The 5 Minute Warmup for your voice 

and the Four Core Skills that will make the difference 

Do you use your voice for more than 5 hours a day? 

Does your job rely on your communication skills? 

Do you have any training to care for your voice?

If you use your voice to present, teach, lecture and inform, either in public or on the telephone, for more than 5 hours a day, you're a professional voice user! Yet you may have had no training in how to keep your own speaking voice healthy and efficient. According to the British Voice Association, "approximately a third of people working in the UK today depend on their voices to do their work".

Back in the 1970s, Psychologist Albert Mehrabian discovered that there were three ways that listeners measured communication from others - words, voice and nonverbal behaviour. He updated this in the 1980s to the following equation:

Total Liking = 7% Verbal Liking + 38% Vocal Liking + 55% Facial Liking

So a whopping 38% of the effectiveness of your communication is measured by how much your listener likes your voice.

Can you afford to lose 38% of your effectiveness in communicating your message? (And if you're on the telephone, the number is even higher.) Imagine how much easier your life would be if people "got" what you were saying more easily.

The 5 Minute Warmup For Your Voice is the first CD from the groundbreaking company Vocal Process that shows you step by step how to warm up and improve your speaking voice quickly and safely.

Launched on World Voice Day, the 5 Minute Warmup For Your Voice uses words, pictures and audio soundbytes to take you in detail through Four Core Skills for vocal health and stamina, ending in a simple, highly effective 5 Minute Warmup Routine. This Routine is already being used in 17 countries including the US, Canada, Australia, Germany, Sweden, France, The Netherlands, and of course the UK.

We've created the Four Core Skills to help you get the best out of your voice: accurate, simple, practical techniques for staying vocally fit, healthy and effective.

Learn the Four Core Skills, then just run the 5 Minute Warmup Routine - in the car on the way to work, when you arrive at the new presentation venue, or during the lunch break if your voice is feeling tired. You can also take each of the Four Core Skills separately and work them for a minute - between phonecalls, between clients, between ceremonies.

WHAT ARE THE FOUR CORE SKILLS?

CORE SKILL 1: Breathing

Breathing is the number one Core Skill. Breath powers your voice. Use your breath efficiently and you will use your voice more efficiently. You need breath to come in easily without too much effort, and to go out as an efficient stream of air.

Do you get nervous when you have to speak in front of others? 
- A good breathing technique can also help calm any nerves, gives you stamina, and enables you to focus on the task in hand.

The most effective form of breathing is known as "diaphragmatic breathing". In the first Core Skill you will learn how to use your abdominal wall as a gentle bellows underneath the diaphragm to support your sound.

Learn how to feed air to your voice and relax your abdomen to get breath deep into your lungs.

CORE SKILL 2: Opening your throat

Does your voice feel tight?
Do you find you're having to clear your throat a lot, even when there's "nothing there"?
Is your voice raspy?

A wide open throat gives warmth, depth and vibrancy to your sound, and gives you more vocal stamina.

The quickest way to control the width in your throat is to do our simple, rather unusual exercise, which has been used by professional singers for decades.
Vocal folds need space to move - opening your throat just above the vocal folds gives them more space and resonate more efficiently, and gives you a clearer, stronger and easier sound.

If you're using a microphone, either on stage or on the telephone, this technique will give you the clearest vocal signal and make your voice understandable to the most people. Microphones only amplify what's put into them - the microphone won't make your voice sound better, only louder!

This technique is so important that we've even created an entire DVD (the first of its kind).

"I've experienced a huge improvement in my voice already! I had a minor vocal injury that had put my in a downward spiral of trying to 'protect' my voice and many other books that just say 'relax' the larynx was just making me worse. This is the first system that has taught me how to actively and precisely release. Can't wait to dig into the rest!" MM, singer Washington, US

CORE SKILL 3 - Jaw, tongue and lips

Core Skill 3 will give you 3 simple steps to clearer speech.
We use our "articulators", jaw, tongue and lips, to speak and communicate. But are you working your articulators too hard? This can throw your voice into bad habits and cause unnecessary tension and strain. This Core Skill will not change your accent but will give you an easier, less tense speaking voice.

And if you don't work each articulator separately, your speech will be unclear. By moving your tongue, jaw and lips individually, you use just the right amount of energy for clear speech, and your listeners will understand better what you have to say.

CORE SKILL 4 - The Voice-Body Connection

Your voice lives in your body and is controlled by your brain. "Get connected" with this two-part Core Skill!

Alignment: Learn how to position your head and neck for an easy, resonant sound. This works standing up or sitting down, with or without a microphone, at the computer, on the telephone or in the boardroom.

Co-ordination: Use a simple body-brain coordination technique to get switched on and wired up. This physical warmup technique helps you to think on the spot and say what you mean!

And we haven't even talked about the bonus yet!

The 5 Minute Warmup For Your Voice CD contains a great bonus track:

The 10 Second Voice Check

This is the fast (it's genuinely 10 seconds long) and efficient (Jeremy and Gillyanne use it themselves when they are presenting for 10 hours a day) little routine to make sure your voice is healthy, efficient and ready to go.

We're going to say no more about it, but check it out when you've listened to the 5 Minute Warmup For Your Voice - it'll make sense!

The Four Core Skills are the essential techniques for finding and maintaining an efficient and effective voice.

But don't take our word for it...

We took these Core Skills to the Microsoft Headquarters in the UK to work with Microsoft's Premier Field Engineers, who give presentations and lectures regularly around the world. Here's what they thought about the Core Skills and the training day:

"The feedback we have received about the course is outstanding"

"Practical exercises that address the issues - I have simple things to remember".

"Great tutors, highly recommended"

"Would recommend to everyone in PFE as we're all customer facing"

"A great course and recommend to everyone"

"All in all, one of the best personal skills courses that I've been on"

And some longer comments:

"I found that I really enjoyed the day as it progressed and I found the insights very valuable. I was teaching the following few days, and have done a few deliveries since and it has made me much more aware of my vocal skills and more importantly my range."

"For my part I thought it was an excellent course, delivered in a very accessible manner. I thought they handled the comfort zone issues very well I never once felt that I had to force myself to do some of the exercises (individual or group) despite being well outside my comfort zone much of the time."

"Overall this has had a positive effect on my presentation skills and reduced the stress on my vocal folds. If my throat hurts I can now do something to address it, so a completely converted thumbs up from me"

And our CSAT scores for the training we gave (based on averages and with a maximum value of 5.0) gave us 5.0 (full marks) on "the course was worth the investment of my time" and "The instructor was knowledgeable about the subject matter".

SO WHO ARE WE?

We are Jeremy Fisher and Gillyanne Kayes, owners and directors of the internationally renowned voice training company Vocal Process. Vocal Process is dedicated to healthy, efficient, practical voice use. We've been professional vocal trainers for more than 25 years each, and we regularly present and lecture for up to 10 hours a day. We know that when you're speaking with people you don't want to have to think about complicated voice techniques.

We've created downloads, DVDs and CDs for the worldwide voice community, and our resources have been seen and heard by more than 44,000,000 people worldwide (BBC figures). We're published authors on healthy and efficient voice use, and have worked all over the world, personally teaching simple, profound techniques to literally thousands of speakers, singers and performers. In fact, narrator Jeremy's vocal folds are featured as the picture of healthy voice on the British Voice Association website and leaflet.

The 5 Minute Warmup For Your Voice is packed with instructions, pictures and soundfiles for the most complete learning experience. Each of the Four Core Skills come with detailed instructions and demonstrations, and a userfriendly index that enables you to pick and choose the skills you need, or revise each technique individually. And the package ends with the complete Warmup Routine in a 5 Minute track.

This groundbreaking new resource was launched on World Voice Day - and is now available worldwide as a CD.

How much is your vocal health worth to you?

If you want to join the vocal health revolution, and improve your communication into the bargain, add the 5 Minute Warmup For Your Voice CD to your cart now!

Jeremy and Gillyanne

PS Once you've listened to the Four Core Skills you can just run the 5 Minute Vocal Warmup Routine before you get to work, or in your lunch break for optimum vocal health.

PPS And don't forget the bonus track - the 10 Second Voice Check. Whenever you're about to speak in public or to an important client on the telephone, use the 10 Second Voice Check to discover how efficient your voice is - it's the exercise that Jeremy and Gillyanne use themselves all the time!

To your continued vocal health