As you all know, we must sing with freedom. While singing is not a relaxed activity it does require the releasing of any tension that may be extraneous or detrimental to our singing.
One of the main culprits when it comes to unhelpful tension is the tongue. If the tongue is not free and flexible it cannot properly shape vowels or articulate consonants.
I do tongue-freeing exercises with all of you, usually toward the beginning of our singing (Session 1), in order to encourage a release that will carry over to the rest of your singing as well.
In exercises like la-la-la and da-da-da the tip of the tongue moves to the front part of the roof of your mouth (the alveolar ridge) or even to the teeth. The freer the tongue is the faster you will be able to do this.
In exercises like ga-ga-ga and ya-ya-ya the middle and back part of the tongue moves up and down. Do these exercises quickly with the jaw as released and uninvolved as possible.
Then you can do combinations of these exercises, again as quickly as you can manage and with release at the jaw: ya-la-ya-la, di-ga-di-ga.
Those of you who can trill your r’s can use that as well. I always like to go from a trilled r to a vowel so you can get as close to “real” singing as possible.
Another thing to consider is that, since the base of the tongue is so near the top of the larynx, if the tongue is pressed too low it will push down on the larynx. While we do often want the tongue to be flat and out of the way for our open vowels, we don’t want it to be held in a way that depresses or excessively lowers the larynx. One helpful image I’ve read to help with this is to imagine that the tongue is falling forward. You may think of the tongue as being weightless or even floating in your mouth as you are sustaining vowels.
Knowing how involved the tongue is in our singing, it’s a good idea to regularly “check in” and see if it is free or if it is carrying any undue tension. Freeing exercises like the ones discussed above are great to incorporate into your regular routine.
Happy singing!
Now go practice.
I have a big issue with my tongue.The problem is I think my tongue is down a lot of the time but, to my surprise it isn't. To fix this problem I have spent more time watching myself sing making sure my tongue is down. Then, I try to feel the difference between the two. It is becoming easier to hear the more I am practicing it.
ReplyDeleteTongue tension is quite hard for me. I feel like some of my problems with spin come from my tongue getting in the way, and moving along with my vibrato. We did many exercises in my last voice lesson that released tongue tension, and i felt my spin felt way more natural than it does some of the time. I need to do more exercises like this to relax my spin and keep it natural. -DRB
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of tongues... I feel like the biggest problem with my tongue is that it won't move fast enough. I think the south has cursed me with a slow tongue. The exercises that go from b-d-b-d and c-g-c-g really help me. I have been working on trying to go faster and faster with those exercises. I have also realized that when my tongue is tense it also affects my jaw and neck. The back of my neck squeezes and then the voice cannot release. The tongue is super important and when it is free so is everything else. I also think it's awesome to release the tongue because then everything is so relaxed and you don't have to wonder why you sound like a dying cat because of lack of breath. Bottom line, I've been working on this quite a bit and am really shocked at how much faster and freer the tongue works when there isn't any tension behind it. Also as a side note, in yoga they randomly will remind you to remove the tongue from the roof of the mouth. This is super interesting to me because the tongue is up there because of stress or too much focus in the wrong places. !!!! Release the tongue!!
ReplyDeleteSarah Walker
I feel like I don't usually have an issue with my tongue. I feel that speaking Spanish has loosened my tongue because of the sounds that the language requires. I do still really enjoy the exercises for relaxing the tongue. I find them fun and, while I don't hold a lot of tension in my tongue, I hold a lot in my jaw. So doing tongue exercises gives my jaw a nice break. I never thought about the tongue pressing down on the vocal chords. It makes sense, I just never realized that that's a thing.
ReplyDeleteMy tongue is quite fat, and manipulating it at times is quite a feat. In lessons when more complicated warm ups like "dig-ga-da", etc. begin (in session 2), my tongue gets tied up on the syllables and I cannot do the exercise. Once I focus on releasing tension, in the tongue specifically, rather than doing the exercise correctly, I can annunciate the sounds correctly and perform the warm up correctly. It's about not having tension at the root of it.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting because tongue tension isn't something I've ever thought about in conjunction with singing. It's a huge part of voice and speech work that I've done but never applied to my singing. I don't feel particularly tense in my tongue (thank you Sandra Shotwell) I always tend to feel tension in my throat or jaw, but being aware of the tongue and how it could be looser may help focus my attention away from my problem areas. It's probably also helpful to be more aware of the tongue when forming vowels during sounding exercises. Efficient tongue placement can only seem to serve efficient resonance as well!
ReplyDeleteIn previous voice lessons with the School of Music, tongue tension was often brought to my attention as a factor hindering my ability to sing higher notes. My voice teacher would always have me imagine getting my tongue down and out of the way, which in turn made me imagine pressing the root of my tongue towards the front of my neck/throat. I believe this effort actually resulted in more tension and less ability to sing higher. Thinking of the tongue as floating or leaning forward, allowing the idea of gravity to work has felt helpful to me as opposed to thinking too much and with too much effort about the tongue. Still, I need work on tongue agility type exercises like the "dig-a-dig-a" warm up that seems to get me tongue tied.
ReplyDeleteFor me, I love to practice! I think the harder the exercise, the better I will become. The tongue exercises can be hard but I learn to appreciate it. A trick I learn to make those exercises easier is to relax my jaw and not think too much about it. This way my tongue is relaxed and so am I. Sometimes when I am doing these exercises I tense up, but then I just need to remember to be calm and rub out my jaw.
ReplyDeleteI really like doing the tongue exercises. I find them hilarious and helpful. It's always tricky for me because the more I think about the exercises, the more tense my tongue becomes. When I simply let it fly I feel that it's much easier. When I'm practicing, I tend to forget how important they are. I notice the biggest difference when I do/don't do them before I sing my Italian. This has been a thought weighing on my mind because I am having to address it in multiple classes. When I'm working with Sands I almost think that some of the exercises are counter productive because my tongue feels more tense after we finish. Maybe I'm doing them incorrectly, but I think that some just work better for me than others.
ReplyDeleteLast year, we did an exercise where we felt the root of our tongue underneath our jaw and felt it tense as we went up and down a scale. I came to a realization then how useless tension in the tongue was for hitting a note. I had sort of a breakthrough on the subject of mouth, jaw, and tongue release last semester in Voice and Speech, and that information has translated directly into being able to more consistently hit higher notes with more ease. It even makes the voice more responsive to the emotion of the song! Release is the ultimate tool of the performing artist, and its incredibly difficult to achieve while on the spot, and sometimes even harder to notice while alone. Tongue release is one of those problem areas for me, anyway. So these exercises have been very useful!
ReplyDeleteIt is so obvious to me how much better my singing feels when my jaw/tongue/neck are relaxed, so I always try to make sure that they are, but it's always harder when I'm practicing alone than when I'm at a lesson. At home, I'm like, "oh yeah, I'm totally loose" so I don't make myself loosen my jaw/tongue/neck further, whereas at a lesson, I'm like "oh yeah, I'm totally loose," but then Brian's like, "make sure you're jaw isn't tight" so I'm like, "oh, I guess it wasn't loose.. better relax it even more." And such is the struggle of practicing. On another note, I REALLY love the trilled-R-to-a-vowel exercise!! It just brings such vocal freedom and spin to my voice. :)
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