. And in fact, when I was doing, uh, vocal teaching for people, this would be one of the skills that I would help them develop and I'd actually time them to see how long they could go without having to take a breath. So.
[00:05:55] I could just keep going, right? So I want you to do that a few times [00:06:00] and you'll feel silly. You'll feel like an idiot, and you'll feel like just a big, dumb, stupid head. And that's okay. I really want you to do it because it warms you up here. The second thing I want you to do is a projection activity. And this also, uh, is a bit of breath control and things in it too.
[00:06:16] But I want you, and I'll have to sit back a bit so that I don't overwhelm the microphone here, but I want you to actually go, ha ha ha ha hot ha quite loud, so that you can get a sense of what your voice can actually do. Uh, so I'll give you an example. Ha. Ha. Ha ha ha. Okay, so that was probably still really loud because I have done.
[00:06:47] Vocal projection exercises for a long time, and I did musical theater, and you learn how to project your voice. Uh, that is the next one. So firstly, that thing then secondly, ha ha ha [00:07:00] ha ha ha, do that a bunch of times. And then I want you to get rid of the boom, but now do a siren without the boom. So now you're going, ah,
[00:07:13] like you just. You're such an idiot at this point. You feel like such a silly person. I look ridiculous. I'm fine with that. Okay. It's fine. Don't worry. You will be doing it in the privacy of your own situation. You won't be showing other people like I am right now. These are the things that I do for you.
[00:07:33] Okay, so we do. Ah,
[00:07:38] these sort of going all the way through your vocal range so that this feels warm. And I don't want you to like, you don't have to go really loud on that siren, but it's more about, ah, it's just relaxing your actual vocal chords. Once you do those exercises, then you'll start to feel a lot more warmed up.
[00:07:57] The next thing I want you to do is actually a [00:08:00] tongue. Twister, the tongue twister prepares your voice and your mouth for actually moving. So the tongue twister that we're gonna use today is just red leather, yellow leather, red leather, yellow leather. What we're doing here is trying to help you with your pronunciation and getting all those syllables out.
[00:08:21] Okay. Red leather, yellow leather. And what you're trying to do with that is actually get faster, but still be able to tell that you're saying red leather, yellow leather. So red leather, yellow leather, red leather, yellow leather, red leather, you know? And that's, it's hard to do. Red leather, yellow leather, red leather, yellow leather, red leather, yellow leather.
[00:08:40] Keep going as fast as you can and do that a little bit and move your mouth around just a lot. Red leather, yellow leather. The more you do that, then you've relaxed your actual facial muscles as well, so that when you go to speak and do the audio recording or whatever it is, the video recording, your voice is [00:09:00] prepped.
[00:09:00] That's the first thing. Your voice needs to be prepped before you record anything, so you need to be relaxed and chill. Do your breathing, and maybe after these vocal exercises, you're a bit hyped up, maybe you need to do your breaths again. And then once you've done those things, then you are ready to actually record.
[00:09:17] The other little things that I would say is, and I know you've probably heard this from other people as well, is don't have milk or cheese before you start recording or chocolate because it gunks the throat up. So avoid things that can feel like it makes your throat. Gunky. If you have a cold, I would recommend holding off until you don't have one.
[00:09:36] If you have a sinus situation, then I would again, would advise against recording, uh, until that is cleared up. But if you have to, even these vocal exercises will help that not be so much of a trouble because it's relaxing everything. The next thing to do, especially in those, you know, those little. Those kind of sounds.
[00:09:57] It's okay if you have them. You, you [00:10:00] may potentially have them when you start recording. Just pause when you have one. Okay? So don't try and rush through the little clicky awkwardness that you're feeling. Have it happen. And then just pause. Okay. Need to swallow, pause. And then rego, like, go again. The more you try and half clear the throat, the worse it is, and if you can avoid at all costs, also going that, that's a really bad thing to do for your throat, I know that from doing it myself, it, it really starts to grate on your throat.
[00:10:35] Uh, so try and avoid that as well if you have that urge to clear your throat. Swallow So. Okay, swallow, reassess. From there, then the actual voice will sound a lot better. The other thing that you can do and make sure that you do do is have some water on hand,
[00:10:54] sipping water, so not having a big chunk of water, but sipping water as you go along. And [00:11:00] again, pausing, take a sip, keep going, is also going to help improve the quality of how your actual voice sounds. So those are the tips for how to actually improve the sound of your voice, how to prep your voice for recording.
[00:11:16] In the next video, I'm gonna go through how you sound overall in your recordings. So where people talk about, they talk too fast. Or they feel like they're too nasally or they sound really boring and they're monotone. There are so many things that you can do to actually improve the quality of your voice and also just how you sound overall.
[00:11:38] Making it sound more like you, more like how you want to sound. Those are all things that we will go into in the next one.