How Vowel Shapes Affect Tone Quality

Let's begin by looking at some examples of vowel shapes and tone. We are looking
objectively, to notice when the sound is nasal; forced, or comfortable' with open vowels, or
closed.

Find recordings of the examples provided below to hear what each tone sounds like.

Nasal Tone

A nasal tone means there is air coming through the sinuses, or, the sound is pushed up
against the palate.

Examples of Nasal Tone in Contemporary Styles:

 Britney Spears - Baby One More Time

 Justin Bieber - Boyfriend
 John Mayer - Slow Dancing in a Burning Room
 Miley Cyrus - Who Owns My Heart

Forced Singing

Forced singing sounds strained, pushed, or constricted. It usually means the muscles in the
throat are squeezing too tightly, choking off the sound. Also, sometimes the singer pushes
air up very hard against the tightened vocal muscles, adding even more pressure to an
already overly-tightened system.

Examples of Forced Singing in Contemporary Styles:

 Adele - When We Were Young

 Bruce Springsteen - Born in the U.S.A.

Comfortable Singing

Comfortable singing is relaxed or balanced, even when it's loud. The singer has good
command of their technique, and is neither straining nor under-supporting the voice.

Examples of Comfortable Singing in Contemporary Styles:

 Barbara Streisand - Don't Rain On My Parade

 Eva Cassidy - What A Wonderful World
 Maroon 5 - Sugar
 Bryan Adams - You Belong To Me

Open vowels

With open vowels, the mouth is open, allowing for resonance. Vowels are the source of the
voice's timbre, and when the mouth is open, the sound can be heard the best.

Examples of Open vowels in Contemporary Styles:

 Rufus & Chaka Khan - Ain't Nobody

 Jennifer Hudson - And I'm Telling You I'm Not Going
 David Bowie & Mick Jagger - Dancing in the Street

Closed Vowels/Mumbling

The mouth is mostly closed, but open enough to produce lyrics. In some cases, singing this
way may be unintentional, but it makes it hard for us to understand the lyrics. A closed
vowel shape will also affect the voice's timbre and at times, may be an artistic choice. Over
time, singing this way for prolonged periods of time can lead to mouth and jaw tension,
which can have an adverse effect on your overall vocal health.

Examples of Closed vowels/mumbling in Contemporary Styles:

 Blondie - Heart of Glass

 Janet Jackson - Any Time, Any Place
 Lyle Lovett - In My Own Mind
The Anatomy of Breathing
Anytime you study singing, you are working on improving breathing techniques to best
support and develop your vocal instrument. Although there are different methods to teach
breathing, it is important to understand how breathing works anatomically as you practice
achieving the sound you desire. In this section, we will look at the anatomical aspects of
breathing for singing.

Understanding How Breathing Works, Anatomically

Because breathing is fundamental to staying alive, our bodies are naturally very protective
about it. When we sing we use breathing intentionally for an artistic result, but that often
seems to trigger the body's fear of not having enough air. When we work on breathing for
singing, the first step is to trust that we will be okay, that we don't need to gulp in vast
amounts of air to sing well.

Breathing technique for singing is a several-step process.

1. Much of breathing technique focuses on how best to take breath into the body.
First, we allow the body to breathe in fully, relaxing our shoulders and lowering the
mid-torso at the base of the rib cage where the lungs are largest and the ribs can
expand the most to enlarge the chest cavity. Focusing your breath here helps to lower
the diaphragm muscle more, which leads to a deeper fuller breath.
2. Next, we use the breath in a pressurized system against the vocal folds, causing
the folds to vibrate and produce sound.
3. The way we expel the breath has a lot of influence on how the vocal fold muscles
respond and vibrate. When we picture what is happening in the larynx and mouth,
controlling the rate of release of the air while we sing, we begin to be able to manage
factors such as volume and quality of tone.
4. Finally, the process is repeated. How we inhale immediately after singing a phrase,
such as catching a breath in between words, is a big part of breath technique study.

Here is a diagram of what is happening inside of our bodies when we breathe:

These are the parts of our body that work together to allow us to breathe:

Here's a close up of the mouth and throat with labeled areas.

In this illustration, the arrows show the passage of air up from the lungs just past the vocal
folds in the larynx, and passing out either through the sinuses (black arrows) or through the
mouth (white arrows). The soft palate is not lifted in this picture.
This illustration shows good posture at the microphone, allowing air flow to come up from a
supported torso, and then visualized traveling forward toward the microphone. This enables
the back of the throat (pharynx) to be less constricted.

How to Avoid Tension

Too much tension is a constant issue for many singers. For example, whenever you sing
"ee", your tongue pulls up adding more pull on the larynx. For many styles (especially R&B,
country, and rock), to minimize this pull the "ee" vowel is widened, creating less tension
and enabling flexible runs and increased volume.
If your singing is forced, you are tensing the larynx too much. Remember, your core
muscles are much sturdier than your laryngeal muscles. Effective breathing technique puts
the focus lower in the torso to utilize these core muscles.