Happy Little EES
Hello IVTOM Teachers! Here is a quick tip for you. If you attended my master class on September 14, you got a taste of what I will be talking about. If you want to watch it for yourself, here is the link. Or if you want to watch a short video of this tip, click here.
Long EE is a magic vowel but many have a love-hate relationship with it. What I mean is you either love it or you hate it. Particularly when you have a song that requires you to belt it on a high note like an E5 or something equally as challenging. “World Burn” from Mean Girls as well as Summer in Ohio from The Last 5 Years are some places where this occurs readily towards the climax of the song.
Why do songwriters do this to us singers and teachers? I have no idea. Someone needs to educate them. 😉
However, we can’t always change the lyrics, or the note they land on, but we can modify the vowel slightly to suit our purposes and get the acoustics to line up in our favor.
Long EE is known as a “releaser” vowel. Meaning that it naturally encourages more head voice. So, this is counter productive when you have a song that requires a belty sound on an E5 or higher (or lower even).
Long EE is also predominantly formed with the tongue. The lips play a part, but the tongue is the key. The higher the tongue in the back of the throat, meaning the closer it is to the soft palate, the more open the throat is and the smaller the space in the back of mouth that the sound can pass through before it hits the teeth and exits the mouth itself. This also encourages more “ping” in the sound and the resistance is fairly high.
What happens if you lower the tongue slightly-don’t drop it back into the throat, just lower it- and support the EE with an UH type of sound? You get a much deeper “Belt” quality to the voice without going to a yell. The EE is great because it encourages release but it will release too much if there is no UH underneath it. So, when you combine UH underneath EE, you get a very powerful High Mix Belt! EE is now your friend, not your enemy! YAY!
Try it out! Let me know how it works for you! Check out the master class or reach out to me for more clarification. I know the scientists here will probably not fully agree with my description and I will say things imperfectly, but this tip is coming from my own experience and observations and success. I know that when I encourage the behaviors described above, they work!
Happy Teaching!
