Aaaaah!!! What is she saying?

Relax. Don’t get excited. I’m not about to say that vowels don’t matter. What kind of monster would I be if I said that!?  🙂

What I do want to say is that I’m about to rant about one of my pet peeves (I’m sure I will eventually rant about others). Whenever a colleague or a well meaning professional says, “Just sing pure vowels” I cringe a little. Not because they’re wrong, but because it is seldom the issue. It isn’t always as straight forward as that.

If a singer has ill conceived ideas about how to form vowels or has speaking habits that get in the way of clear vowels, this advice will not help one bit! At the peak of my own vocal problems, absolutely NONE of my vowels were worth a dime. All of them were contorted and convoluted because I had jaw and tongue tension that was interfering with my ability to form a clean vowel. It was exceedingly frustrating for me to hear the words, “just sing a pure vowel.” My brain knew what that meant but my vocal apparatus was in a state of spastic confusion. Later, studying with a teacher who addressed the tongue tension (this took an enormous amount of time) and helped me balance my support, I finally began to get some clear vowels. And this is when I realized that screaming, “Just sing pure vowels!” to a frustrated young singer, is really a kind of torture.

So in this post, I’d like to say to anyone in the profession who is reading: If a young singer (or older… doesn’t matter) can’t give you clean vowels after you’ve asked repeatedly, try asking them to relax their tongue or check their body alignment or put their hands on their lower ribs and check if they’re supporting. In other words, turn your attention to some other issue which might be impeding the vowel formation. Tension in the face and lips is a good one to start with, especially if you’re directing a chorus. It’s a simple check for a larger group. But please don’t just keep asking for clean vowels. If you’re not getting them, there are other impediments that need addressing.

Clean pure vowels are the sign of a well produced, free voice. They are an end result. In a voice that has built up tension or faulty production, asking for pure vowels will get mixed results and will not address the issues causing the inaccuracy of the vowel formation.