This is an image of the inside of the mouth
I want to start by taking you on a tour through your mouth.
Going backwards from the front …
1 – Your top lip
2 – Your top teeth
3 – Right behind your teeth – the alveolar ridge.
4 – Your hard palate – the hard bit on the top of your mouth.
5 – Your soft palate – the bit behind that is squidgy – aka your velum.
Accents
6 Your uvula and your tonsils.
My current favourite way to explore placement only works with some people. It’s a very simple exercise in playing with accents.
The standard RP English accent is placed very far back in the mouth. We will feel a lot of vibrations at the back of the hard palate, just in front of the velum. You can feel this area if you say g or k abruptly.
When I employ a generic American accent, (the kind that I would sing most contemporary – and older contemporary – songs are sung in), I feel the vibrations in middle of my hard palate. I also experience more nasality in my tone. I’m aware that this is my version and that to say there is one accent in America is farcical but it’s what I’m working with.
My current favourite accent I know to pull the placement right to the front of the mouth is a Southern Irish accent. I’m not skilled enough to know which specific accent but it’s when I do a (bad) version of a lovely lyrical and open Irish accent.
This video has a couple of lovely examples…
There are other accents that are really forward, like Russian but that accent is less open.
Feeling Vibrations
This exercise is a mash up of work I learned when studying the NeuroVocal Method with Meredith Colby https://www.meredithcolby.com/ and work in my singing lessons about feeling how the voice vibrates in your body.
This would be an adaptation of feeling the vibrations that your voice makes in your body by putting your hands on your chest/nose or other places, or placing an internal focus take the focus off the sound of your voice.
It’s hard to explain. I plan to make a video about this and if you really want me to do that urgently drop me a message and I’ll prioritise it.
The Mouth Smush
This is very simple, entirely unusable in public and pretty much always works. You smush your lips forwards with your hands. Please see the glamorous photo of me above here. From there we work on keeping the sense of the mouth smush without the actual smushing.
Husler’s Vocal Placements
Image from the Husler book of the different placements – this is taken from “Singing. The Physical Nature of the Vocal Organ” Frederick Husler and Yvonne Rodd-Marling. Page 68
I first heard of Husler when a colleague at Leeds College of Music, Scott, was getting breakthroughs for students who I was hitting walls with. I got in touch with him and asked him what he was doing with them and he mentioned Husler’s work.
I realised I’d got a book by Husler (and Yvonne Rodd-Marling) and dutifully read it. It is interesting but doesn’t give much that can be practically used with my singers.
So I booked one lesson with Scott and he worked through the placements with me.
I’m not sure the photo below will mean much and I’m not sure how to describe the work except it involves certain vowels, certain movements and feeling different sensations. For some of my singers it is transformative!
Again I plan to make videos about this but if you’re keen let me know and that will prompt me to make them sooner.
How You can Explore Placement and Similar things With Me
Last month I explored Placement with the Vocal Explorer’s Membership (VEM) Group.
If you’re interesting in knowing more about the VEM group check out this page https://rebeccaschwarz.co.uk/the-vocal-explorers-membership-group/
Anyone who signs up for regular lessons with me is automatically a member of the group and gets access to the classes.
To book in with me or to book a check to learn more go to this page