Hey there, this is John Henny and today I want to talk to you about Lip Trills.
A very popular warm up exercise is the lip trill or the lip bubble, which is done like this and you’ll often see singers doing this perhaps you’ve even had a voice teacher asked you to do it. But why do we do this? Why is it a good warm up? Well, what we’re doing is we’re creating some secondary resistance. Resistance is key in singing. Because when we resist the flow of air, we start pressing the air molecules together building energy so that when they’re released, we get a sound wave this excited moving air, but the vocal cords have to do this job all on their own and less.
We add a helper and this helper, the lips create a little more resistance and so it kind of slows the flow of air down and helps press back some of that energy towards the vocal cords which helped the vocal cords hold back and compress the air. It’s a little assistance. Now the other thing that it’s great for is it will make sure that your facial muscles are relaxed. I mean, if you’re tight, you will be able to do it and if you’re engaging excess muscle as you go higher, the lip bubble will warn you by ceasing to work.
The other thing it does is it can increase the sensation of the vocal transitions and where the resonances go, which is important for learning to sing higher. So one of my favorite warm ups or lip bubbles, try some today.
For further information check out my website johnhenny.com and go to your favorite podcast listening place and check out my podcast The Intelligent Vocalist.
Thank you.