In my last post I talked about back vowels and how they have to be rounded and open, so in this post I thought I'd talk about front vowels. As we can see in the quote from the book Singing for Dummies your tongue does a lot of work with front vowels. From my previous knowledge of front vowels, I know that they make a "bright" sound. This means that when you're making the sound your teeth are more exposed and your tongue isn't covering the back of your throat. I also know that the vowels are all in the front of your mouth as opposed to the back (which explains the name being front vowels, obviously). One thing I didn't know about front vowels was that your tongue touches your teeth most of the time. This is explained in the book by saying, "another difference between back and front vowels is that, when the tongue arches in the front, the sides of the tongue also raise and touch the upper teeth" (Phillips 98).
The front vowels are ee (as in me), ih (as in kiss), ay (as in day), eh (as in bed), and a (as in asked). And as said before, when saying all these vowels notice how you pronounce them your tongue touching the ridge of your teeth. With front vowels I have learned that your jaw drops slightly for the ee vowel (as in me) and the more forward the vowels gets the more you drop your vowel. (As seen in the diagram below). You probably have to drop your jaw more because the "brighter" your sound gets the quieter it gets, so then you need more room in order to produce a louder sound. Another thing I learned about front vowels is that, your lips open more as your jaw drops. Lastly what I learned was, your tongue arches more the more your jaw drops. After learning these new things about front vowels I realized that I needed to pay more attention to how I pronounce them the correct way. Also, the exercise showed in the video helped me apply these new found facts. For the readers looking at this description you might not understand or be able to visualize what I mean so I'm hoping the video of me pronouncing the front vowels will help as well as the diagram. Another tip would be for you to pronounce the vowels slowly and realize what your mouth is doing. Hopefully after reading my post you learned something new and can apply it to your life. Can you realize the difference between the back vowels and front vowels?
Hey Bestfriend! This is really helpful. I never knew this before. I understand how in musical theater, I pay more attention to these things because of diction, but I usually don't in choir. I start remembering these tips.
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