Elissa Weinzimmer here I'm a vocal health educator and the founder of Voice
Body Connection and today in my how to warm-up video series we are using straws
yay okay so straws are a wonderful tool for warming up our voice a lot of voice
teachers have been talking about them over the last number of years especially
since a voice doctor named Ingo Titze came out with a really interesting video
about how to practice straw phonation it's called so this is indeed a sound video
it pertains to the vibration at the vocal folds or vocal cords again those
are interchangeable terms but what we're doing here is we're really focusing on
the interplay between airflow and the vocal folds themselves okay because
really it's a feedback loop between we can't send too much air flow through
otherwise our vocal cords are probably going to either well they can do two
things if we send too much air flow through one is that they can just let it
through and we'll have a lot of breath coming out or the other more likely
option is that they will brace against the extra air pressure and we'll get what's
called a pressed sound the pressed thing is what caused me to lose my voice when
I was vocally pushing and so it's really important that we don't go into that
mode if and that sounds a little bit like this ah ah can you hear how there's a
little bit of that it's almost the mom stop yelling at me I'm not yelling at
you type sound right so we don't want to do that and we also don't want to send
too little air flow through because then we're going to get a breathy sound which
would sound something like this so we're trying to get an optimum amount of
airflow through the vocal folds so the vocal folds can engage nicely in their
vibratory movement without needing to use excess effort okay the straw is
helpful for that because the straw essentially lengthens our vocal tract so
again our local tract is the tube that goes from
epiglottis level of the vocal cords up through the pharynx the throat
into our oral cavity and our nasal passages okay so that two pronged tube is
where the sound bounces around and creates resonance and then that sound leaves
our mouth it gets shaped by articulation and finally into language
this is actually a little bit of a review of everything that the how to warm
up series is about right now here's the thing when we take the tube and we make
it longer with a straw we're lengthening our vocal tract but we're obviously also
narrowing it so we cannot send too much air flow through or the straw will sort
of get a blown out sound and we also can't send too little where we
won't get a buzz in the straw that lets us know that there's vibration traveling
through it so what we're looking for is that buzzing quality instead of sound
going around the sides of the straw out of your nose blowing out the sound all
together so it stops phonating etc okay I'm going to start with a smoothie
size straw because you can start bigger and work your way to smaller the smaller
you go the harder it is okay so we're going to put this between our lips and
right now we're just going to do the exercise that we did last time when we
worked on sound which was humming humming up and down and up and down in pitch and
actually I believe that was two sounds videos ago okay ready here we go
you meet up you might have heard right at the beginning that my voice cut out
for a second which actually has to do with air flow so the straw is a really
good reminder that I need to be sending continuous air flow through let me try
that glide one more time yeah and often we have issues of air flow during our
passagio our break which is the hardest part so that's really where you need to
send air flow through and this straw helps us understand how to do that
okay I'm going to move down now from smoothie size into normal soda sized
straw so let's try that one there we go so this is really letting me know when I
stop my airflow and when I'm sending too much or too little through yeah I keep
getting a little blip there okay good so practice you want to try to get
rid of the lips there we go okay great and now of course this is a coffee stirrer
straw this is small this one's going to be challenging but let's try it here we
go mmm that was definitely a blip there that oneworked yay so here's another thing to say
because the passaggio is a hard place to navigate you can always just stay in
optimum pitch range and move yourself through that optimal place right that
type of thing now also you can do especially if you're a singer you can do
vocalizing exercises with the straw I'm going to come back to the soda side and
do a vocal exercise
so you can go on so on and so forth like that you could do any sort of vocalizing like
than you would do through the straw it's a really nice way to take pressure off
of your throat to remind you to not work too hard but of course to send the
airflow through and not let that fall back so try your straws obviously you
can get these at any place you can buy them in the store or you can pick up
an extra when you buy a drink and practice with your straw
it's a really really good exercise on a day that you're feeling vocally fatigued
and it's a fantastic exercise on an everyday basis I look forward to hearing
how it goes for you