Estimated reading time 7 minutes
Table of Contents
Introduction
Do you have a hard time performing words like lung, ton, and done with a strong tone? Many vocalists find neutral vowels tricky to sing with good resonance. The most common neutral vowel in English is the schwa, which you can find in words like us, one, and son. Read more to learn about singing schwa vowels.
- Since singing is all about the vowels, I thought that we needed to spend more time learning how to sing them well.
- Good vowel production remains a critical skill for vocalists.
- Vowels help with staying in tune and good vocal tone and resonance.
- All of these things revolve around how you perform your vowels.
When I sang in choruses, choirs, and took vocal lessons, it seemed that my teachers focused mostly on the long vowels: A, E, I, O, and U. The next section talks about how I realized that I needed to improve how I produced my schwa vowels.
This article uses musical terms. For definitions, see the Glossary at the end of the post.
The Blue Umbrella and Singing Schwa Vowels
As I progressed with my singing, I realized that focusing on the long vowels left gaps in my general understanding of vowels. Namely, I had never focused on mastering short vowels or the schwa.
- A case in point, Disney has a short film called The Blue Umbrella. The story centers on a blue umbrella that flirts with a nice red umbrella. The short film lacks dialog, so the music adds a lot of the emotional sub-context.
- I always found the song difficult to sing. The vocalist sings vocables, mostly uh, but every so often oo, and oh.
- My main issue had to do with the fact that I hadn’t mastered singing schwa vowels yet. Therefore, I got very little resonance on the neutral vowels.
- In other words, the vowels sounded weak and lifeless.
Read on to learn my strategy for singing schwa vowels.
The Blue Umbrella Video
Speaking vs Singing Schwa Vowels
Hearing the Vowels
Before you start working on singing schwa vowels, we need to generally talk more about vowels. Click here for a vowel chart that has audio samples of each vowel sound.
- On the chart at the above link, click on each of the audio samples on the outside on the left side of the chart. From top to bottom you have the vowels: ee, ay, ih, eh, a (cat), a (rather with a New England accent). Phoneticists call these front vowels. They descend on the chart from closed to open.
- Now, click on each of the audio samples on the outside of the right side of the chart. From top to bottom you have the vowels: oo, oh (yawn in standard British English), oh (row), aw, ah. Phoneticians call these back vowels. They also descend on the chart from closed to open.
- The terms back and closed can create issues for vocalists. John Moriarty, in his book Diction, explains.
- “Most phoneticists classify vowels in three groups: frontal, central and back. These terms refer to the position of the tongue. For example, in the English me the vowel would be frontal, in ma it would be central, and in moo it would be back.
- “The word ‘back’, however, is anathema to many singers and teachers of singing. For this and additional reasons, we find it more useful to classify the vowels in five groups as tongue vowels, lip vowels, (according to which factor is most active in their formation), mixed vowels, neutral vowels, and nasalized vowels” (7).
Likewise, the term “closed,” could confuse vocal students, leading to collapsed soft pallets. Click here for a discussion on performing with a high soft pallet.
The Schwa
- Smack dab in the middle of the vowel chart you’ll find a symbol that looks like an upside-down e. Click on the audio sample, and you’ll hear the vowel that we’ll work on today: the schwa. Being a mid-central vowel, it has a neutral sound, thus why the schwa often gets called a neutral vowel.
- Spoken schwa vowels sound different from the sung schwa. Say the words the, a, and up. Notice how they all have a really short duration. Now, go back and listen to The Blue Umbrella video again. Most of the schwa vowels don’t get held for long. However, some gets held for a half note or so.
- When the schwa gets sustained, it changes how we perceive the vowel, making it harder to identify it with the spoken version.
- So, how do we translate speaking the schwa into singing the schwa vowel? Start by saying the word up. Now, sing the word up to the first note of the vocal track below. (For a review of how shape notes work:
- Next, sing the schwa with the vocal track using a sustained tone, leaving off the p altogether. If you lose the schwa sound, just say the word up again to get it back. It just takes practice to learn how to sing a sustained schwa vowel.
- Finally, sing along with The Blue Umbrella video. Be aware of when the vocalist switches to the oo and oh vowels.
- The sing-along tracks use synth voices rather than actual voices. Science has shown that this helps you, the vocalist, to identify and perform absolute pitch information. For more info, see Why Use a Synth Voice Instead of Real Voices.
Mobile users: for best results reading the music, tilt your screen 90o to the right.
Synthetic Vocal Track:
Sing into the Mask and Singing Schwa Vowels
The Videos
At this point you might be saying, “Wait… that’s it? Just one vowel?!” On the contrary, we will now talk about a common vocal technique used to help make singing the schwa vowel sound stronger and more resonant. Really, this strategy, sing into the mask, helps make any vowel sound better.
- Imagine that your mouth as a tiny room. Rooms of various sizes will sound different. A living room sounds one way while a cathedral sounds another.
- As you change the shape of your mouth to form different vowels, you also change the shape of your “room.”
- This makes it so some notes resonant better and others don’t.
- As you learn more about vowels, you can adjust and fine tune them to be better in tune, producing a more striking sound.
- When done correctly, you’ll feel like parts of your face will vibrate. My vocal teacher, Sue Ellen Kuzma, always commented that at times you’d feel your teeth, nose, and forehead vibrate.
- The first video below talks about what parts of the vocal track vibrate as you sing into your mask. The second video talks about what parts of the face vibrate as you sing different vowels.
Also, it has good exercises to help you sing into the mask. Especially, the “chewing” exercise will help you understand what it feels like to sing into the mask if you’ve never felt it before.
Video: Using the Mask
Video: How to Sing into Your Mask
How to Do It
So, how do you sing into the mask? In his book, Components of Vocal Blend, Gerald Eskelin has this advice. “To help singers experience this feeling, ask them to hold an open hand about an inch in front of the mouth, but below the nose, and to ‘sing over the fence.’
- “Since the ‘fence’ would seem to block much of the mouth sounds, singers intuitively direct the energy of the sound ‘through the eyes.’ It works very well and the vocal result is usually quite stunning” (33).
- I agree with Eskelin that the results can be stunning. As I said before, using the sing-into-the-mask strategy works for much more than just singing schwa vowels. I highly recommend The Components of Vocal Blend for anyone serious about vocal performance.
- Next, start with the ah vowel, because the open quality of ah makes it fairly easy to sing.
- Practice your sing-into-the-mask technique using the sing-along track above.
- After you’ve gotten comfortable doing that on an ah vowel, try other vowels, including the schwa.
Once you can sing the schwa vowel with a strong tone, go back and sing The Blue Umbrella again.
Singing Schwa Vowels: More Resources that Help with Vocal Tuning
Once you’ve gotten the hang of singing schwa vowels and the sing-into-the-mask technique, you can work on making them sound in tune. These links will help:
- The Intonation Flight Simulator: has sing-along tracks that help you to be able to sing in tune
- Sing in Tune Like a Rock Star: learn how to emulate vocal timbre and nuance
- 10 Elements that Impact Singing in Tune: This article talks about the most important factors that affect vocal tuning
- Singing in Tune with Vowels: discusses scientific studies that show the impact that vowels have on vocal intonation
Concluding Thoughts on Singing Schwa Vowels
Make sure you practice more than just the long vowels. Successfully singing the schwa vowels is just a matter of practice. Practice with the sing-along song track until you can do it easily and naturally. The schwa and the other short vowels show up in too many words for you to ignore them.
- In later posts, we’ll deal with the short vowels.
- However, we’ll group them with the long vowels into two main types: lips vowels and tongue vowels.
- Also, we’ll look at diphthongs (such as: oi, ow, U, I, and w), which consist of more than one vowel.
- Finally, we’ll discuss producing the “vowel” R.
In other words, in this post, we worked on only one vowel. The next vowel post will have six more vowels to work with. Have fun singing!
© 2022 Geoffrey Keith
Join me for in-person or online lessons today!
Glossary
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