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Take A Minute To Sing Episode 18: Dropping the Jaw

An important lesson for beautiful singing is knowing how to make a rich, resonant tone. One way to help achieve that is to learn to drop the jaw correctly. It's not as obvious it sounds.

As a young singer, I misunderstood my first voice teacher who told me to drop my jaw. I thought it meant to push it down as far as I could. This created a throaty, gagged sound which sounded unpleasant.
The first exercise is to put the index and middle fingers of each hand in front of the lower part of your ears.
Try jutting the jaw forward and then pull the jaw in towards your ears. This should be effortless, but it doesn't come easy for many people, so practice that for a while. As always, if anything is painful, stop and talk to a pro.
You can also ask your dentist about TMJ (Google that if you're unfamiliar).
The next step is to practice speaking "Whoa", but separate it into a diphthong sound, Whoa-----Oo. Round the lips on the "Oh" and purse them more forward on the "Oo".

The last step is to practice singing this using groups of 3 notes on a pentatonic scale (example: A,C,D,E, G) so maybe start with A, G, E and repeat those notes as shown in the accompanying video.

Remember to always take a minute to sing every day!

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