Hi it's Elissa Weinzimmer founder of Voice Body Connection and
which means it's time for another how to warm up video
how to warm up
in today's video we're going to be talking about trills
and why they are a fabulous way to warm up now
if you're familiar with the international phonetic alphabet chart
you know that there are three different types of trills we can do in our mouth
and a trill is rapid oscillation or vibration of the articulators against
each other so we can do one which is bi-labial that means our two lips
we can do one with the tip or blade of our tongue and the alveolar ridge which is
the fancy word for the bumpy gum ridge on the top of your mouth and that sounds
like this and we can do one in the uvular area which is the hangy-ball
thing at the back of your mouth and the back of your tongue and that one I will
demonstrate to the best of my ability sounds like this
that one's hard I'll keep working on it
like that
so for our purposes right now we're going to
focus on a bi-labial trill which is the one with the two lips and it's the
easiest one for most people even though honestly trills are pretty hard now part
of the reason trills are hard but also useful is because you have to have the
ideal amount of airflow flowing through the whole system in order to set those
articulators into vibration rapid vibration together so if you bring the
two lips together and you press them too hard and don't send enough airflow then
you won't get the trill and if you send too much airflow you also won't get the
trill so let's try it right now it goes something like this
good and here's a little trick you can do as well if you're having trouble
finding the accurate engagement for your lips is take two fingers like this and
go ahead and bring them against the corners of your lips and just pinch in a
little bit to help you find the engagement with your lips in order to
really master this trill it is very important to make sure that the airflow
is working ideally for you so go back and look at the breath support exercise
in the How To Warm Up sequence if you need a reminder about how to support
from the guts of you up and out and now once you master your trill what we're
going to do is we're gonna play with it up and down so much like we did in the
humming exercise we can move up and down and around and your pitch range and we
could even bring it into singing exercises as well so I'll start with the
humming up and down and then we'll move into a singing exercise
and you can kind of just move your hands up and down wherever you want your voice
to go to help you find that matching idea and then here's what it might sound
like to do it with a singing exercise
and so on and so forth
so have fun with your trills and as you work on mastering
them you can really mix them in with any pattern of vocal up and down singing etc
it's a fabulous way to work on the coordination of airflow and also the
engagement of the articulators because here's the thing the way your lips are
behaving in this trill is actually pretty similar to the way your vocal
cords are behaving a little bit lower down in the whole tube so have fun if
you're curious about how to mix this in with other how to warm-up exercises take
a look back at the intro video and you can use all of these different videos in
the series to design yourself your perfect warm-up thanks for tuning in
today and see you next time
how to warm up