How To Properly Use Your Jaw Muscles
- Improvements In Tone of Voice
- How Anxiety Effects The Muscle
- Growing Your Jaw Muscles
One of the most interval parts of singing is vocal dynamics with the jaw muscle.
Vocal dynamics include how you control your sounds using your muscles, but also your mobility and control through your range.
The jaw muscles are a big part of vocal dynamics. We often want to sound fuller when we sing; we want to improve our tone.
The jaw muscles provide a clear example of change in tonality over a range of motion.
Muscle exercises are a great way to improve your range of motion with your jaw thus improving your tonality.
Improvements In Tone of Voice
What is fullness? Fullness in singing is when you have a balance between the muscles used for stretching your vocal chords.
When your jaw is not lowered, you are not allowing enough space for the tones to come out with a clear sound.
You have to know how your tonality changes with the placement of your jaw. This includes your tongue muscles, as they move with your jaw.
Nasally sounds are created when air travels through the nasal cavity and your jaw and tongue are not low enough.
By lowering your jaw and doing exercises to improve the muscle, you will be able to have a fuller voice.
How Anxiety Effects The Muscle
An important thing to note is that the jaw is a muscle. Your muscles will tense up if you feel anxious.
Similar to lock-jaw, your muscle will lock up as soon as you try to reach that high note.
It’s important that you actively seek to use your jaw. During your rehearsal of a song try to point out certain vowels that have you use your jaw.
Look for elongated sounds that have a, e, i, o, and u. Practice this until your jaw is loose and your notes are full.
Extending your jaw muscles with singing is like relearning how to pronounce words as you sing.
Growing Your Jaw Muscles
Ultimately since the jaw is a muscle, it takes some time to develop.
Working on your jaw muscles, will allow you to stretch them more. Try doing the jaw stretch exercises and words within your voicercise kit.
Overtime, it won’t feel so awkward to use your jaw while actively singing. Your muscles are meant to be conditioned into dropping vertically at the right times to give you the sound that you want.
It can take years to fully control the jaw, however, that depends on how much time you spend practicing.
