Lift and firmness in the palate is a great way to add brightness to the voice, re-center pitch, and regulate vibrato. And all it takes is one silly face: The Lip Over!
The first two videos in the Vibrato series dealt with keeping airflow rapid and steady, and then in placing the sound high. Today’s exercise is the final touch for regulating vibrato, especially if you’re hoping to create a straight sound without feeling like you’re rubbing two dry sticks together in your throat.
We’ll create a taut, high palate that will help to really stabilize the sound and create brightness and a ringing tone.
Even if straight tone singing is not your aim (or it seems totally impossible!), you can absolutely regulate the vibrato and place it back up in the mask of the face where it belongs with the Lip Over Exercise. Wobbles, saggy tuning, and dull tone will be a thing of the past!
How to do the Lip Over
This is another paired exercise, where we use a physical manipulation (pulling the lip over) to create a desired effect on a sung phrase, and then repeat the phrase without the manipulation, maintaining the inner adjustments.
Give it a try!
- Put your upper lip down over the top teeth. ALL THE WAY OVER so it looks like you have no teeth at all. Because pulling the lip over will probably make your tongue retract into the throat, now stick the tongue out and down, maintaining the lip over position.
- Now we’re going to sing the pattern Sol-La-Fa-Sol-Mi-Fa-Re-Mi-Do on “ee”, with the lip over and the tongue out. You’ll probably feel the air moving right across that top palate, and a sense of taut-ness or firmness in the upper palate.
- Release the lip and tongue to “normal,” but keep that inner firmness and sing the same pattern on “ee.”
I won’t lie – this exercise is more challenging to coordinate than some of the others I teach, but the effects are absolutely worth it.
And if you just can’t get the lip over and the tongue out at the same time, just do the lip part and follow up with some tongue stretches after.
Be sure to check out the other videos in the Vibrato series:
Series Introduction and Doobie Doo
And thanks for practicing!
