2/27/2018 0 Comments VowelsA new student who has never had a lesson before is like a blank slate. They have heard music, have sung before, usually know how to match pitches and to move their voices up and down the scale, an if they have sung enough, they have made sort of a map about how the voice lies. As they ascend the scale there is the loud easy part, followed by a tough place where they either squeeze or push, and then the easy place again, where sounds entirely different and high. They are unaware of the jaw or tongue tension, or that they are pushing or squeezing at all. They sing a bit like they talk, usually, and don’t know to take long, deep breath to make the most of their tone. It takes a while to convince teens that they need to add energy to their breath.
Vowels We start with trying to sing pure vowels on exercises and warm ups. The “Ah” vowel usually starts too far back in the throat, so we try to lengthen it, and move it forward as we release the jaw to make room for that nice round “Ah” vowel. “Ah” is what we call an open vowel. An open vowel is a speech sound produced by comparatively open configuration of the vocal tract, with vibration of the vocal cords. An open vowel is a vowel sound in which the tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of the mouth. Open vowels are sometimes also called low vowels in reference to the low position of the tongue. Other open vowels are “open I” (the sound in “bitter”, “big” and “pickle”, “open o” the sound in “bought”, “moth” and “bother”, and “open e as in “bed”, “red” and “bled”. There is also open U, which is like “bug”, “plug” and “tug”. There are mixed vowels, where the vocal cords are a little closer together. “Closed o”, (as in “most”, “both” and “post”) and closed e. The closed “e” vowel creates a bit of a problem because we do not have that vowel in English—we have similar sounding words--“ay” like bay, may, hay. Notice that there is a kind of a hook at the end of the English words. That is called a diphthong. The Oxford definition of this word is: “a sound formed by the combination of two vowels in a single syllable, in which the sound begins as one vowel and moves toward another (as in coin, loud, and side).” The pure mixed vowel of closed e has not got the diphthong at the end of it. If you dissect the word “bay” slowly you will get “bay-ee”. The closed e sound, or the Italian e. is produced higher on the palate, and lacks the “ee” hook of the English “bay. Other words have the diphthong hook like “Shine”, “my” and “beautiful”. We need to be careful of how we approach diphthongs when we sing, because we have a tendency to chew on them in American English. More on that later! Finally there are closed vowels. Closed vowels represent the vowels wherein the vocal cords are approximating the closest of all the vowel sounds. A closed vowel is also known as a high vowel. The defining characteristic of a closed vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as possible to the roof of the mouth as it can be without creating a constriction. Those sounds are closed “i” as in “ mean”, “green”, “queen” and “ski”. There is also closed u, which is like “moon”, “boot”, “coupe” and “scoop”.
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