If you dream of performing —but aren’t performing at all—this episode is your sign to start.
Consider this episode your call to action to start sharing your voice, from wherever you are, right now. Whether it’s an open mic night, a choir, a local venue, or just posting a clip on social media—every small step counts. In this episode, Amber offers encouragement, real talk, and practical ideas for getting started, plus insight into the supportive Vocal Pro community where singers grow together.
You’ll hear:
01:31 The Importance of Sharing Your Voice
04:54 Overcoming Nerves and Self-Doubt
08:11 Taking the First Steps to Perform
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Hello friends, we are jumping into the vocal cool down today. How do you do it? What really is it? And why would you do it? I did a poll on Instagram the other day asking you all what topics you wanted to learn more about here on the podcast. The vocal cool down was the clear winner, so let's get into it.
I feel like at this point, pretty much every voice user has heard of the vocal warmup, and if you've done them, you can see the benefits. It's an easier sell, because when you take the time to warm up your voice, your voice and your body, because your body is your instrument, generally you're gonna feel better when you're singing and you're gonna sound better. So we have a better performance. So singers are like, okay, I see the benefit in that. The cool down I think is a harder sell to get singers onto to say,
Add on some more time at the end of a gig, usually at the end of the night, at the end of heavy vocal activity. Add on some more time to that, right? Singers are exhausted. and they just think, I'm tired. What does it even do? I'm just gonna go to bed.
and then they wake up the next morning and they're like, ⁓ my body feels tight, my voice feels tight, like I just don't feel and sound my best, but I guess it's because I had a gig last night. Well, if they would have taken the time to stretch out that body and that voice after their heavy activity, which is what singing is, singers are vocal athletes.
What you ask your body to do when you are singing, is no different than what any other athlete asks their body to do when they are doing their athletic activity.
it's the same thing as doing a 10K run and you stretch before because of course that just makes that run feel better. But I bet you stretch after too because if not, if you do a 10K run and gosh, think about we're talking some singers are doing three and four hour shows. That's a marathon. Think about doing a marathon, lifting heavy weights for two hours and then just going to bed.
What's going to happen when you try to get up the next day and get out of bed? Your body is going to be screaming at you, right? Your muscles are going to be tight. They were constricting in that heavier activity. And then you just put them to bed. So they're still in that tight constricted position. really similar to us as singers. The vocal cool down is taking those muscles and that body that's been working at this higher level, stretching it out to bring it back.
neutral so that the larynx is not hiked up high it's not depressed low which both are going to cause tension so that the vocal folds don't feel like they have to continue to work so hard because that's where you're leaving them you give them a little love you bring them back to speech level so that the voice
and the body are not working any harder than they need to. And taking those few minutes, that's all you need guys for a cool down. A cool down could be two minutes can make a big difference. Five minutes can make a big difference. It's just taking some time to stretch out your body, stretch out your voice, give it all some love so that the next day you feel better, you sound better, you recover more quickly.
All the research on vocal warmups and cool downs show they're both really important, but the vocal cool down has the greatest effect on the long term overall health of your voice. You have better vocal longevity when you do cool downs.
So one, that should help sell you if you don't do vocal cool downs. And two, You do not need to add a bunch more time onto your day. You don't need to add more workload onto your workload. This should be the opposite of that. You know how good it feels after a workout to just
Stretch out those muscles, give them some love, get kind of typical blood flow back, typical positioning back to everything. It feels so good. It makes you feel better after the workout and you feel better the next day. So that's what a vocal cool down is. It only needs to take a handful of minutes. It's gonna depend on your voice and your body. So let's get into things you can do to cool your voice down.
so a lot of the exercises and things you're gonna do in a vocal warm up are the same things you can do in a vocal cool down. The difference is in a warm up you're starting at speech level, ⁓
and you're stretching those muscles out to go to a broader range, because that's what we use when we sing, and to get ready for more heavy athletic activity. They need more blood flow, they need more flexibility, they need to be ready to work broader and wider and harder. And so you're helping them do that, you're prepping them to do that. When you're cooling down, you've already been doing all that. You are done with the heavy work, your muscles have been stretching and working at this higher level. So we wanna start at that broader range,
and bring it right back to neutral speech. So take the SOVT sound of your choice. All that means,
semi-occluded vocal tract, a partially closed mouth, things like a lip trill, a raspberry, I love that one, that's kind of a lip trill with your tongue relaxed out, an H N a straw in water, I will say singing through a straw into water.
Probably my all time favorite cool down. And what I love about it, you wanna use a larger straw. You can do drinking size or larger, but definitely more beneficial for your voice is the larger size. I like kind of that boba tea smoothie size. You're gonna put it down in the water, half inch to an inch. You'll then go deeper if you feel you need a bit more resistance. You'll go less deep, more shallow if you want less resistance.
if you are like most of us, you are grabbing a straw that comes along with your cup, hopefully it's one of those larger ones, putting it down into the water, thinking, ⁓ wrapping your lips around the straw, gently singing through some sliding intervals. It's the only thing that actually massages the laryngeal tissue.
and the vocal folds themselves. So any kind of like swelling, little bit of irritation we have because we've been working them just at a high heavy level many times, we can help diminish that right off the bat with the straw and water. So I love it. It's also then great, especially if you've had a particularly heavy workload to not only use it to cool down, but use it the next day for warmup. Just give it another little massage and you will be feeling good. You'll be thanking me. So straw and water is one of my favorites.
But you don't have to do that. Sometimes it's hard to do for a cool down because you've got an hour drive home and you can't be driving with a straw and water. Please don't do that. I don't want you to get hurt. So you choose whatever else you like. Let's say it's a raspberry. I like that because I get a little bit of tongue extension. The tongue has to work quite a lot when we sing. We get those facial muscles relaxed and it's nice for setting up optimally those vocal folds again, bringing it back to speech level. What you're going to do is instead of starting with the smaller intervals,
around your speaking range and growing from there, we're gonna start broader. So let's say that was a sliding third and a sliding fifth. Let's say that's a great way, that's a way that I start to warm up. Many times I'll start people with some smaller intervals and then I broaden them as their voice gets more warm. You're already warm for a cool down. We are cooling you down. And some people call it a warm down by the way. I don't care what you call it. I just care that you take the time to do it because it will make you feel so much better, even if it's a minute.
two minutes, three minutes, five minutes. That's really all you need. Listen to your voice and your body, and you'll know when you're like, oh gosh, I feel so much better. I can call it a night. So if I'm gonna do a cool down, I'm gonna start with an octave, come back to that fifth, and maybe a third. See how I'm going from a broader range back to speech? So on my raspberry.
I just want to go kind of the higher and lower levels, kind of that mid range back down to my speaking voice. Now, do you have to have a keyboard and do you have to do specific intervals to cool down? No. Like I said, if you're driving in the car and you're like, I don't want to mess with that. My brain is fried right now. Just do vocal sirens.
Vocal sirens, what I like to do when I'm warming up is I like to start low, stretch them up high, I might bring them back low so it would sound like this. That can be great for a cool down too, but if you've done a lot of kind of speechy, chesty work, you really wanna make sure you work that opposing muscle. So when we're in that lower range, we're really working that shortening, thickening muscle much like a bicep. We really wanna stretch that tricep, get it kind of balanced back out.
So I like to start higher in pitch and just glide down. ⁓ I like to do some little rev ups or rev downs. Rev up would be low to high. That's a warm up. ⁓ A rev down is the opposite direction for a cool down. Bringing it back to speech. Already? I just did a couple of those. like, ⁓ I already feel more relaxed.
I also personally like to do some things like stretch my tongue a little bit. You don't have to be able to hold on to it. If you're driving in a car, you can just go, bleh. Stretch your tongue out, a little bit of extended tongue. And then the other thing I would encourage you to do is if you feel tension in your body, some shoulder rolls, some head and neck rolls, maybe a full body roll, just stretching the body out, giving it a little love too. All of that could take five minutes, even if you do it for one minute,
you're gonna feel a difference in your voice. And you're gonna feel a difference in your voice the next day when you go to use it, the next day after that, multiple days after that, week by week, month by month, and through the years. Vocal cool downs are the key to an even healthier voice, to even more vocal longevity.
Happy singing guys, healthy singing, take the time to cool down and I look forward to seeing you in the next episode.
