s a singing leader, I often include simple humming exercises at the start of my workshops and rehearsals, starting with a single sustained note and then moving onto a five-note scale. The musical benefits of this are well-documented: it helps to warm up the voice in a safe way that doesn’t exert too much pressure on the vocal folds. It can also help improve a sense of pitch and resonance, so that the voice will sound (Wellcome Collection, £9.99), explains: ‘When we hum, we maximise our internal sense of hearing. It allows you to ‘hear’ your own pitch inside your head before you let it out into the world. So, humming helps you build your own internal auditory map of pitch and melody.’
