♬
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 34 of Voice Lessons To The World.
The show where we want to help you guys as singers
by answering your questions from all over the world.
And I'll give you a chance to ask questions later,
but our question for this week comes from Max R. in Ontario, Canada.
And Max says, "Dear Justin, I sing with a lot of tension.
I have a lot of tension in my sound.
What can be done to fix this?"
That's an awesome point, Max.
Because all of us, one hundred percent of singers,
wrestle with vocal tension.
Now that's a very good job of keeping it real open for me there, Max.
Because tension is such a broad term that there's so many
different videos that I could do, and I will do,
in the future on tension.
Because it could be a lot of things.
But today I'm just going to pick one for you guys
so we can start to eliminate vocal tension from your sound.
And the one we're going to be talking about today is jaw thrust.
There's a tendency among singers, a habit really, of having jaw thrust.
It's the following kind of movement, this...
[Demonstrates jaw thrust]
...in the singing.
So maybe Max, and all, one of the tensions
that you hear and feel is that jaw.
Now, the jaw coming forward is going to put a bit of a
strain in your sound and you're actually going to really feel it.
So before we talk about how to fix it
let's talk about why one would even do it.
Why is there a tension in the jaw?
Why does it even happen?
The first reason is because of, perhaps, too much breath.
When we don't have our breath support in place,
as we've talked about before,
there's too much air coming at the vocal cords.
Somebody's got to hold it back.
A pretty good one would be the jaw.
Of course we don't want it but that's what happens.
The jaw comes forward and helps to hold the air in.
That's one.
Another thing is compression.
Nobody really wants to crack.
I've told you why you should be cracking
and cracking up a storm.
But nobody really wants to and so to increase compression
in a way that's not positive one could jut the jaw forward.
And that will cause greater compression on the cords.
So you crack less but the sound is tight.
The other thing it does is bring up the larynx.
We've again talked about how the larynx being high
isn't always a bad thing.
But if the jaw is the one that's bringing it up
that's of course not a good thing at all.
Then finally, when we sing a higher note
the air has got to get into the pharynx and
into the head more and out the mouth less.
If we jut the jaw forward we're going to increase
the size of the pharynx, but again, not in a good way.
In a way that causes a tension and limitation.
So those are the reasons why somebody
might have jaw thrust as a part of their singing.
But let's just talk about what we're really
looking for when we sing and what we should do with our jaw.
So I want you try something crazy for me.
I just want you to pretend you just kind of got a shot of
Novocain to the jaw
as a lot of voice teachers like to say.
Pretend somebody just gave you a shot of Novocain
and I just make this sound for me,
just go, duuuh.
Try that out...
Duuuh.
It's kind of sloppy, it's kind of stupid
I just want, duh.
And it's not about the jaw being open per se.
It's about it being released.
Duh.
And so when you feel that sort of idiot kind of feeling,
Duh.
One more time, try that for me...
That's nice.
Then you feel the jaw come down and back
and that's the key, down and back.
It's kind of like the sensation of having
your front teeth more forward than your back teeth.
You don't have to really try to jam it back.
That's not really good.
But if you just have our sort of idiot sound,
duuuh.
Then you're going to find the correct jaw placement.
And that really goes for all the vowels.
We're going to really talk about vowels in the future.
But just so that you can see that I can do ah, eh, ee, oh, oo,
all with that free, free jaw.
Now if you're getting into, like I say, ah, eh, ee, oh, oo
Those sorts of things are really going to put
the tension into the sound.
So what we have to do is make sure we're
exercising the voice free from that jaw thrust.
Now a good way to do that is just
take a simple H sound.
Today we're going to do h-u-h, huh.
Which is kind of like duh, but just with the H.
So you're gonna feel like a real loser here.
I hope there's nobody else in the room listening to you.
I hope you're in the privacy of your own home for this one.
But let's try this sound, just again go duh.
And now h-u-h, guys down here.
♪
Let's do,
♪ HUH - HUH - HUH - HUH ♪
And then ladies up here.
♪ HUH - HUH - HUH - HUH ♪
And you can see that I'm sliding my voice.
From 1-3, 3-5, 5-3, 3-1.
I'm not moving my jaw at all.
Look at it one more time before we start.
♪ HUH - HUH - HUH - HUH ♪
I totally have my duh position.
So here we go, let's try it.
Guys down here.
♪ HUH - HUH - HUH - HUH ♪
Great.
♪
So nice.
♪
Yep!
♪
Keep it sloppy.
♪ HUH - HUH - HUH - HUH ♪
Nice job.
♪
Great.
♪
Good for you.
♪
So loose...
♪ HUH - HUH - HUH - HUH ♪
Nothin' to it.
♪
Yep, chin down and back.
♪ HUH - HUH - HUH - HUH ♪
Awesome.
♪
Great! Two more.
♪
So loose...
♪ HUH - HUH - HUH - HUH ♪
♪
Awesome stuff.
So, you can feel what it is to have no jaw thrust in your sound.
Some of you might need a mirror for that.
Because this is another one of those things where
it's tough to know that you're doing it.
A lot of times people do ♪ HUH ♪,
And they say no no no, my jaw is down.
But really it's not.
Sometimes you need to check this one out in the mirror.
But this is another thing too, where if you can
do it without the jaw thrust,
that's how you know you've got the note.
If you have to jut the jaw probably you're tensing the larynx,
probably you're tensing the cords,
and probably you're using too much air.
So you might have to go back and examine
your breath support as well.
That's a good way just to work out the voice.
You can try some other vowels if you want,
this is a good way to work out your voice
with absolutely no jaw involvement.
And that's going to train the good guys and not the bad guys.
And hopefully, Max and all, that will be helpful for you
in starting to eliminate some of those
elements of tension from your voice.
So I hope that's been helpful for you guys today as singers. [♪]
If you have questions that you'd like to [♪]
see us answer on the show, [♪]
you can send an email to: Questions@VoiceLessonsToTheWorld.com [♪]
We just encourage you not to lose that joy or that passion. [♪]
Don't let people tell you that you can't sing. [♪]
Just keep working hard at it and prove them wrong. [♪]
Find a great voice teacher in your area. [♪]
If you guys are in New York City [♪]
you can check us out at: www.NewYorkVocalCoaching.com [♪]
And if you like these videos you can visit: [♪]
www.VoiceLessonsToTheWorld.com [♪]
I'm Justin Stoney. [♪]
We'll see you next time. [♪]
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:)