How to avoid constriction while singing

In one of the previous articles, we talked about the importance of singing with an open throat. It gives your voice more room to resonate, so creates a warmer and rounder tone with more timbre. A tone’s steadiness is the result of singing with an open throat and the correct use of breath support.

But if you don’t sing with an open throat and use breath support, you run the risk of singing with constriction. That is something you definitely want to avoid because it’s stressful, harmful for the voice, and doesn’t sound good! 

How constriction arises 

Constriction is a thing almost every singer, including me, had to deal with at some point. It mostly takes place in the upper chest voice, around the flip/break to head voice, so in the area where both voice registers can be used. This is due to the fact that the higher you sing, the more air pressure is needed. And in order to regulate this air pressure, you need to use proper breath support.

If that isn’t the case you quickly lose a lot of air and your larynx (voice box) comes up. You automatically tense up the jaw, the tongue partly closes off the throat and thus the throat muscles tense to compensate for this loss of breath support and air. The combination of a high larynx and closed-up throat produces a very constricted and tense sound that is often out of tune. Furthermore, it impairs the sound, the volume, and the timbre of the voice. Some untrained singers sing louder to offset the poor volume and timbre, but this is tiring and straining the voice and can be damaging.  

The Tongue, Jaw, and Larynx

It’s clear that the tongue can’t just lie on the floor of our mouth when we sing, but it also shouldn’t be too active. However many singers move the tongue too much, which creates tension. I want to underline that the tongue should be relaxed because it is connected to the jaw and larynx, so can influence their condition. If the jaw and larynx are tensed, due to the tongue’s movement, constriction arises, and that’s what we want to avoid. To prevent constriction it is important to start with the root of the problem which is often a tensed tongue. Let’s check out some exercises that can help you to have a relaxed tongue, an elastic jaw, and a resting larynx.

Tongue 

When the tongue is relaxed it just lies on the floor of the mouth. To be able to really feel the difference between a tensed and a relaxed tongue, one can do the following exercise.

Jaw 

A relaxed jaw is a dropped jaw. But the Jaw shouldn’t be actively pushed down or to the front, we want to let the jaw drop open using gravity, rather than muscle. When you let the jaw drop open, it’s important, that it also swings towards the back. This is a natural movement you also do while yawning.

Larynx 

High larynx – swallowing 

Low larynx – yawning 

But how do we get a neutral larynx?

Body alignment 

A habit many singers have is that their neck and with it, their head, moves forward when they sing. To really hear how this affects your voice you can do this exercise:

When your head and chin go forward, the sound gets softer, and the timbre gets weaker. Through the forward movement of your head, the throat space gets smaller, and there’s less place for resonance to take place. You can compare your vocal tract to a garden hose, just that instead of water, air comes through it. When you bend a hose, the water stream gets interrupted and less water comes out. The exact same thing happens when you bend your head forwards, the airflow has to go through a tighter opening, the sound gets softer and has fewer overtones. So instead of bending your head forward out of some old habit, try to keep your neck aligned to your body.

Literature references

• Best exercise for a low larynx – Mark Baxter
• Jaw Position Singing – Victoria
• Singing From The Inside Out – Ineke van Doorn
• How to eliminate jaw, throat and neck tension for singers – Marnell Sample