Posts Tagged tongue
Tongue Flapping In and Out
Learning to isolate your tongue from your jaw and soft palate takes time and practice. There is no quick fix for this one, I'm afraid. You just have to work, or play, at it until your tongue and jaw learn how to play independently. Of course, this takes time. But an effective exercise is one that targets the process involved effectively, and sometimes doing a familiar thing in an unfamiliar way can make enough of a difference that what you learn from doing it crosses over to doing the familiar thing back in its familiar place.
The movement of the tongue is very varied. You can bunch your tongue up like a ball, fold it, flip it, cup it or arch it. The action we're looking at today can be described as "flapping." You want the front edge of your tongue to go up the the area behind your upper front teeth, as if it we a flap, hinged at the centre of your tongue. The front edge goes up, the front edge comes down. Now, to do this, your tongue actually is "curling" back on itself slightly, but the image of a flap valve (like you'd see in the bottom of a toilet tank) could be helpful. For people with very short frenums on the underside of the front of the tongue (aka ankyloglossia) this may be very hard to do.
To exaggerate this action, we're going to move the tongue "out of the mouth," that is, do the flap action with tongue stretched forward, out of the mouth. Begin by sliding your tongue forward onto your lower lip. Fro there, bring the front edge of your tongue up to cover your upper lip. Finally, relax your tongue back down over the lower lip, and then let it slide S L O W L Y into your mouth. Do the combined action slowly, maybe as much as ten times in a row. As you can see from the animated .gif file that accompanies this step, your jaw is likely to close as your bring your tongue up to the upper lip. This is partly due to the length of your tongue. When we move the action back inside the mouth, we'll try to keep that jaw relaxed. The next step is to add sound: sigh out on "ah" on the tongue sliping out portion, make an "n" sound as your touch your upper lip with the front edge of your tongue, and then open back up to "ah". After a few of those, narrow your tongue slightly, so that your make a "L" sound when your lift the tongue up to your upper lip.
You now want to do the whole thing with your tongue inside your mouth. Start by dropping your jaw, and then bring your tongue up to behind your upper front teeth. It's not very far, compared to what you were doing with your tongue out! Start with a very simple /n/ sound, and then go to the narrower tongue action of /l/.
You can see a video of the tongue action here.
Next Step: Soft Palate Floating
Small Tongue Rolls
Posted by earmstro in Voice, Warm-ups, intermediate on April 21st, 2009
- This post is available for download as an audio file, so you can do the work along with the recording.
The assumption with this exercise is that you’ve already read and done the Tongue Stretch Basics exercise; if you haven’t you might want to go and read that first.
The goal of stretching out the tongue in the manner we have been (in the Tongue Stretch Basics exercise) is to target the tongue root where a lot of tension is held. This part of the tongue is instrumental in the process of swallowing, and the theory goes that by stretching out the tongue root, we can increase awareness and find some release in that part of the tongue in order to help the sound move past the back of the mouth and forward into the front of the skull.
Big Tongue Rolls on Sound
Begin by dropping your jaw, and finding lots of room in the back of your mouth. With the tongue tip behind your lower front teeth, roll the body of your tongue out in a big arch, as we did before, exhaling silently, and then s l o w ly roll your tongue back in. Let the breath drop into your belly, and roll your tongue out again. The point here is that it’s a big tongue roll, and you’re really trying to show the back of your tongue.
To add sound, start with your mouth open wide and sigh out on "ah" (IPA [ɑ]), in the middle of your range. Then roll your tongue out on the sustained [ɑ] sound, and back in again. Breath by breath, work your way up by semitones through your range. You can hear a two octave range of pitches going up and down to practice along with here. The goal is to roll your tongue smoothly while trying to find room above your tongue for the [ɑ] sound. Rolling your tongue will distort the sound of the vowel somewhat, but try to find enough room above the [ɑ] so it distorts as little as possible.
Smaller Tongue Rolls
The next step is to work on smaller tongue rolls. These aren’t so much about stretching the tongue as they are about isolating the tongue arching action, and keeping the sound free. Begin by rolling the tongue out to the point where the middle of your tongue is just below your upper front teeth, about half the distance of the Big Roll. Just hang out there for 30 seconds or so, breathing over the smaller tongue roll to get used to it. Let the jaw opening be just big enough to you aren’t biting your tongue, and let the outgoing breath be like a whispered "ee" sound (IPA [i].) Now, on the next breath cycle, whisper/sigh out on "ee," [i], and then let your tongue relax back into the centre of your mouth to the whispered vowel sound "uh," (IPA [ʌ].) I find it helps to have a leading /h/ sound before this, so it might be more accurate to say "hee-uh" Now, breath by breath, roll the tongue out, then sigh out "hee", relax the tongue back in, let the sound change to "uh." Now try two rolls on one breath, "hee-uh-ee-uh." Now three, "hee-uh-ee-uh-ee-uh," (IPA [hi.ʌ.i.ʌ].)
Finally, add sound to the small tongue roll. As you do, the second and third "ee" may begin to sound like a "y" consonant (IPA [i] becomes [j].) This means the sound will be more like "Hee-uh-yuh-yuh," (IPA [hi.ʌ.jʌ.jʌ].) Work your way up to 5 small tongue rolls in a row, and then try them on pitches, working up and down through your range with ease. Remember to keep your jaw relaxed, find space in the back of your mouth (ie lift your soft palate), and let the breath drop down to your core for each group of 5.
You can view this action here, first without sound, and then with:
- This post is available for download in a condensed format, so you practice the small tongue rolls, once you know them, and work along with the recording.
Next Step: Soft Palate Lifting
Tongue Stretch Basics
- This post is available for download as an audio file, so you can do the work along with the recording.
After working to release the jaw, the next step in any Linklater-based voice warm-up or workout is to focus on the tongue. Our goal in this step is to relax the tongue by visualizing it, and then to stretch it out. These should lead to increased tongue awareness, so that when combined with sound, the tongue will “get out of the way” so that the sound, and ultimately the thought and emotion, will have an open channel to spill out of.
VISUALIZING THE TONGUE INTO STILLNESS
The first thing to do is to get a small hand mirror or pocket mirror. Of course, any mirror will do for this, but it’s always handy to have a small mirror nearby when you’re practising. Take a look at your tongue in the mirror. The goal is for your tongue to lie still in your mouth and not wiggle around. Things to notice:
- the front edge of your tongue should rest behind your lower front teeth, gently touching the back of the teeth, not pressing into them
- the body of your tongue, is really quite large, and goes all the way into the back of your mouth
- there is probably a central groove down the middle of your tongue, where the muscles in your tongue that narrow it attach to a fibrous wall that runs down the length of the inside of your tongue
- the root of your tongue cannot be seen—it connects to your larynx at the hyoid bone, just above the adam’s apple
- the blade of your tongue is the portion that extends from the tip of your tongue and that, if you stick your tongue out gently, is the part that isn’tattached to the bottom of your mouth. For speech purposes, it’s the part that’s immediately below the gum ridge, behind your upper front teeth
If you feel your tongue wanting to wriggle around, just breathe and relax it as best you can. Relax your jaw, and let it drop with gravity. Let your tongue rest inside the basin formed by your lower teeth, and try to let it rest just at the level of the tops of your teeth.
STRETCHING OUT THE TONGUE
To stretch your tongue, you need to press your tongue tip down, behind your lower front teeth, and let the top surface of the blade of your tongue touch the back of your lower front teeth as you roll the middle and back of your tongue forward. Let your jaw drop and think a gentle smile to make room for the movement of your tongue. Try to make space in the back of your mouth and in your throat, so that your tongue can move easily, rolling slowly out and relaxing slowly back in. How fast should it be? If you think of a waltz tempo (1–2–3, 1–2–3, ) that’s probably about the right speed. The root of the tongue is very strong and because we swallow so many times per day, our tongues are conditioned to pull down and back very rapidly. Try to counter this action by letting the inward action of the tongue be slow.
This video will allow you to watch me doing the action of the tongue roll.
http://voiceguy.ca/sites/voiceguy.ca/files/tongue_basics.mov
Next Step: Soft Palate Basics
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Eric Armstrong is an Associate Professor of Voice and Speech at the Dept. of Theatre, Faculty of Fine Arts, York University.
Eric Armstrong is a Full Member of the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists, the national organization of professional performers and coaches working in the English-language recorded media.
The VoiceGuy is a proud member of the Voice and Speech Trainers Association.
The VoiceGuy is an Associate Editor of the International Dialects of English Archive.
