Hello singing family! This week we are going to discuss the importance of mastering vowel sounds and how they affect the way that you sing.
Do vowels make it easier for you to sing challenging pitches? YES!
Certain vowel sounds can either make your mouth more closed or more open. The will also give you an incredible amplification system that works on the echo chamber. This means that the higher that your cheeks raise up, and the more that your jaw moves down, the higher your soft palate moves up, and the lower your tongue moves down which opens up your throat. This space gives you the ability to have a greater quality of sound, volume and the ability to sing higher and lower. Mastering vowel sounds is all in your technique and takes consistent practice with each song you sing.
There are certain vowels that will naturally open up your mouth more so than others.
The easiest vowel for most people to sing (keep in mind everybody’s mouth is different) would be an A sound. So go ahead, sing “A” and take note of what happens with your mouth.
Automatically, your tongue will move downwards. This is a clear sign that your throat is more open and able to hit harder pitches while saying an A sound.
Now let’s go from an A to an O.
An O sound is also one of the more open vowels. Some people’s muscles are built differently, so their O sounds are harder to sing than A sounds and vice versa. An O could make your tongue and jaw move a little further down. If you’re singing in a deeper tone it’s a little easier.
Now let’s get to a more difficult and closed off vowel. The E sound.
It is the most closed off sound that you’re going to be able to create as a singer, and that means that if you’re trying to sing a high note on the E sound, it’s not you that’s the problem. It’s the vowel sound. Try going from an A to an E sound. Notice how your mouth instinctively closes more on the E. Typically when people sing E, it sounds like a sandwich to create the most amount of space inside of the mouth as possible.
So if you’re singing a high note on an E sound and you keep messing it up, maybe the earlier part of the song is a verse and one of the words has an A in it. That sometimes is the reason why it’s easier or harder to sing certain notes in a song because of the vowel sound.
The vowel I is called a diphthong. A diphthong is defined as a sound formed by the combination of two vowel sounds. From a singing standpoint you’re going from one shape into another. For example, make an i and then an E shape with your mouth. You can’t say I without the E sound.
The I is also a closed vowel, however it may be easier for some people to create than just an E sound, because it does have that open space.
Lastly is the vowel sound of U. The difficulty with a U is that your tongue is going to start forward in your mouth and then move into your throat as you complete the sound. Since we sing with vibrations when going from a higher to a lower note, what’s changing is the number of vibrations per second. A higher note has more vibrations per second.
Let’s say you’re creating on a high note with a bunch of vibrations per second, but at the same time, your tongue is moving into your throat and cutting off that space to be able to create it, this could be more difficult to sing. Listen to “I Will Always Love You” by Whitney Houston and you will realize the tremendous talent the woman had, mastering vowel sounds perfectly throughout the entire ballad.
We hope you now understand the importance of vowels in singing. Invest your time into figuring out why things might be difficult. Take a look at the lyrics and listen out for each vowel. Maybe print out the lyrics and circle all the vowels. It’s not that you just suck because you don’t! Figure out which techniques can help you with getting better. Mastering vowel sounds is one technique that makes a professional singer a professional.
