Why you shoud Warm Up before you Sing and Warm up techniques

Its incredibly important to warm up your voice before you sing because

• It will relax your voice 
• Stop you from putting undue stress on your vocal chords. 
• Strengthen your singing voice
• Reduce or removes the cracks and  breaks between registers
• Make it easier to reach the extremes of your voice

Tips and explanations by vocal coach to the stars Brett manningof why warming your voice up before singing is so important

Below we have a quotation from The essential voice forum giving some advice on the matter;

Firstly, it's as important to gently stretch your vocal muscles by doing vocal warm-up exercises, just as it is important to stretch before any other form of physical exercise. A vocal warm-up will increase blood circulation to the vocal aparatus, thus enabling it to be more supple and flexible and helps to avoid muscle strain. Imagine trying to do the splits without first stretching your legs...

It's also important that you gently warm-up the entire vocal range. For example, if you are planning to sing a song that has many high notes in it and you only 'stretch' the vocal cords to the extent required to sing low notes (ie warming up using only the lower notes in your range), then the area of the voice or vocal cords that are engaged when singing higher notes, will not be warmed or stretched.
It's like stretching your toes and ankles and not your thighs and calf muscles, when you want to do the splits!

If you have been warming up the entire voice before you experience this strain, then perhaps it is a technical issue. Strain can be experienced for a variety of different reasons. A couple of these are:
1) When you are enagaging incorrect muslce groups or...
- you will feel a tightness or aching around your neck and throat
2) when you are not achieving complete cord closure
- you will hear a breathiness to the tone you are producing and will feel tired or 'achy' in your throat area.
3) When you have warmed-up in an agressive manner
- you will notice vocal fatigue and a huskiness to the tone. Your voice may even cut-out on particular notes.

The best way to warm up the voice is gently and progressively. The best exercises to use are ones that involve humming or singing on an NG sound (as in siNG) and focusing on small areas of the vocal range, from lower notes and then moving gradually up through your vocal range. It is also important to sing gently - ease the voice along and sing at a low volume (but be sure you are not singing with breathy tone).