Greetings Aspiring Singers,
If you’ve been following my articles for any period of time, you know that it’s space that creates the fullness of the sound. Just think of thumping a wine glass. If it’s empty when you thump it, it’ll ring out. But, if you fill the same wine glass with pennies and thump it, all you’ll hear is a quick thud.
But this article isn’t about space… okay, well maybe it is, but in somewhat of a round about way. That being the case, why would spitting out our consonants give us more space when singing?
Well, there are a handful of different spaces within our body that we can open to create more space when we sing. One of these spaces is the back of the mouth and throat area.
It doesn’t take a genius to know if you close off this area, you’re going to be able to create like zero sound. But, the more you allow this space to open naturally, the more sound you’re going to produce while exerting no extra effort.
So, once again, what does that have to do with spitting out the consonants?
When we sing, it’s relatively common for the consonants to pull the tongue backward, closing off the back of the mouth and throat. This is especially true when singing R’s and L’s, but relatively common with many consonants.
One of the best ways to keep this from happening is to spit out your consonants.
When spitting out your consonants, you want to keep the tongue as comfortably forward in the mouth as possible when speaking the consonant, then, AND HERE’S THE BIG THING, release the tongue forward after speaking the consonant.
This will likely feel very weird to you at first, but once you get the hang of it, it’s no big deal. Doing this will not only effortlessly give you more volume, but the added space will likely make singing higher notes much easier on you than they were before.
While there are certainly more places in your body that you can open up to create resonance space while singing, spitting out your consonants to create more space in the back of the mouth area is probably one of the easiest to do and will yield you one of the greatest results.
So give it a try and see how much it helps. And of course, feel free to comment below with your thoughts.
Happy Singing,
Vocal Coach Ken Taylor