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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 33 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 Greg F. in Eugene, Oregon.
And Greg says, "Dear Justin, what do I do about a retracted tongue?"
Whoa!
Greg, thank you very much for that great question.
And that's a good piece of vocal information.
I don't know if a voice teacher gave that to you,
if that's something that you figured out on your own,
or something that you read,
but a retracted tongue that's a great thing to bring up.
So we're gonna be talking about tongue retraction today.
In future episodes we'll talk about the tongue in general.
There's a lot of things that we need to discuss about the tongue.
It can really get in the way of your singing
if you don't know what to do with it.
But tongue retraction is one big element of the
tongue problems that people sometimes have with their singing.
And it sounds like that's what you're having a problem with, Greg.
So, what is tongue retraction?
Tongue retraction is when the tongue
retracts back like this...
in your singing.
Now you may not be aware that you're doing this.
But many, many singers do without their knowledge.
It's just that pull back.
Now why would they do it?
That's the question.
Why is this a common vocal tension
and why is this a big limitation?
The reason it's common is the tongue and the larynx are interwoven,
they're right next door to each other.
So when the tongue retracts backwards it stabilizes the larynx.
Perhaps it lowers it, perhaps it holds it in place,
but that backwards tongue movement
causes a laryngeal stability.
It causes your larynx to stay where you told it to be.
Now that's a cheat and that causes a big limitation
because then your tongue is tight.
But also, then your larynx isn't learning
the skills on its own that it needs to
because the tongue is always jamming it around.
That's what tongue retraction is.
Now here's some of the things that it kind of can cause.
I'm going to do some song examples for you so you can hear it.
But then we're going to do an exercise to
work on fixing it a little bit later.
Now I'm going to start with a more classical sound.
The reason why is a lot of people that have had
classical training tend to have this tongue retraction.
Not always but a lot of times because if your teacher is always
telling you to lower the larynx.
And that's not a bad thing, we do need to be able to
sing with a low larynx.
But if it's all low larynx, low larynx, low larynx all day long
probably what's going to start to happen is the tongue
will retract so that you get more and more and more low larynx
and it becomes too much because the tongue is in the way.
Let me show you what I mean in a song called
"Lonely House" this is by Kurt Weill.
I'm going to do a really retracted tongue sound.
♪ Lonely house ♪
♪ Lonely me ♪
Now I have a lot of space there
but I'm also retracting my tongue.
♪ Lonely me ♪
I'm not doing...
[Demonstrates]
I still have a low larynx there.
I'm not doing...
[Demonstrates]
but
[Demonstrates]
With my larynx down and tongue up.
[Demonstrates]
There, I've just gone too far.
So you can take a listen...
♪ Lonely house ♪
♪ Lonely me ♪
That's with my tongue forward, still a classical sound.
♪ Lonely house ♪
♪ Lonely me ♪
I might be doing that- that's the retracted sound again-
to try to get more space.
But again, you can hear that's too much space for my sound.
The tongue is in the way.
Now what if we went to a more rock example.
I'm gonna pick something again with some E vowels in it
"Let It Be" by The Beatles.
There's a little bit of a different issue in pop music.
You're not going to get that [retracted tongue] sound with the tongue.
But I might do something like this...
♪ When I find myself in times of trouble ♪
♪ Mother Mary comes to me ♪
♪ Speaking words of wisdom ♪
♪ Let it be ♪
Now that's the retracted sound.
You probably couldn't quite tell at first but
I'm going to explain this to you.
Here's my tongue forward...
♪ When I find myself in times of trouble ♪
♪ Mother Mary comes to me ♪
♪ Speaking words of wisdom ♪
♪ Let it be ♪
Did you hear it?
It's more subtle in pop, but it still happens.
I'm having to spread, we talked about that last time,
I'm having to spread to compensate for the fact that
my tongue is back here...
[Demonstrates]
So I have to go...
[Demonstrates]
But my tongue is still back.
But if it was just E to begin with I'd get what I want.
♪ When I find myself in times of trouble ♪
♪ Mother Mary comes to me ♪
Perfect.
♪ When I find myself in times of trouble ♪
♪ Mother Mary comes to me ♪
You can hear me go back and forth between the retracted and the forward.
Now, again this is an example.
Justin, why would anybody do that?
But if you listen carefully to your recordings of yourself
you might hear some of those sounds happen
and it might be because of the tongue retraction.
Classical singers, musical theater, rock, anywhere in between,
tons of tongue retraction stabilizing the larynx.
Now what can we do to fix it?
I'm going to give you an exercise right here.
The E vowel is a great vowel, period.
Everybody loves the E vowel.
It's fantastic in so many ways.
We're going to get to that in the future.
But can you do a good one, that's the question.
If you can, awesomeness ensues in your voice.
If you can't, big trouble happens.
So just being able to do a good E vowel,
and I'm also going to give you a K,
this stuff will help you to keep your tongue forward.
So doing an exercise like Ke-Ke-Ke
makes it very difficult to cheat the larynx
back and down with the tongue.
So we're going to do Ke-Ke-Ke together.
Just so you can get a feeling of what it feels like to
really have that tongue nice and tall and forward
and not retracted.
Right.
Now watch out for things like this...
You can still cheat.
Ke-Ke-Ke-Ke-Ke
I could still do it.
So I really need Ke-Ke-Ke right up front.
Now you can do this with a low larynx,
a middle larynx, or more of a pop higher larynx.
Doesn't matter to me, just as long as these are
just solid E vowels.
So we're gonna have the guy's down here...
♪ Ke-Ke-Ke-Ke-Ke ♪
And ladies up here...
♪ Ke-Ke-Ke-Ke-Ke ♪
And let's just have that nice forward tall tongue together,
not retracting.
♪
♪ Ke-Ke-Ke-Ke-Ke ♪
Nice.
♪
Yep.
♪
Good.
♪
♪ Ke-Ke-Ke-Ke-Ke ♪
Excellent.
♪
Great job.
♪
Nice!
♪ Ke-Ke-Ke-Ke-Ke ♪
Great.
♪
Good for you.
♪
♪ Ke-Ke-Ke-Ke-Ke ♪
Excellent.
♪
Good stuff.
♪
Good, keep it forward.
♪
♪ Ke-Ke-Ke-Ke-Ke ♪
Excellent.
♪
A few more.
♪
♪ Ke-Ke-Ke-Ke-Ke ♪
Good.
♪
And last one.
♪ Ke-Ke-Ke-Ke-Ke ♪
Great stuff.
So, just keeping that tongue, nice and tall,
nice and forward.
It's a harder skill than you'd think.
I want you guys watching out for that
in your technique exercises, in your song work.
You should never really have your tongue
jamming back like that.
That's only going to cause limitations
that don't let your voice grow.
So, Greg and all, 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 lost that joy, don't lose that passion. [♪]
Get with 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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