Stretches of the abdomen, back, neck, and shoulders are important to avoid tension, which influences the sound of the voice through constriction of the larynx and/or breathing muscles.
Specific training of the respiratory muscles is required for singers to take very quick deep breath and sustain their exhalation over many bars of music.
Resonators are the hard and soft surfaces within the oral cavity that affect the sound waves produced during phonation.
Other exercises can help singers/actors be aware of lifting the soft palate, which can create a darker richer timbre when singing – an example would be simulating a sudden shocked gasp, and then maintaining the openness at the back of the mouth.
For some, their director will be the only voice teacher they ever work with, so the vocal warm-up is the only time where they receive specific training for the muscles required by their craft.
Jean-Antoine Bérard's 1755 compilation L'art du chant includes a selection of songs without words (sans paroles) by composers such as Lully (1632–1687) and Rameau (1683–1764), chosen for their value as exercises in vocal technique.
This followed the fashion of the time of setting even the most mechanical of études to piano accompaniment with the thought that this would inspire the performer to execute the music more artistically.
Vocalese (with the -ese suffix) refers to a type of jazz singing in which new words are created and sung to existing instrumental improvisations.