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Hi everybody!
My name is Justin Stoney and I'm the founder of
New York Vocal Coaching here in New York City.
Welcome to episode 54 of Voice Lessons To The World.
The show where we want to help you guys as singers by
answering your questions from all over.
And I'll give you a chance to ask questions later
but our question for this week comes from
Arnold C. in Lublin, Poland.
And Arnold writes, "Dear Justin, I loved your video on "The Deadly I".
And I was wondering could you do more videos on the vowels?
Well thank you so much Arnold for the kind encouragement.
And yes indeed, we will do videos on the other vowels.
But today my very, very favorite vowel- the magic E.
Ok so the E vowel is just so, so great.
And voice teachers and singers often consider to be
a sort of magical vowel.
The reason why this is true is if you can do a great E vowel,
things tend to go really well for the voice.
And really well in the universe.
If there's problems with the E vowel though,
there tends to be some kinds of limitations.
So today we're going to talk about how to do a great E vowel.
And, what that can mean for your voice,
which I promise is some magical stuff.
So first, why is the E vowel so awesome?
[hits piano]
Because it totally is.
One reason is the E vowel has more compression
than the other vowels if you're doing it properly.
And what that means is as we're going up
the voice tends to want to flip -
to falsetto if you're a man or
head voice if you're a female -
as you're going higher.
But the compression that's naturally in the E vowel
is very good for preventing that crack from happening.
So you can often go higher with the E vowel
than with the other vowels if you're doing it right.
That's one thing.
The other thing is singers often struggle
with some tension in the tongue and jaw,
and some compensation.
We hear it right away with the E vowel
if there's something going wrong.
If the singer can do E, things are going well.
But if something like, ehr-ehr happens
then we know that there a problem
with the tongue or the jaw.
So a great E vowel will be the front of the tongue forward,
touching just behind the bottom teeth
and the back of the tongue lifted very high and tall.
E.
That's the E vowel that we're really looking for.
Now the next thing about an E vowel
that's so, so great is it gives us the brightness
and the ringing sound that we love in voices.
Now we like to have the dark sound of the voice too
but we often want the bright to be present.
And singers get the brightness of their voice
sometimes by pushing,
sometimes by raising the larynx too high,
by compressing the cords, or by spreading the mouth.
There's lots of ways to get the sound too bright.
But the E vowel gives you a natural brightness
because it's our brightest vowel.
So if you do the E vowel well
your voice will just have a great brightness to it
because of that magic E.
Now let's talk about some problems with the E vowel.
One thing that people do is spread it out too much
even though it doesn't need to be.
A lot of singers will do E
when really we were just looking for E.
Again it's the front of the tongue forward
and touching just behind the bottom teeth
and the back of the tongue lifted.
E.
So we don't need to do, E.
This will cause some problems.
Next, the E vowel could be too tight.
It could squeeze too much
Or it doesn't really help us to keep the larynx stable,
so make sure you're not over-compressing your E vowel.
Don't squeeze as an, E. [demonstrates a strained vowel]
We don't need all that extra compression.
Just the natural compression of a pure E vowel is enough
So watch that you're not squeezing the larynx up.
Or squeezing the cords to tight with the E.
Now the next thing is the vowel itself.
So many people think that they're doing E.
But they're really not.
And this is the major problem with the E.
So many people will do either either,
[Demonstrates]
And we have a retracted tongue where the front is moving back.
[Demonstrates E with tongue tension]
Watch out for that because that's stabilizing the larynx with your tongue.
We don't want this.
[Demonstrates E with tongue tension]
And the other thing is people will try to do E,
and will end up with "ih" or even "eh".
Where the back of the tongue is dropping.
Both of these things, the "ih" and the "eh"
is either the front or the back of the tongue stabilizing the larynx.
And then all manner of problems start to happen.
If we can keep the front forward and the back tall- E - then we've
got our E vowel in place.
Let me just show you a classic example
of where the E vowel goes wrong.
The American "Star-Spangled Banner"
which is so, so hard for singers to sing often.
We've got the end...
♪ Oe'r the land of the free ♪
Oh man, I really spread it out.
♪ Oe'r the land of the free ♪
Oh no, I didn't need to go wide with it.
Or singers sometimes do...
♪ Oe'r the land of the freh ♪
♪ freh ♪
Right? Now that's not even the vowel.
Doesn't sound all that bad, but that's an eh vowel.
So I had to compensate with my tongue.
♪ Oe'r the land of the free ♪
If I'm singing my E vowel properly I get a nice ringing sound
and it's very effortless.
It stays connected, it stays bright,
and it's easy to do.
♪ Oe'r the land of the free ♪
And there's my E vowel in a great place.
Now just with our I vowel, we had an exercise,
that helped combat the problems of the vowel,
that we were working on.
So we're going to do that again today.
This time with gween, G-W-E-E-N, gween.
The G is going to get your tongue in the right place.
And the W is going to prevent you from spreading.
And the N is going to help you keep the air inside the head.
So we're going to do gween gween gween together
on a 5-3-4-2-1.
And this is going to help you get E vowel in the right place.
So guys you're going to be right here...
♪ GWEEN ♪
And ladies up here...
♪ GWEEN ♪
We're gonna do this together and feel the magic of the E vowel.
So here we go...
♪ GWEEN ♪
♪
Nice job.
♪
♪ GWEEN ♪
Good for you.
♪
So nice!
♪
That's it.
♪ GWEEN ♪
Good for you.
♪
You've got it.
♪
♪ GWEEN ♪
Right.
♪
Good stuff.
♪
Mhm!
♪
Nice.
♪ GWEEN ♪
Great!
♪
Mhm!
♪
♪ GWEEN ♪
Mhm.
♪
Great.
♪
♪ GWEEN ♪
Mhm!
♪
Right on!
♪ GWEEN ♪
Good for you.
♪
Keep it up!
♪
A few more.
♪ GWEEN ♪
Right on.
♪
Last one!
♪ GWEEN ♪
♪
Great, great stuff.
So that will help you keep your E vowel
in a magical place and start learning what
it feels like to do a really proper E vowel.
And like I say, it's going to make all right with the voice
and all right with the universe too.
So Arnold, thank you so much for your great question
and I hope that's been helpful for you today as singers.
If you guys have questions that you'd like to see us
answer on the show you can send an email to,
Questions@VoiceLessonsToTheWorld.com.
So we just encourage you don't lose that joy,
don't lose that passion, don't let people tell you
that you can't sing because you and I both know it's just not true. [♪]
Get with a great voice teacher in your area. [♪]
Or if you guys are in the New York City area, [♪]
or you want to Skype with one of our staff, [♪]
you can visit us at www.NewYorkVocalCoaching.com. [♪]
I also encourage you to download our free app. [♪]
It's for iPhone and iPad, a lot of free resources, tips, [♪]
articles, videos, so many things there [♪]
to help you guys grow to the next level as singers. [♪]
So check that out. [♪]
Or you can visit www.VoiceLessonsToTheWorld.com. [♪]
I'm Justin Stoney. [♪]
We'll see you next time. [♪]
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