[Matt Pocock]

Apologies, maybe I wasn’t clear – I meant exercises to work the soft palate to prevent nasality in open vowels:) So if a student is using too much nasality, you can use these exercises to make a clean sound. Does that make sense?

[Matt Pocock]

Sweet, I’m guessing what the student means is that they’re closing the ‘passage’ to the nose, meaning that no sound is coming out of the nasal passage when they say open vowels.

This is a good thing. Only three sounds in the English language should be nasal: ‘m’, ‘n’ and ‘ng’. On every other sound, the nasal passage should be closed. You can test this by holding the nose while singing vowels to see if it buzzes with resonance. If it buzzes, it’s nasal.

But how does it close? It closes with the soft palate, in the back of the mouth above the tongue, which stretches up and seals the passage to the nose. This operates independently of the tongue (not counting the palato-glossus muscle). So if you look up soft palate nasality exercises you’ll find some solutions. Or does anyone else have any?

[Matt Pocock]

Awesome – that’s really interesting that you maintain that the student feels ‘gear shifts’ but still maintains a ‘mixed’ sound. I totally believe that M1 can sound exactly like M2 and vice versa when certain adaptions are made to the mouth/throat position. This means that the student feels a firm gear shift at the ‘break’, but the sound is totally smooth.

Kenneth Bozeman writes very lucidly on this, talking about the difference between ‘hoot’ tone (closed lips, head voicy-sounding) and ‘yell’ tone (spread lips, belty-sounding) and writes that both can be used in M1 and M2.

We’ll have to collaborate on an article on this on the wiki!

[Matt Pocock]

Hi Kat,

What a wonderful article to pull up! It certainly does seem that in that instance there is a co-ordination of slow release of the vocalis muscle. Although I have also seen the Thyroarytenoid muscle and the Vocalis muscle labelled as different muscles – each capable of independent movement – in other studies. This might complicate their conclusion!

I can’t claim to be an expert, but Kayes’ and Fisher’s model resonated with me as I have always felt in my own body that there is no gradient between M1 and M2. This is easy to blame on lack of register co-ordination, but I had also never observed a gradient in any of my students or colleagues – some of them seasoned pro’s.

One exceptional student (whose video I will post here but please don’t share widely) bamboozled me when I saw him. When he came to me, he completely lacked any ‘head voice’. But after a year of tuition, he sounded like this. The video is raw, and he wasn’t perfect yet (note the head position and terrible posture!) but the M1 and M2 sometimes sound identical, suggesting a ‘mix voice’.

However, listening now, I can clearly differentiate when he’s in M1 and M2 – but there are certain resonance tricks he’s using to make his M1 sound ‘heady or falsetto-like’. Have a listen, what do you think?

http://mattpocock.com/…/2015/10/Mix-Voice-Guy-Short.mov

mattpocock.com

Unhandled Thrown Response!

Unhandled Thrown Response!

[Matt Pocock]

I work from home! Wearing slippers to work can’t be beat! Have rented studios in the past but it always works out cheaper to see them at your place.