YOUR REAL VOICE Archive

Singers can learn a lot from Kermit, Miss Piggy and my favorite, Count Dracula.  That's right, the Muppets are once again terrific examples of how to do something.  Many of the Muppet characters, as well as their brethren from Sesame Street, have faces that completely flop open when they speak.  Think of Kermit the Frog, whose lower jaw swings down freely every time he makes a sound.   A free and relaxed jaw is great for your singing because it allows your tone to flow without an "edge" to it and makes producing a great sound much less work once you get the hang of it.  It's getting to the point of having a relaxed jaw that takes work for most singers!

I read an article recently that really got me thinking about the jaw and tone.  A voice teacher wrote his thoughts on why a particular world-class opera singer sounded so great during performance.  He stood at the side of the stage and watched her sing, taking note of the technical skills and habits that make her voice work so well.  One of the main things he noticed was that every time she sang a consonant, her jaw immediately fell open.  She completely released her jaw each time she made a new sound and was able to keep that level of relaxation continuously.   That's a BIG deal if you consider how many consonant sounds we make just speaking through one sentence (47 in that sentence alone)!

I got so intrigued by this idea that I spent a week thinking about how to do it and how to teach it (which is actually why this YRV is coming to you five days later than it normally does.  I was determined to get to the bottom of this whole thing so I could write about it!)    Since most beginning singers don't even feel the tension in their jaw, and working on trying to relax usually produces more tension, I was determined to find a way around that whole problem.  Luckily, two separate moments of divine intervention while teaching voice lessons last week brought the solution.  Thus, "Muppet-mouth" was born!  I had to formulate a few new consonant sounds that I've never heard or used before in any language that I've sung, but these were the sounds that were necessary to produce the result.   

"Muppet-mouth" has worked for every student I've taught this week, and they have already road-tested the following exercises with great results.  The second exercise is the one that got the best results with every student during their warm-ups, but both exercises were necessary together for them to get the same results while singing an actual song in English, rather than just syllable sounds.

1)  Think Kermit the Frog or Count Dracula for this one.  Their lower jaw drops open every time they make a sound and only moves straight up or down (no side-to-side, front-to-back or "chewing" motion in the movement).  Sing "blah blah blah" on any easy melody line and have the sensation of your lower jaw falling straight down open, as though gravity, and not your muscles, is what is opening your mouth.   Since Muppets have no muscles, it may help to imagine that you have no muscle anywhere in your head or throat and that nothing is holding your jaw in place.   

2)  Close your mouth and puff up your cheeks with air.  Hold that for a few seconds and notice what that feels like in the front of your cheeks, particularly right next to and around your nose.  (Think of the front puffy part of a baby's cheeks, the hollows right above your upper teeth.) When you let the air out and relax, maintain the feeling of your cheeks being slightly forward and filled with air along your upper jaw line, with a very forward sensation, but let the sides of your face be completely loose and relaxed.  Say or sing "pwa" and aim the air forward to the hollows of your cheeks.  Put the emphasis on aiming the air forward into the hollows right along the upper front teeth.  Remember to let your cheeks relax as much as possible.  If your lips tense up, switch to either "fwa" or "hwa" syllable sounds, but keep the air as forward in your cheeks as you can.  Put all your attention on how it feels and not how it sounds.

Even though "pwa,"  "fwa" and "hwa" are completely made-up, we had a lot of success with these particular sounds, and nothing else we tried worked as well.  I and my students found that the sensation of moving the air forward along the upper jaw-line and into the front of the face completely relaxed the lower jaw.  This was the first time that some of my students actually experienced having their lower jaw be completely free of tension!  It was quite a breakthrough for some of them.  

The secret to making this effective in your singing is feeling exactly what it feels like to be completely relaxed in the jaw and face, and then have that sensation enough times that your body learns it and can reproduce that effect whenever you want it.  The important thing is to feel the relaxation, rather than listening to the sound.  Once you've felt relaxation in your jaw and face enough times, you'll want  it to feel like that all of the time when  you sing, which is what will develop the relaxation as a habit and give you the best tone.

If you have any questions about these exercises, please email me at info@sing-in-tune.com.  I'd love to hear about your results!  Stay tuned for Part 2 of this article in the next issue of YRV.