Tongue Root Tension

How do I stop straining on my higher notes?

Ask your vocal coaching expert Dr Anikó Tóth.

If you find you’re working very hard to try to reach your high notes, but you can’t reach them, one place to start troubleshooting is to check in with tongue root tension.

As your tongue is a large muscular organ connected to the hyoid bone, from which your larynx also hangs, tension in the tongue can mean less flexibility for your larynx to move up to sing higher notes.

Sometimes the sound of the voice has an element of Kermit the Frog, which is why I’ve nicknamed that type of tongue root tension ‘Kermit tongue’.

In some styles, like Gospel, this technique of ‘tongue backing’ is actually part of the sound. It’s when it’s the only way you can sing that it becomes a problem because the muscles of your tongue can keep your larynx from rising up as needed for high notes. ‘Tongue backing’ absolutely needs to be released on higher notes.

In other words, ‘tongue backing’ should be a choice, rather than an automatic, especially when it’s not working for you.

The Tongue, via WebMD.

Some tongue root release exercises:

Toffee Circles:

After ‘chewing imaginary sticky toffee’, imagine you are removing it from your teeth. This warms up the tongue. (You can also just do tongue circles, both ways, in front of your teeth, lips closed.)

‘Baby Tongue’:

With the tip of the tongue behind the bottom teeth, drop the jaw and stick out the middle of the tongue as far as possible while saying, “Yeah, yeah, yeah” and “Yah, yah, yah”.

There should be no jaw movement because you are isolating your tongue.

Sing with your tongue out:

Try both sensations: a) as relaxed as possible (something my lovely colleague Alison calls ‘melting butter tongue’ and b) extended out as far as possible. Don’t worry about making consonants (B, D, F, J, L, M, N…) sound correct. Concentrate on relaxing the tongue.

Embrace the silly sounds you make.

Tongue behind your bottom teeth:

The tip of the tongue should generally be relaxed against the back of the bottom teeth while singing vowels (A, E, I, O, U, Y, W), rather than retracted (pulled back). If you sing in front of a mirror and you see two different colors of the tongue (top - reddish and bottom - more pinkish), your tongue is retracted, which is NOT what you want. Try tip 3.a until your tongue gets used to being forward, then try singing with your tongue just behind the bottom teeth.

Try vocal coaching lessons with our vocal coaching expert Dr Anikó Tóth.

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