Mouth shape for warm up exercises

Hi all,

I am following Jonathan's  course, and in the second lesson, he gives some warm up exercises for us to do.

As I am completely blind, I just wanted to confirm some things as I could not have the visual feedback of how his mouth was doing some of them.

More specifically, for the "uuuu exercises, descending from g to c", and "aaa exercises", from c to e and back:

1. How open should be my mouth for each exercise? 

2. Is there anything else I should be paying attention concerning the mouth shape?

Thanks.

Hi, Lucas!

Thank you for asking!

In general, the ideal mouth position is that of a relaxed "pre-yawn". If you just let your mouth open and jaw drop naturally, there should be about one fingertip's space between your top and bottom teeth. That's about enough space when you're in the low to medium portion of your range. Higher notes sometimes require more space - so if the tone starts to feel or sound tight or pinched, you may want to drop your jaw more. 

Another thing to keep in mind is different vowel shapes: you will naturally have a slightly different mouth shape for each vowel you sing, but in order to keep a consistent tone, we actually don't want to be moving the jaw that much! Singers try to pronounce vowels inside the throat and mouth, with a relatively stable jaw. 

When we sing lyrics, our mouths are constantly moving! So more important than any specific position is your relaxation and flexibility. We don't want your jaw feeling stuck!

The last thing I want to mention is the "lift" in the top part of your face. We often raise the cheeks and eyebrows, "smiling with our eyes" in order to achieve an energized, lifted tone. The mouth and jaw are relaxed, but lifting the muscles in the top of our face helps to also lift the soft palate (inside the mouth), and can help correct a dull, heavy, or flat sound. 

Please let me know if you have other questions!