Initially it will help you to keep the sound focused if you move your mouth and lips as little as possible – apart from allowing your jaw to drop open as necessary.

Make sure you stay on the same note throughout.

Exercise 20: Meet Mama and Nana

• Switch on an mmmm or an nnnn hum, whichever you find easier. Let it establish itself for a few seconds.
• Let your lower jaw drop slightly so that the sound changes to aah for a few seconds.
• Repeat mmmm/aaah/mmmm/aaah or nnnn/aaah/nnnn/aaah for as long as you comfortably can in one breath, always keeping the same feeling in your head that you had when humming.

‍

‍

Remember: You want to be producing the same bright sound whether your mouth is closed or open.

Once you can do that confidently, you can gradually speed up the process:

• In stages, start moving from mmmmaammmmaammmmaa to mamama, or nnnnaannnnaannnnaa to nanana.

If you feel you’re losing the focus of your voice, go back a step to a slower pace.

‍

‍

• Repeat using the other kind of hum.

Exercise 21: Changing consonants and vowels

We are now going to introduce another consonant and two more vowels. You will be changing from consonant to vowel in nonsense sounds again, as a half-way stage to forming words.

As with the previous exercise, minimise your mouth movements – which means you won’t be articulating the sounds as much as you normally would.

There are a number of combinations to practise. You’re wanting to keep the same sound quality on the consonant and vowel in all of them.

There’s a lot to concentrate on, so take it all very slowly to start with.

• First, replace the ‘m’/’n’ with a ‘w’ to produce wawawawa. To get the correct hummy quality on the ‘w’, move your lips forward slightly, as though you’re doing a celebrity ‘air kiss’.
• Now mix the ‘m’, ‘n’, ‘w’ and ‘a’ however you like in a one-breath phrase: e.g. mamanawamawanana. Apart from moving your lips forward for the ‘w’, keep the idea of only moving your mouth to goldfish the a.
• Next change the vowel, and go woowoowoowoo. You will hardly need to move your mouth: opening your lips slightly from the w will give you the correct position for the oo.
• Add in ‘m’ and ‘n’ for e.g. woonoomoowoonoomoo.
• Another vowel change, this time to ee. Again, your starting consonant will be ‘w’, as it will put your mouth in the correct forward position to open onto the ee sound for weeweeweewee. (Avoid pulling your lips back into a narrow letterbox shape: if you do you’ll lose the sound quality.)
• Then add in ‘m’ and ‘n’ for e.g. weeneemeeneeweemeeneewee.

‍

• You now have nine possible consonant/vowel combinations: maa, moo, mee, naa, noo, nee, waa, woo, wee. Practise them all separately, especially the ones you find trickier.
• Finally, create mixes of all of them, such as manaweemeemoonoowawoonee. This will give you practice in keeping your voice focused correctly as you change sounds, just as you need to when you speak.

‍

‍

As keeping the head focus of your voice throughout the changes becomes more automatic you can start to speed up all the consonant/vowel combinations.

Exercise 22: Changing from singing to speaking

Now is a good time to have a first try at introducing your Better Voice into speech, by moving from singing an exercise to speaking it.

The idea is to stay on at least approximately the same note through the singing/speaking transition. Try out a few starting notes until you find one in a comfortable place in your speaking voice that makes the transition as easy as possible.

• Choose a consonant/vowel combination from the previous exercise, e.g. mee, and sing it three or four times.
•  After a short pause to prepare, and on as close as you can to the note you sang on, say mee three or four times with the same head-focused tone you sang with.

Once you’ve mastered that you can repeat the exercise using:

• other consonant/vowel combinations from the previous exercise, both single (e.g. noo) and combined (e.g. noowamee).
• more transitions: e.g. singing/speaking/singing/speaking.

‍

Remember: You only have one voice, however you are using it, and you want it to have the same tone quality whether you are singing or speaking.

Sounding confident

Incidentally, this is excellent practice in giving vowels their full value. As we saw in Unit 4.3, that’s a great help in slowing your delivery and making it sound relaxed and confident rather than hurried and nervous.