Host: How do you warm up for a music audition?
Jennifer Rutherford: Well, every voice teacher is different but I like to start off with a little bit of relaxation because I firmly believe that tension is the number one enemy of the singer. And in a performance situation when you get nervous, it’s important to remember how to relax. So if you practice relaxing, the theory is that in a tense situation, it’ll come back to you, you’ll remember how to relax. So I start with a simple exercise it’s a dangle from the waist and breathing into the back and bringing the relaxation up with you as you slowly stand. Feel how heavy your hands are when you’re down there and feel the joint spaces opening up. So let that heaviness work its way up through the elbows into the shoulders down into the neck and head. Take a big fill of relaxed air, deep into the back and hold it for a second, now release, releasing any tension with the breath. Do that one more time please, fill into the back and hold it.
Now stand up slowly, stacking your vertebrate one on top of the other, release the air as you come up and bring that relaxation up with you. Of course, you have to fix your hair then. Then we move into some loose and free vocalizations involving the whole range and after that we will do some arpeggios, scales, regular vocalizing that most voice teachers will do and I have some special ones that I do in particular but every voice teacher is different.
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