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've come back
around to articulation now so far with the articulation exercises we've been
covering consonants we've done plosives which are the explosive sounds where the
articulators explode away from each other quickly we've done nasals where the
sounds continuously go through the nasal passages and leave that way and now
we're doing fricatives now fricatives are sounds where the articulators come
very close together but they leave a little passageway and the sound can
actually friction through or buzz through the space that's left
creating a fricative okay so the fricatives that we deal with most often in
English are F V TH both the unvoiced and voiced version S Z and then the SH
sound and also the voiced version which we could spell ZH okay so those sound
like this
yeah and you might be able to tell that there are two pairs or we could call
them cognates is the official word there are two pairs of sounds for each
so there's actually four placements and each placement has an unvoiced and a
voiced version okay now here's a fun way that I like to think about this is that
the unvoiced versions of the sounds are like steam escaping from let's say a tea
kettle whereas the voiced versions are sort of like a drum you can make a
droning sound with them okay so we're going to practice all these sounds
thinking of the unvoiced sounds as steam and the voiced sounds as a drone now
don't forget all of the work we've done so far with our impulse our body our
breath support our phonation and our resonance because we want to be sure
you're supporting from the bottom of the tube and really sending lots of breath
and vibration through these sounds okay so here we go so an F sound will sound
like this we're going to make these long because these fricative sounds are
continuants meaning that they can continue so f sound will sound like this
right you've got sound escaping between the
teeth and the lower lip and then the voiced version of that is going to sound
like this we're going to drone it
yeah okay good so and here's something that I like to think of with V that I
think is fun is you can think about the sound vroom with a motorcycle so you can go
right and that will be nice too because it'll require breath
support to have those pulses okay now let's go to our THs so we have the
unvoiced version which is you may not even hear it much from where I am right
it's sound coming between the teeth and the tip of the tongue this would be as
in the word thin thin right and then the voiced version we're going to send
airflow and vibration through it
very nice good now let's go a little bit further back this is the tip of the
tongue contacting the bumpy gum ridge the alveolar ridge here's the unvoiced
version that's definitely the sound of steam or it would be the sound of a snake
and then the voiced version and this one's fun cause it sounds like a bee so I
thought I'm going to do an exercise where I send my hand around like a
bumble bee right that's fun good and then we have a little bit further back
this is now the tip or blade which is slightly behind the tip of the tongue on
the post alveolar placement so right behind the alveolar ridge we get and
then if we do the voice version we get
yeah unvoiced again the steam version is and the voiced version is as in like
the name zsa zsa yeah or the word judge that's at the end yeah okay good so these
are your fricative sounds from front to back in the mouth and practice them and
especially if you're a singer you can actually do vocalizing on any of
the voiced sounds so you could go uh that won't work alright you guys
enjoy your fricatives next week in language we will put them into context
with some tongue twisters