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From:  Karen Mercedes <dalila@R...>
Date:  Mon Nov 25, 2002  8:29 pm
Subject:  Re: [vocalist] Hi everyone!! New person here : )

1) Your nervousness to some extent is directly proportional to your
confidence in your technique. As your technique improves, your nervousness
will reduce.

2) Instead of trying to "drop your jaw", try instead to "unhinge" your
jaw. Start by figuring out where the hinge is: Put your fingers right in
front of your ears, just at the little indentation - when you lower your
chin, this indentation will widen. Now, leaving your fingers there, try
lowering your chin down towards your neck. Open and close it very quickly,
to get a sense of freedom in the opening/closing movement. I call this
freedom "floppy jaw".

3) Close your mouth again. Now, without opening your lips, LIFT your upper
molars off of your lower molars. You should feel this LIFT at the sides of
your skull above your ears, and even in your eyebrows. This is what you
want to feel. With your upper teeth in this lifted position, again push
the chin down towards your neck WITHOUT TENSING YOUR TONGUE AT ALL. Keep
the "lift" feeling and do the floppy jaw, open close exercise. The tip of
your tongue should be behind the lower teeth. The middle of the tongue
might lift up slightly. If you look in the mirror, you'll look a bit like
an idiot.

4) Close your mouth again. Make an "o" shape with your lips, then "fan"
the lips out and forward (think "fish lips"), so the lips become a kind
of mini-megaphone.
If your lips are in this position, it will be impossible for the root of
your tongue to tense and your jaw to clench. Just practise vocalising on
vowels that you can sing in that "forward O lips" mouth shape (think tall
ellipse, rather than circle, when you think "O"). The sounds you'll be
able to make with only very small adjustments to the tongue position are:

Italian: open and closed "o"
French: "oe" (and in "coeur")
English: "aw" (as in "paw")

Work on keeping the lips extended even when you close your mouth. If you
do this, you may notice that your upper molars automatically "lift" off
the lower molars. It's impossible to extend the lips and clench
your teeth at the same time.

5) With the "O" lips and lifted molars, now do "floppy jaw". You can
vocalise when you do this: start with a monotone "buh-buh-buh-buh-buh"
very fast, as your lips open and close because of your jaw lowering and
rising. Then try singing a 5-note descending scale on "buh": concentrate
on how everything FEELS - make sure the upper molars remain lifted off the
lower ones, and that the lips remain extended forward ("fishy"), and that
the jaw moves easily (floppily), and that the tip of the tongue remains
behind the lower front teeth.

6) Now play with some different vowel sounds while doing the exercise in
(5). First try the vowel sounds I listed in (4). Once you can do all of
these with floppy jaw, fishy lips, and lifted upper molars, you can
experiment with more closed vowels: Italian i and u. The trick is to
create the "i" ONLY by raising the middle of the tongue (the part
underneath your soft palate). NOTHING ELSE
CHANGES: The lips are still forward, the upper molars are still lifted,
the jaw is still floppy, the tip of the tongue is still behind the bottom
front teeth. Now try starting with the "aw" sound in this position, then
change nothing EXCEPT for raising the middle of your tongue: "aw...eee"
(think of a donkey: ee-aw, ee-aw). Pay very close attention to the
sensations you feel: the molars stay lifted, the lips stay "O", the tip of
the tongue stays down, the jaw is still "floppy". Only the middle of the
tongue rises and lowers.
To turn the "i" into an "u", all you need to do is "tighten" the closure
of the forward lips. Try it - nothing else changes: the tongue for "i" and
"u" are in exactly the same position, everything else remains the same:
only the lips close slightly - think about the drawstring on a bag - for
"u" you pull it closed more, for "i" you open it again.


Give these things a try, and ALWAYS stay very aware of the sensations when
you know you're doing things right, and when you think you might be
"slipping" back into old habits. Also, I strongly suggest you do all this
in front of a mirror (wall or hand mirror), so you can be sure your lips
are really extending, your chin is really lowering easily, your tongue tip
remains down behind the lower teeth. Learn to relate the visual cues with
the sensations you feel.

Let me know how you do, if you have questions, want more suggestions, etc.

Karen Mercedes
http://www.radix.net/~dalila/index.html
________________________________
That man is the happiest who
is most thoroughly deluded.
- Erasmus





  Replies Name/Email Yahoo! ID Date  
21122 Re: "jaw just won't drop - was: RE: [vocalist] Hi everyone!! New pDré de Man dredeman Mon  11/25/2002  
21128 Re: Hi everyone!! New person here : )Dawn crazy4jet66 Tue  11/26/2002  

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