Actor Warm Ups: 8 Theater Vocal Warmups for New and Old Actors

For years I skipped the warm up. I wanted the scene. Ten minutes of lip trills felt like the part of the workout where you stretch, and I was the guy who walked straight to the weights. Then I started casting, and I spent whole afternoons listening to actors whose faces were doing everything right while their voices did one thing. Same pitch on every line. Same volume. Air running out on the last word. I knew exactly what it was, because I’d been that actor.

So here’s the case for the ten minutes, and then the ten minutes themselves.

Why actor warm ups matter

Your voice and your emotional instrument are wired together. Try this right now. Say “get out of my house” the way you’d order a coffee. Now say it to someone who just hurt your kid. Nothing changed but the thought, and everything changed in the sound. That connection runs both ways, which is the whole point: a voice that is tight, tired or stuck in one register will hold the feeling back no matter how honest the thought behind it is.

A voice that can only do one thing can only do one thing. The actor who has never explored the top and bottom of their range walks into every audition with half a toolbox. We’re not talking about singing. We’re talking about being able to whisper a threat, fill a theater, and read a clunky line of commercial copy so it sounds like a person said it. Ten minutes a day buys that. So let’s get you warmed up.

8 of the best vocal warm ups

1) Lip trills

If you do nothing else on this list, do lip trills. If you stop reading right here and do lip trills in the car on the way to class, you still walk away ahead. Singers and actors both swear by them, and they belong to a family of exercises called semi-occluded vocal tract exercises, along with humming and blowing through a straw. That phrase means your vocal tube is partly closed off, which changes the pressure in your throat and lets the vocal folds and the resonators vibrate without strain.

Start by trilling on any note you can hold comfortably. It doesn’t matter which one. Then run a simple five note scale up and down. When that’s easy, stretch it: a longer scale is a longer breath, and breath support is what you’re really training.

Can’t do a lip trill yet? Keep at it. Rolling your r’s works the same muscles, and humming or blowing gentle bubbles through a straw into a cup of water will do in the meantime. Don’t worry about tone or pitch. Just rehearse the movement. If your cheeks are heavy, push up gently on the apples of your cheeks with two fingers to take the weight off your lips while they learn the coordination.

2) Tongue twisters

The classic, and it earns its reputation. Your voice and the dozen small coordinations behind it are muscles, no different from your legs. If you were training for a marathon you wouldn’t train for half the distance. You’d make practice harder than the race so the race feels possible. Tongue twisters are that principle applied to speech.

Commercial copy is famously clumsy. “Drive your dream car with rates as low as 2.8% APR for qualified buyers.” Nobody talks like that, and you’ll be asked to make it sound like somebody does. If your mouth is used to difficult phrases, you won’t be rattled by one. “She sells seashells” is so familiar it barely counts anymore. Try some you haven’t done.

• Red lorry, yellow lorry.
• I like New York unique, unique New York I like.
• How can a clam cram in a clean cream can?
• Scissors sizzle, thistles sizzle.

When you hit one that’s genuinely hard for you, good. You just found a weak spot, and a weak spot you know about is one you can fix. Go only as fast as you can go correctly, then add speed over days, not minutes.

3) Breathing

There are whole books on this, and you should read one. For today, one idea from my teacher Larry Moss: breath is preparation for the idea. Every line you send out on stage or on camera starts with an inhale, and the word for that is inspiration. The two meanings of that word are not a coincidence.

Practically, that means two skills: knowing where your breath is, and controlling the exhale so you don’t dump all your air on the first three words. Here’s the first exercise. Lie on the floor if it helps. Breathe in and notice your sides push out and your diaphragm drop as the lungs fill. Now do it again and let the air out over a controlled ten seconds. Then see if you can go longer.

Here’s the second, and it’s my favorite. Feet under your shoulders. Take a full breath and swing one arm up over your head as you do. Now lower the arm back to your side as you empty. Halfway out of air, the arm should be parallel to the floor, like a gas gauge. Fully empty, the arm is back at your side. Do it again and stretch the exhale a little further each time.

4) Pitch glides

Simple and effective. Start on a low sound at the very bottom of your range and slide up to a high note and back down, like a slow siren. This should never hurt. If you feel yourself pulling or straining to reach a pitch, stop. That’s the rule for every exercise on this page: one note higher is never worth a sore throat. Go as high and as low as you can today, and today’s range is enough.

5) Projection and power

How does a Broadway singer fill a two thousand seat house? How does a preacher reach the last pew without a microphone? Breath, yes. But also placement. You can tell your sound where to go, and most people have never tried.

On an “oo” sound, pick any note and notice where you feel it. The roof of your mouth? Back toward the throat? Just notice. Now think about sending the sound toward your teeth instead of the back of your head. Most people feel it move forward immediately, buzzing behind the teeth, and the sound carries further with less effort. That is projection. It is not shouting. The video further down shows the placement better than words can.

6) Tongue and jaw relaxation

Tension in the tongue and jaw will choke a performance before you’ve said a word. Start by massaging the jaw from the hinge, just in front of the ears, down to the chin. Open your mouth as wide as it goes and stick your tongue out as far as it goes. Several times.

Now the test. Hold your chin gently with both hands and give up control of your jaw completely. Can you move your chin up and down using only your hands? Your brain will want to help. Don’t let it. Going fully slack is harder than it sounds, and if you can get there, you’ve found the relaxed state you want to carry into the scene.

7) Sirens

Cousin to the pitch glide, and the best way I know to wake up the head voice, the higher part of your speaking and singing range. Make a siren sound right now. “Wee ohh wee ohh wee.” Don’t assign it a pitch. Just make the sound. Then try it on a five note descending scale. You may feel a buzz at the top of your head, your temples or your nose. That’s the right place. If you don’t feel it yet, keep playing. It comes.

8) Vocal fry

Fry gets blamed for a lot, and used on purpose it’s one of the gentlest ways to tell your vocal folds to relax. Make a low, lazy grumble, the sound of someone being woken up before they’re ready. Soft. Gravelly. It should feel easy leaving the body, and if it hurts at all, back off immediately. From there, drift slowly up the scale on that same relaxed sound.

All eight take ten to fifteen minutes, and you can do them every day. The car, windows up, is where most of ours get done.

What if you’re sick and still have to perform?

We get this one every winter. First, the honest answer: if you’re sick, the pain is inflammation, and the best remedy is not performing. If there is any way to move the show or the audition, move it. Sometimes there isn’t. So here’s what helps.

• Moist air. A humidifier or a steamer, used often.
• Vocal rest. Don’t talk more than you have to. Aim for none.
• Water. Then more. Then, when you think you’ve had enough, a little more.
• Ginger. Scrape a piece of raw root, simmer it in hot water, add lemon and honey.
• Reverse phonation. Make the sound on the inhale instead of the exhale. Find an easy note and sing it breathing in, on “ah” or “oo”, whichever is comfortable. You can also pinch your nose and run three to five notes up and down on the inhale. Done right it sounds a little like talking underwater. It’s the kindest exercise there is for a swollen voice.

If the problem keeps coming back, work with a vocal coach, for singing or for speech. Ask us and we’ll point you to the right person.

Ten minutes, every day

Nobody is going to make you do these. That’s the part I had to learn. The actors who do them are not more talented than the ones who don’t; they just sound like it, take after take, because the instrument was ready when the thought arrived. Pick three from this list tonight. Add the rest as they get easy. Happiness lives in the progress.