Warm Up & Breathing Exercises For Auditions
- Diaphragm Warm Up
- Versatile Breathing Exercises
- Get Into Character
When prepping for an audition it’s important to consider breathing as the first thing on your to do list.
While on stage or in a closed room, make sure to breathe for your performances.
Depending on your vocal type and style of music, you will want to do exercises that help support your breathing and song choice.
Pay attention to the song’s emotion and use that to help channel your breathing.
In this article we will discuss breathing exercises and the mindset necessary for an audition.
Diaphragm Warm Up
We use our diaphragm muscles to breathe and working these out is the first step to refreshing your lung capacity.
For auditions, this can be used to help you center yourself. The speed at which we can control our breathing will benefit us in not straining our singing muscles.
When we first wake up in the morning it’s hard to start belting because we have been sleeping taking shorter breaths in the night.
If you haven’t done much speaking or warmups before your audition you are more inclined to make vocal mistakes.
Practice the hut exercise and use this to work on your speed in catching breaths. It is a good way to get those muscles moving.
Versatile Breathing Exercises
You should practice all of the muscles you have to help prepare for an audition. First, look at the song that you are choosing for your audition.
Listen to the song and then sing it. Listen for the parts you think you could improve on.
Then you want to find the right muscle to do the exercises accordingly. If the song is fast, try to work on enunciation.
If the song has alot of belting and high notes, work on soft palate exercises and slides. If the song has difficult riffs, slow the riffs down and practice the notes individually.
For your practice I would start by doing 5 lip rolls, inhale and exhale, all the way to empty.
Then move into the Hut exercise. Do 20 huts and then work in your voicercise kit.
You will want to go through the vocal slides, make sure you are starting from your lowest to your highest note.
When you get into the habit of doing warm up exercises, you can become warmed up fairly quickly. There is an exercise for everything, sign up for lessons to learn more..
Get Into Character
Just like actors/actresses, singers have to be mentally ready for their auditions too. If you struggle with performance anxiety or stage fright try to focus on why you are there.
Having a focal point can shift your attention from those negative feelings and reform it into something creative.
If the song is centered on sadness, think of something sad over thinking of being in an audition. Use the emotion of the song to shift your perspective and approach.
Your emotions affect your breathing. Honing this ability is what will make your performance authentic. In the end you will have sung it from the heart, and that is the best audition one can give.
Confidence does not form overnight, however, practicing and experience can get you there pretty quickly. Make sure to spend time rehearsing prior to your audition to find exactly what that song means to you.
