Voice training: the fundamental treatment for chronic laryngitis
Voice workers are prone to chronic laryngitis, which is recurrent and difficult to recover from. To solve this problem at the root, it is necessary to rely not on medication but on the correct vocal method. Why is it that ordinary people’s voices get tired and even hoarse when they speak naturally for a long time, while TV hosts speak for hours on end, their voices are still so strong and luminous? It is because they have professional training pharyngeal method of vocalization. We advocate that you should not speak with your natural voice, but also use your vocal skills.
Breathing techniques: abdominal breathing, fast inhalation and slow exhalation, inhalation but not full
Abdominal breathing, is the use of abdominal muscle contraction and pressurization of a deep breathing. Abdominal muscle contraction, increase abdominal pressure, abdominal pressure so that the diaphragm pushed upward, increasing the pressure in the chest cavity, so that the air exhaled from the lungs powerful.
Methods of training inspiratory muscle groups.
1, the method of holding the breath The practice is to take a large breath first, after inhaling enough air, hold the breath, do not exhale, the longer you hold the breath the better. Slowly you can exercise the ability to hold your breath for a long time, that is, the ability to fix the thorax.
2, the method of counting The practice is to take a large breath, after taking a full breath, the thorax fixed; then with a very light and thin, only they can hear the voice count 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 …… until you can no longer count; then, take a breath again, so repeated training. This will count more and more numbers, and the time will be longer. It is best to be able to count to more than 50 in one breath.
The following two audible exhalation training, to lay the foundation for our voice control
(1) “Popping lips” exercise: lips closed, that is, with the breath impact lips, so that it makes a “toot” sound, be sure to make the lips tremble, more to make the lips sound loud. The “lip popping” exercise should be experienced by: using the feeling of slow contraction of the small abdominal muscles to compress the breath to impact the lips; making the breath flow evenly from beginning to end, not a moment of more air, a moment of less air, evenness is the most critical; 3) Experience your “lip popping” exercise, This is also a key exercise to control the breath. In addition, “lip popping” can also be used as a vocal fold massage exercise to help your tired voice recover as soon as possible.
(2) “Humming” exercise: It refers to the nasal resonance, which prepares for the higher sound in the future, and bridges the upper and lower bass. With “humming”, our voice will have a glow. The “humming” exercise is a closed-mouth humming, when the mouth is closed, we should feel a small mouthful of water in the mouth, the nasal cavity is erected, and then inhale deeply and hum. Again, the breath must be even and dynamic. Nasal resonance, not nasal resonance, refers to resonance through the sinuses, nasal cavity and palate sinuses, while nasal resonance is to send the sound directly to the nose.
Remember that when “humming”, the sound is emitted at the top of the nasal cavity, at the center of the eyebrow, and you can practice with a single extended tone every day until the eyebrow vibrates. When we do these exercises, we can do simple vocal exercises.
Vocal technique: use resonance to make the larynx drop naturally
Adjust the resonance cavity of the larynx to be thick at one end and thin at the other. Therefore, before vocalizing, open the mouth wide so that the back of the neck is erected, so that the epiglottis cartilage stands up, the tongue body is held up downward, and the soft palate and the uvula are put down. A straight tube is formed. After the sound emanates from the vocal cords, it rushes upward directly to the top of the nasopharynx and returns at the top of the head.
This sound is very loud, thick and metallic. This is the “cephalic vocal method”. To test whether this method is applied correctly, you only need to feel the back of the head and the top of the head for vibrations when speaking.
Here I have chosen the vowel u as the first exercise for vocal resonance.
The U(u) sound can effectively lower the larynx, which lays the foundation for the smooth flow of the voice up and down. That’s why we call it a model tone, and all other vowels should try to sound like the u vowel, so that your voice will be unified and rounded.
When we practice the u sound, we should pay special attention to:
(1) Do not press the larynx, let the larynx drop naturally, you can inhale deeply to feel the larynx drop;
(2) The chin and tongue should be relaxed, so that the oropharynx is not stiff;
(3) The nasal, oral and thoracic cavities should feel connected when pronouncing the u sounds, like a smooth pipe. A correct u vowel can feel the resonant vibration of both the head and the chest cavity. We usually use a single sound to find the feeling I mentioned above.
With the foundation of u vowel, we can experience the breath of singing and realize that vocalization does not depend on the throat alone (as people think), it is the organic combination of the head cavity (treble), pharyngeal cavity (alto) and chest cavity (bass) to produce a smooth, round, penetrating and lasting sound.
Before speaking, you must take a full breath, and then smoothly use your breath to speak slowly. Consciously lower your head forward, lower your jaw, relax your neck muscles, and straighten the back of your neck naturally so that your throat and nasopharynx resonate in a straight line.
The following is a word I offer you to practice saying is “cannon”
Before practicing “cannon”, we have to do a little preparation, that is, the breath should be deep, the mouth should be empty, as if containing a round ball, the nasal cavity should be open, the chest and head cavity should feel connected up and down. When these have been prepared, we can vocalize, the power of vocalization must be in the small abdominal rebound force, so that the resonance of the oral cavity to get the outbreak. You can press your hand on your belly and feel the beginning of the sound in the belly, when the belly is forceful, the sound from the belly quickly hit the brow and pop out.
”The “m” sound itself is flat, and the sound is produced only after the upper and lower teeth are brought together. In order to give it some space for resonance, we use “m i (m) + (applause)”, the latter “applause” sound rounds the mouth and concentrates the sound. The sound “m i (m) + (phew)” must be pronounced within 1 second at the beginning of practice, with the same breath and resonance as above.
When you have mastered it, you can lengthen each sound, because the “m” sound has more nasal resonance, so the nasal cavity should be erected and actively opened, so that it resonates in the nasal cavity. When this single sound is pronounced correctly, you can add the word “m ao (cap)” and alternate it with “(m i+ 吁) + 帽”. The “cap” itself is pronounced the same as “cannon”, so the continuous training of the accent is the foundation for more sound changes in the future.
In other words, no matter what the sound is, the breath foundation of our pronunciation cannot be changed, and with this foundation, our voice will have staying power. Through a period of single and double sound practice, the breath of the voice has been further improved, and then we can do some more complex word sound training.
Next, we can do some tongue-twister training. Make the previous vocal exercises, from the unnatural state, and gradually restore the natural process, and in maintaining the unique flavor of the language of drama, boldly use tongue twisters, so that the voice strengthens the ability to stretch, master the ability to control the speed of language. Here I recommend a tongue twister: “Eight hundred standard soldiers run to the north slope, artillery standard soldiers run side by side, artillery afraid to touch the standard soldiers, standard soldiers afraid to touch the artillery gun.”
This tongue twister is a good breath training material. After memorizing it, you can concentrate on the use of breath for each sound: each word has to be “blasted” out with the support of breath. In other words, each word should be “blown out” with the support of breath, that is, with the action of the belly, and with elasticity. The use of breath is from natural to unnatural, and then back to natural, which is a process of voice and breath progress.
After the previous fast and slow voice training, the feeling of the voice is basically formed. The last thing we want to do is to train the artistic tone of recitation and speech, through a good poem and some touching stories, to stimulate the passion of artistic creation of the voice practitioner, through fast, slow, strong, weak voice changes to make the voice practitioner feel clearer and more accurate in the use of breath. The lyrical voice portrayal and passionate outbursts are the results of the quality of the voice practitioner’s previous training.
As the training process, we have a basic understanding, of course, in the training, some people can use the breath better when practicing a single tone or a single word, but once they encounter multiple words, they find it difficult to issue the quality of a single tone. I can tell you the easiest way is to say a sentence in a row when you first start yawning, the voice is very high and the breath is very deep.
”The natural fall of the larynx opens a channel for the voice, which makes the voice smooth and pleasant to the ear. When you have accumulated a certain amount of time, the fulcrum of your breath will definitely move down, especially when you speak loudly, you will unconsciously use the strength of your abdominal muscles, and finally get an unexpectedly good voice.
Last but not least, no matter how good your voice is, no matter how scientific the method is, if you use your voice for a long time with a lot of exercise, you will get voice lesions. Therefore, it is important to keep in mind that we should allocate the time for voice use in a scientific and clever way based on training.
Some patients with vocal cord nodules and polyps have been operated to remove organic lesions, but the voice still cannot return to normal, which shows that pathological vocalization can lead to laryngeal muscle dysmotility, incomplete closure of the vocal chambers, and shouting can be followed by organic lesions of the vocal cords, which is a mutual cause and effect relationship. The effect of removing organic lesions without correcting functional lesions is inevitably poor or unsustainable. Therefore, voice training has become one of the main tools for the treatment of functional laryngeal disease.