When you’re looking forward to making your career in voice acting, it is important to warm up your voice before you start your practice sessions. This is because if you don’t warm it up, your voice could cramp due to sudden breaking in. Warming up is a patient exercise and every voice actor has his own version of it. Some gently turn their warm ups into practice and others like to have a distinct line between the two. If truth be told, warm up is a kind of basic level practice for your voice.

After the basic warming up, every voice actor likes to introduce an element of fun and innovativeness in his routine.

You need to simply find a comfortable but firm place to lie down on your back. Then start by making a low humming sound and you could also practice panting. Then roll your body over to one side and get up, keeping your breathing rhythm intact. Repeat this by rolling over to the other side. Also do some neck rolls by rotating your head very slowly clockwise and anti-clockwise. You could also do some shoulder rolls by rotating them forward and backward. This warms up your neck and throat muscles. Massage your whole face by drawing slow circles with the tip on your fingers to relax the muscles of your face. Also, jump up and down. You should also shake your hands and feet for improving your circulation and loosening your muscles. The Lion/Mouse technique requires that you stand in front of a mirror and stretch all your facial muscles. The first part is to stretch your mouth wide open, imitating a lion’s roar and snarl. After that switch to a mouse face immediately, by scrunching your facial muscles and looking small and meek. Switching between the lion and mouse would help in improving circulation in your face. Pull your tongue out as far as you can, trying to reach your chin by pulling it down or the tip of your nose by stretching it up. Also try to reach your ears. Sirens are meant to improve your vocal range. Alternate between the octaves by uttering the phrase “eeee” and hitting the top notes and the lower ones. Trills are created when you roll your tongue along the roof of your mouth and create a “trrrr” or “rrrr” sound. Use the standard PTKT (pronounced as puhh tuhh kuhh tuhh) and BDGD (pronounced buhh duhh guhh duhh) to warm up your vocal chords further. This would also exercise your tongue. Tongue twisters are generally used to further exercise your mouth, tongue, lips and cheeks. Say your favorite ones out loud and this could really be a fun exercise.

You don’t need to go through the entire routine every day because there might be days when you don’t have much time. You can exclude steps 2 – 4 when you are short on time and follow up with the other steps. For more such tips, you can read any good voice acting book. These steps exercise almost all the parts of your body that affect your voice in any way and following it regularly will be really beneficial to you.