Jaw Tension In Singing – Learn To Release It So You Can Sing!
Learn 5 Exercises that I use all the time to release my jaw tension so that I can sing!
(Transcript)
QUCK Test: See If You Have Tongue Tension In Your Singing!
(test starts at the very beginning of the video)
Take your index finger and your thumb grab hold of your jaw and give it a wiggle.
Uh huh.
How did it wiggle? Did it wiggle freely and easily or was it rigid and stiff, you couldn’t move at all. If you couldn’t move it at all or that some severe singers jaw tension right there. If you got a little bit of wiggle out of it, but there was a little bit of resistance. Again, you’ve still got a bit of jaw tension that needs working out. If you want a really nice resonant voice.
So before you look at anything else, if you want a good tone, it needs to be able to come out. If that jaw is tense, it’s going to struggle to come out. So you may even be sat there watching this video and your jaws. That’s your attention to what we want is a nice free open jaw. So our sound is like this, ah, rather than like this, uh, now it may not be as extreme as that, but what happens when you have even a little bit of jaw tension is that tension migrates into the tongue.
So you then get tongue tension and it’ll migrate into your neck, tighten up your neck and then inadvertently squeeze your vocals, giving you a much tighter sound. Cool. We don’t want none of that because what we want a singers is total freedom to use our singing instrument, exactly how we want.
5 Exercises To Release Jaw Tension (1:31mins in video)
Now I’m going to show you five exercises in this video that you can use to target and release your jaw tension. Now, this is something that’s really close to my heart. Why? Because I have really bad jaw tension myself, and you wouldn’t even know it. That’s why these exercises are so powerful. Many, many years ago, I fell off a swing, smashed my jaw and it dushed me temporal mandibular joint. So I actually go through phases where my jaw is this tight. I then had a phase where I’d let it clunk and then it went past clunking and it kind of grinds.
Now either way. These five exercises are the exercise that I use daily to release my jaw tension so I can speak and sing freely like I am now. And then at the end of this video, I’m going to show you one thing. That could be the biggest reason that you have jaw tension in your singing voice cool. And it’s often overlooked, but I’ll tell you about that at the end, let’s get into those five different exercises.
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The Jaw Wiggle Exercise (2:44mins into video)
Okay? So the first three exercises I’m going to show you are all about targeting tight jaw muscles. Cool. So the first one was that wiggly jaw that you did right at the beginning of the video. So all you want to do is hold of your jaw and you’re going to work on relaxing these muscles until it’s just your fingers, wiggling your jaw up and down. Great exercise for isolating the muscles that are giving you the problem. Ah,
Uh huh.
And I’m just trying to breathe through it and release those jaw muscles. So that’s the first exercise, the wiggly jaw. Now, if you’ve got a lot of tension, that jaw is going to be absolutely rigid. It’s not going to move. So it’s going to take you a lot of time breathing in, breathing out relaxing until eventually you can isolate and free up those muscles. So that’s the wiggly jaw exercise.
The Goldfish Exercise (3:41 into video)
The second exercise is the goldfish and that’s this and that leads on nicely from the wiggly jaw. you just go like this.
And go really quickly. Have a go see if you can do it that quickly. You’re probably fined. You’re voice falls over a lot and it can’t keep up that speed if it. Can’t keep up that speed. You’re over-controlling your jaw muscles you need to be able to do it really fast, a little tip here for you using some sort of rhythm, some sort of tempo, anything like that will really help you freed up. Why are you going to do it quickly? The quicker you can do it, the more freedom you have in your voice. Cool.
And that leads me on to the third exercise. And the third exercise is super difficult, but really powerful. It it’s based in the fact that all muscles, when they jerk respond like a reflex response, tension disappears only the correct tension is their cool and it happens naturally. So a good one for the jaw is when you’re cold, you know, See that little jerking
Shivering Jaw Exercise (4:25mins into video)
Cool,
Really difficult. But if you practice with it and keep thinking cold and shivering, you’ll get to a point where you can isolate that kind of shivering reflex.
Now that is one of the most powerful tools I have used help release my jaw.
Habitual Jaw Tension In Your Singing Release Exercise (5:23mins into video)
Okay. So the next exercise is targeting the fact that it could be habitual. In other words, you’ve been doing this since year dot and to you, it just feels normal. So that means those first three exercises are great for releasing that tension. But then when you go to speak or sing, that tension comes right back in because it’s habitual makes sense. All right. So for that situation, I use this exercise. So I take my hands. I take my fingers and I find that little divot sort of there’s my ear. There’s like a little divot as you run down in front of the ear. And then I run my fingers across there. So it’s just below the cheekbone cool and keep my hands in there fingers in there same on the other side.
And now I just try and breathe through it and soften those muscles. Now you’ll know you have your fingers in the right place. If you just clench your teeth and you’ll feel the muscles go cool. Now, if you swallow, you should feel, there’s a point where they soften a bit, that really firm it’s going to take a lot of work. Okay. So swallow feel a little bit of softening. Okay.
Now with that, I’m just going to sing. Well, my mom has said, and you’re going to experiment on working on softening those muscles that you feel under your fingers and noticing how it sounds and how it feels when they’re soft. Okay. So when they’re tight, so clench and feel them. Well, my mummu said, now I’m going to soften. Well, my mom has said my jaw feels like it’s responding to me wanting it to move to the sounds and it’s suddenly does so again, well, my mom has said soften more. Well, my mom has said, obviously, we don’t want to take it so far that it’s just so soft. [inaudible]
we want that balance of tension. So the jaw feels floating, responsive. Cool. So play around with that. And that’s a great exercise to help you release that habit of singing with tension or speaking with tension.
All right. So onto the third reason why you can have jaw tension, like myself is a physical problem. I have actually damaged my jaw and it doesn’t work very well. So I have to work hard every day on freeing up. So if you’re in that crew, then it’s temporal mandibular joint TMJ problems. Cool. You can go and see a chiropractor, an osteopath, and they will really dive in there and help you fix it.
Neck Alignment For Jaw Tension In Singing (8:21mins into video)
But there are a couple of physical problems that you can deal with yourself. And one of them is neck alignment. So if you’re singing and you’re next out here, just try it. Now, when you’re next out like that, can you hear the sound is different and your chest has dropped.
Cool sound is weak and forward and thin. Now, as I straightened up my neck, listen to how that tone changed. So try it like this, like that, you feel tension in your jaw here now, straighten up feel. There’s a point where the jaw actually relaxes and you feel it soften here. How powerful is that? And I go back to that, sing something. Well, my mom has said, well, my mom has said, well, mom has said hear the difference when you feel that tension release soup. Powerful. All right. So that was the neck alignment. So there, what we’re basic saying is good posture is crucial to releasing that jaw.
Okay. So do you remember right back at the beginning of this video, I said that there was one thing that singers often overlook when they’re looking at that jaw tension in their singing voice. And it can be the main reason they got jaw tension in the first place.
So what is that thing? It’s breath support. If you don’t support correctly. In other words, too much support that jaw is going to lock up too little support. The jaw is going to lock up. It’s gotta be the right amount of support. So not only does a jaw lock up the tongue, then locks up the neck, muscles, lock up, everything locks up as it’s trying to help your voice to sing. Now support in itself is a huge subject and it’s something I cover in my how to sing course. And you can find links to that in the description box below.
Alrighty, you now have five really cool exercises that you can do to help alleviate your singer’s jaw tension.
I’m vocal. Coach Dylan have yourself a great day. Y’all.