Dennis Parnell's Private Web

When you take a deep breath, you squish your liver and your stomach and all that soft tissue in a downward direction. Your belly will usually expand. If you expand your ribcage when inhaling, your stomach won't bulge out as much. That always looks better. If you notice where the sternum is above (it's your breastbone) and you elevate that, your ribcage will expand, your posture will improve, and you will look marvelous. You may also find yourself getting a better breath when inhaling.Once you have inhaled, your diaphragm relaxes and your “abs” take on the job of exhaling, speaking, singing, yelling, etc. If you are speaking, singing or yelling, your vocal cords go to work as well, providing you with the first “faucet” with which to squeeze the air being pumped against them from your lungs. Your abs are the generators of the squeezing of your intestines, stomach, liver, etc. They get pushed into your relaxed diaphragm, and your diaphragm gets squeezed up aginst your lungs.
Faucet #2
If you have left your vocal cords apart (as when you breathed in) then that first faucet is entirely open, and creates no resistance to the flow of air.... you simply exhale.However, if your vocal cords are brought together and held there, you will be making some sort of sound. This means the you have adjusted the first faucet, creating some resistance to the flow of air. Since the vocal cords get pulled together, they begin to vibrate as the air passes through them. You can make your lips vibrate almost the same way (they used to call it a “rasberry”). If you add a resonator by putting your lips in a trombone or tuba mouthpiece, you can make pitches similar to the way your vocal cords make pitches in your vocal tract. You can feel the resistance your lips need to make a “rasberry.” The same is true for the vocal cords. To make pitches, they vibrate, causing you to feel some resistance in your throat – not a lot unless your are yelling.

At this point, you might feel some “synergy” between your abs and your vocal cords – or, you may not. This can prove to be very vexing for some students as they attempt to understand the concept of what singers call “support.” More about that in a while.
Faucet #3
The next faucet is not used too often by “normal” singers. This faucet represents the false vocal cords, used by Mongolian singers and Tibetan monks. These false vocal cords allow one to produce very low sounds in the voice, as they vibrate along with the vocal cords, but usually an octave or more below the pitch being sung. It is possible to actually sing two real pitches at the same time, and even add higher harmonic overtones above, creating three pitches at the same time. The techniques for using the false cords can be found on line, but it is better to have a teacher, as these exercises can be rough on the vocal cords themselves if done to excess or improperly. These false vocal cords are another pair of “air squeezers,” adding to the compression of the air flowing in the vocal tract.

Faucet #4
Above the false vocal cords is the next faucet – the epiglottis. This organ can be raised or lowered or turned into a small tube surrounding the vocal cords (ventriloquists use this trick to “throw” their voices). It is operated by a group of constrictor muscles that go to work when we swallow. When lowered over the vocal cords while singing, a “Kermit the frog” or “Pee Wee Herman” sound is produced. This organ can also be used to help eliminate “breaks” in the voice. More about this later.

Faucet #5
The jaw in singing is most often used as a tuner of both vowels and an adjuster of vocal “color” or timbre (pronounced tamber – originally a French word).Choral directors often direct singers to “drop the jaw” which usually results in the singers opening the mouth too wide and loosing the very quality the director was attempting to achieve. The jaw has a sinovial joint – basically a ball joint in an elliptical holder.Generally, for singing (and the comfort of the singer) the vowel AH in most people opens the jaw as far as it needs to open for singing – even for high notes. The “tenor” in the picture is opening more than he needs to!The wider the mouth is open, the less resonance there is in the mouth cavity. In this case, the mouth is serving as a sort of megaphone, rather than a “tuner.” We will explore the tuning concept of each of these “faucets” in a much more comprehensive manner a bit later. For now we just need to know that the jaw serves both vowel and timbre.Faucet #6This is the big one! The tongue is probably the most important organ in the vocal tract – especially for singing. It is often a blessing and a curse for singer and teacher alike. Sometimes it seems the tongue simply has a mind of its own and will not do what is asked for. This is often a teaching problem, as it is very difficult to “train” the tongue to do things it is not used to doing.There is a way, however, to get that obstreperous item to do your bidding. It is learning to literally tune the vocal tract. Not the pitches you are singing, but the vocal tract itself!Let's examine how the tongue makes two separate cavities in the vocal tract.Notice the Eee vowel brings the front part of the tongue up and forward, making a very small cavity in the front of the vocal tract and a large one behind the “hump” of the tongue. The beginning of the word “human” creates this tongue position, as does the German word “ich.”The Eh vowel has the hump in the middle - you can use the “K” in the word “kick” to feel this tongue position.The Ah vowel position can be found by saying “Bach” and extending the sound of the “ch.”Wherever the tongue is near the roof of the mouth it creates some compression. You might like to think of that as if we had put a short hose with a nozzle on faucet #6. You can feel the compression on the roof of your mouth for each of the three vowels: especially on “human” and “Bach.” It's as though you were aiming a stream of air (from the nozzle effect) at a specific place on your hard or soft palate. This is the beginning of your understanding of vocal technique. Not only can you feel that jet of air, but you can repeatedly do it by yourself again and again without a teacher. You are learning the concept of “placement.”By moving your tongue into these repeatable positions, you are training yourself to get a tactile sense of what the airflow inside the vocal tract feels like to you. This is very important!This is the Eee vowelThis is the Eh vowelThe picture on the next page represents the Aaa vowel (as in the word bad, hat , sat, etc)Here the mouth works more like a megaphone – this is often a “nasty” sound, generating a lot of high frequencies. Sounds like Jerry Lewis, The Nanny, or the Aflac duck. A very useful training sound, often found in r and b singing and in some Eastern European singing styles (Bulgarian Women's Choirs).