Tongue Position when Singing + Exercises to Avoid Tongue Tension

you you should talk a lot when you sing and depending on how you position it it can either hinder you or help you to get the sound that you want today I'm going to teach you good song position for singing and I'm going to give you some tips to avoid that dreaded tongue tension let's get to it hello singers my name is Rania Peterson and I'm here to geek out on your voice now getting my tongue position right was one of those things in my vocal journey that was like BAM I was having a hard time getting the right resonant space and I was having sort of a muffled sound and getting my tongue position right really helped me there so I want to get you there too today we're going to look at tongue position how does your tongue move and where should it sit and then as I said in the intro we're going to look at tongue tension now if you already know how your tongue behaves that's totally cool if you just want to get to the tongue tension part it's hard to say tongue tension part it starts right at this time the rest of us we're going to take a look at your tongue your tongue moves around a lot when you speak and when you sing and it has to otherwise we can't understand what you're saying just try with me right now to say the phrase I am a singing geek and try to say it without moving your tongue if you have clean hands you can even put a finger on your tongue to help it not move so let's try that together right now ah nice so I could even feel that my tongue you wanted to push against the fingers because because it wanted to move around to make the vows and the consonants that are needed to to make the our language so the tongue moves around a lot and really it moves a tip up and down and the sides can move and curl the middle of the tongue can move up and touch the different molars and the bag of the tongue can move up to touch the soft palate a flat so when we talk about tongue position it's not that there's just this one position that your tongue should be in at all times otherwise we would not be able to communicate with each other right but there is this general sort of neutral or centered position that's really good for your tongue the neutral tongue position is one where the tip of the tongue lies gently behind your bottom front teeth and they're just nice and flat in the back yeah so with the tip we don't want it to push against your bottom front teeth we want to curl up or down just nice and relaxed and you should also be able to feel the underside of the tongue on the gum Ridge yeah and in the back this flat position that I was talking about is the one that I was missing when I was first starting out and and it's really good to have this flat position because it creates space in the pharynx it creates a space that really helps you resonate here and get that fuller tone so get that space yeah now with this neutral position the the tongue that's in between these two positions it's then free to go up and create the different vowels for example if I'm creating an eval my tongue will go up and touch the first molar e yeah very nice so that is a really nice precision that you have the neutral and then that you can move around very relaxed and very easy very good I should say that on your consonants the tongue obviously is not touching the tip of your bottom front teeth it can't write if you're saying L L the tongue goes up so it's up to you as a singer to go L and go back down so for example you're singing the word love love love you want to get that tongue down into the nice neutral position the reason we care so much about the vowels when we sing it's because we pull on the vowels we don't say the consonants for that long so for example if I'm going I'm not going love right and work love love my vowel is one that's long one last thing to mention about the good tongue position is that you might see some singers have this dent in the Tongass divot when they sing and that's something that naturally happens over time with most singers as they create that nice resonant space and they calibrate their instrument you might even see that you're doing it without thinking about already so don't try and do it on purpose don't go like that but if you notice it happening it's definitely something that should also be categorized as good tongue position in theory and neutral tone position seems pretty straightforward right so why are so many people worried about it well there is this one thing that sort of throws a wrench into the whole works and that is the fact that your tongue is connected to your larynx and if you saw my video on Larry's control you know that inside the larynx we have the vocal folds and so any tension in this area travels to your vocal folds and it can put strain on your voice so that's the whole thing about this that we want to avoid that's why so many people are also talking about oh we want the tongue to move independently of the other groups here we want the tongue to move on its own because we don't want it to affect anything else that's why we want to get this neutral tongue position there's two things to look out for with tongue tension and that is a tongue that is pulled too far back tongue at home that is retracted so it puts pressure on your larynx and then there's a tongue that is pulled too far out so that lifts your larynx yeah the tongue retraction is probably the most common one so a few things you can look for if you think that you might have tongue retraction so the first one is just look if your tongue keeps going back when you sing yeah then you can see that your the tongue is retracting yeah the second thing is a very common thing is that you can take your thumb and you can feel underneath your chin where it's supposed to be soft that if it's stiffens up or if it's sort of bulges out then there's also some tension there right another common way to identify tongue retraction is the sound like Kermit the Frog yeah you can actually try and imitate that sound right now and then put your thumb here see if you can feel it it's good sometimes to feel it so that you know what to look for so put your thumb here you know then use that curve into frog voice we track your time pull it all the way back yeah oh I can really feel it right here let me know in the comments below if you were able to feel this tension okay so now you know how the tongue retraction feels like so if that's something that's happening to you I have two exercises that we can do to help you get through that the first exercise to help you get rid of tongue retraction is one that's super commonly known it's the one where you put a pencil here mm-hmm under your tongue so make sure you watch the pencil yeah like this and then you can train on an ah you can actually go into any vocal exercise that you're working on with an ah sound sing here yeah just sing glides very cool one now if it's hard to do this and if it keeps pulling back and I have a second exercise that I find works for a lot of my students and this way you take your thumb and your index finger and you put it right here you pull the tongue out like this yeah and then you get a sing through one of your favorite songs and as the tongue gets drier it's easier to hold it out you can also put a tissue between your fingers you should really have clean fingers for a lot of my training videos cuz we use them a lot but yeah let's try it out so you're gonna go like meow and it's over when I my hand over yeah you're holding that tongue out helping it when you want to pull it back you're helping it now the next step is to just keep the tip and again when the tongue gets dry you can hold on to it much easier you can put it where you want it down here yeah and then the next step is to just keep the tip of the finger yeah just monitor and then you just take your hand away go wash your hands and then the training wheels off and you're singing without tongue retraction okay so let's talk about the other outer position for tongue tension the one where your tongue is pulled out too much right so the way that you can recognize this is usually that you kind of have a tongue they want to sit on top of your teeth yeah and you can feel that your larynx is sort of up here and sort of like it's sometimes a lump in the throat feeling that's how it looks and feels the sound quality tends to be like a little more nasal sometimes because as the tongue is pulled up it sort of closes off a lot of the resonant of space that you want there in the back and it gets let into the nasal cavity yeah that's the sound quality and how it feels so this is something that you think happens to you it's something that did happen to me when I was starting out and I learned to train it to go away so if some of you feel happens to you then there's some exercises that you can do now it's a little bit different because we can't quite push your tongue back like we could hold it out and the other one but there's some exercise that we can do the first one is a lot of people describes that it's like your tongue is in the way and it feels too big for their mouth so we gotta get us to relax we gotta relax so it's a very common exercise will you tilt your head down like this and you just relax all relaxed nice then you go back up oh and now it's um feels a lot smaller and it's not here anymore right it's here where it should be yeah that creates more space the tongue gets out of your way the second exercise to help you is to sing with a yawn I've said this before all voice teachers say is all time but it is so good for you because once you yawn you create that space in the pharynx and that's the problem that we were having with this song going out is that we were lifting it in and there was not enough space in the pharynx so sing with a yawn or just like let's just try it on first Oh put the tongue behind the lower teeth here oh oh oh my god I'm feeling all that space hello if you're someone who's used to this sort of sound and you're getting ah ah this sort of more open sound it might even sound care of me to you and so be careful with that that you're not sort of scanning some yes and it sound that you're not that you're thinking or not every time a retraction so feel out the different - and also remember you might be doing it right all along sometimes when we go in our vocal journey we want so badly to geek out on everything and studying everything and I think you should know about everything enjoy it but also sometimes you're doing things right on your own sometimes you're already doing it right you didn't have to change anything so unless you're feeling crazy Tim's intention for many of these things maybe it's just okay the way you're doing it go do some vocal exercises and sing some of your songs instead okay singing geeks it's getting dark here in Denmark and I'm losing some light so I'm going to wrap this up but just know that the most important thing in all of this is that you feel nice and relaxed and that you're happy with the tone that you're producing and also remember to support with your air and kids are nice and relaxed it's going to help the tongue move in the way that you want okay so you need to foundation that you can practice the tongue position on top of this whole thing with tongue movements has a lot to do with our vowels as I explained in the beginning of the video and I'm creating this mini series on how to pronounce nice resonant beautiful vowels and that series will be linked right here in the meantime if you haven't already done it I invite you to subscribe right here join us at sing geek every week as we continue to geek out on your voice to create the sound that you want of a girl kind of scary Oh

Channel: Singgeek

Views: 239,687

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Keywords: tongue position when singing, singing tongue position, singing tongue, singing with tongue, singing with tongue out, tongue retraction, tongue retraction exercises, tongue thrust, tongue thrust singing, position of the tongue when singing, how to sing with tongue, the tongue when singing, tongue position while singing, correct tongue position exercises, tongue position for singing, singing without tongue tension, tongue positioning, tongue posture, singgeek, tongue

Id: ryuf_tv231c

Length: 12min 51sec (771 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 17 2019