You may have encountered problems with the previous two exercises. For example:
Cause: You have gone back to producing the note from your throat rather than keeping the focus high in your head.
Remedy: Make sure you keep imagining you’re still humming even when your mouth is open.
Cause: You are not simply allowing your jaw to drop open. You might be tensing it, moving it downwards too forcibly, forcing it too wide like a letterbox, or tightening your lips over your teeth.
(By the way, if you’re a singer you may have come across teachers and choir directors who maintain that if your mouth isn’t open jaw-achingly wide you can’t be singing properly. Almost the opposite is true. Opening your jaw too wide will make your neck and throat tense, which is exactly what you want to avoid.)
Remedy: Watch in a mirror to see what the problem is. The aim is to keep your lips, mouth and jaw as relaxed as possible. Starting from a point just in front of your ears, use your fingers to massage gently round your lower jaw, or gently stroke your fingers down each side of your face, as you practise opening and closing your mouth. You can do this at any time to help relax.
Incidentally, paying attention to the clarity of your vowels is another way of sounding authoritative – because it will stop you speaking too quickly.
You may have noticed that powerful people generally speak more slowly than others do. They exude the confidence that people will stop and listen to them. Nervousness, on the other hand, often leads people to talk faster. Make your vowels last longer and you’ll slow down and appear in control. Once again, you’ll find your voice playing a key role in managing the classroom. We’ll cover this aspect in more detail in Part Two of the Better Voice course.
Cause: You are not allowing your tongue to move downwards with your lower jaw. This could be because you’re rather tense, or you just haven’t got the knack yet of how to do it.
If your tongue stays high it will block some of the sound that should be coming out of your mouth. As you hear your own voice to quite a large extent through the bones of your skull it won’t be very noticeable to you, but it will be to anyone listening.
As a general rule, whenever you speak (or sing) your tongue should be lying in the bottom of your mouth unless it is being used to form a consonant that needs it to come up higher (‘d’, ‘l’, ‘n’, ‘r’, ‘s’, ‘t’ or ‘z’).
Remedy: Keep practising, and use the jaw massage described above to help stay relaxed.
Build your confidence with a variation on the previous two exercises that uses the two types of hum alternately and different notes:
Q: What, if any, problems did you encounter when opening your mouth? Are you working to overcome them?
You may have encountered problems with the previous two exercises. For example:
Cause: You have gone back to producing the note from your throat rather than keeping the focus high in your head.
Remedy: Make sure you keep imagining you’re still humming even when your mouth is open.
Cause: You are not simply allowing your jaw to drop open. You might be tensing it, moving it downwards too forcibly, forcing it too wide like a letterbox, or tightening your lips over your teeth.
(By the way, if you’re a singer you may have come across teachers and choir directors who maintain that if your mouth isn’t open jaw-achingly wide you can’t be singing properly. Almost the opposite is true. Opening your jaw too wide will make your neck and throat tense, which is exactly what you want to avoid.)
Remedy: Watch in a mirror to see what the problem is. The aim is to keep your lips, mouth and jaw as relaxed as possible. Starting from a point just in front of your ears, use your fingers to massage gently round your lower jaw, or gently stroke your fingers down each side of your face, as you practise opening and closing your mouth. You can do this at any time to help relax.
Incidentally, paying attention to the clarity of your vowels is another way of sounding authoritative – because it will stop you speaking too quickly.
You may have noticed that powerful people generally speak more slowly than others do. They exude the confidence that people will stop and listen to them. Nervousness, on the other hand, often leads people to talk faster. Make your vowels last longer and you’ll slow down and appear in control. Once again, you’ll find your voice playing a key role in managing the classroom. We’ll cover this aspect in more detail in Part Two of the Better Voice course.
Cause: You are not allowing your tongue to move downwards with your lower jaw. This could be because you’re rather tense, or you just haven’t got the knack yet of how to do it.
If your tongue stays high it will block some of the sound that should be coming out of your mouth. As you hear your own voice to quite a large extent through the bones of your skull it won’t be very noticeable to you, but it will be to anyone listening.
As a general rule, whenever you speak (or sing) your tongue should be lying in the bottom of your mouth unless it is being used to form a consonant that needs it to come up higher (‘d’, ‘l’, ‘n’, ‘r’, ‘s’, ‘t’ or ‘z’).
Remedy: Keep practising, and use the jaw massage described above to help stay relaxed.
Build your confidence with a variation on the previous two exercises that uses the two types of hum alternately and different notes:
Q: What, if any, problems did you encounter when opening your mouth? Are you working to overcome them?
