Line things up and let your voice out! You can sing more freely by knocking out misalignment and tongue tension.
Two of the most common challenges to free singing are misalignment (ie. crumpling) in the vocal pathway and the tongue (that old rascal!) getting in the way. You can remedy both with today’s simple exercise.
Imagine your singing mechanism as a tank and a tube. You need to take air into the tank and then move it back out through a tube shaped as sound. If you want to free up your singing, it makes sense to start by A) Straightening the tube and B) Removing any obstructions at the top of the tube.
That’s what we’ll do today!
If the video does not embed properly, here’s the YouTube Link! : https://youtu.be/7gCvONWyCEQ
How To Do It:
- Begin with a lifted posture. In the video, I’m going to stand against a wall so I can monitor the sensations against the back of my head (which might be easier to sense than “staying aligned”). This is the same posture as the Nobble Lift, but with backup!
- Stretch your tongue – forward, to either side, up toward the nose, and down as you yawn. Feel that part in the back that is really getting a good stretch? THAT’S the part we’re targeting here, because it would rather be in a ball at the back of your throat, ie. singing tube.
- Check your alignment – did the head come away from the wall when you stretched the tongue forward? Refresh your posture.
- Put the tongue on the lower lip, so it’s out of the mouth, and keep it soft and floppy. Send your air up and out on an energized sigh. This will feel somewhat like a combo between the Heimlich maneuver and a sigh. Beautiful! This sound is quite resonant and free – bookmark this feeling for later.
- Now we’re going to sing. The pitches are an arpeggiated octave: Do Mi Sol Do Sol Mi Do on “Ee-Ah-Ee-Ah-Ee-Ah-Ee,” with the tongue ON the lower lip (if you’d like a refresher on exactly how the vowels are made in your mouth, check out the Six Vowels Video). Remember to prioritize feeling over sound – of course, the sound will be fuzzy because the tongue is on the lip.
- Watch out for the tongue yanking back into the mouth on Ah, for overwork on the jaw, or for the head creeping away from the wall as you sing. Can you find your way back to that free feeling from the sigh?
- Work your way through the range – this exercise works pretty much anywhere.
Let me know how this worked for you in the comments, and thanks for practicing!
