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Why does Ken use the 'L' sound along with the vowels?
Abh1lasha
Member Posts: 4
I suspect it has something to do with achieving a wider throat space with the vowels. But I wonder if someone could provide me with a more specific reason. Also, opening my mouth really wide, hurts my jaw and I was wondering if I was doing something wrong. Thanks a lot.
Comments
As to jaw-opening, do remember that Ken says: "not to the point that you get tension in the jaw"...
I'd recommend you'd drop your jaw and relax it. Lowering your jaw with too much energy could in fact hinder the opening of your throat, which is what you really are aiming at.
More experienced forum members could certainly add to this advice.
Keep it up and don't go tense
the thing with the lah, good question, i guess it is just traditional to start with LAH. if you sing without lyrics, it is mostly lalalalala right? maybe someone else can help...
Lah, as opposed to just AH, starts the onset of the note out with a light consonant, "L"
In the scales we sing Lah, ah, ah, ah, ah , ah, ahhhh. Not Lah, lah, lah, lah, lah, lah, lah.
We are keeping the throat (vocal tract) OPEN for the remainder of the notes of the scale for contiguous vowel singing, aka Open Throat Singing. Every time we use a hard consonant, we have to work to reset the vocal tract to open it back up (or it simply is not open). Training in consonant-launched scales we will be totally dependent on launching every note with consonants. That is not good vocal technique. It's hard on the voice.
Some of you (like me) may have previously done some other courses using other methods that are entirely consonant-launched exercises. Such as Mum, mum, mum, or goog, goog, goog, or gug, gug, gug, or Nay, nay, nay.
Sound familiar?
Courses that teach this are duping the students. Putting harder consonants on every note is the opposite of Open Throat Singing, and most definitely not contiguous-phrase singing. The only way those students can hit the high notes is to pop them out with hard consonants. That doesn't work well in a real song. You can sing the notes in a scale, but not in a song. You don't learn to sustain notes with those consonant-launched notes.