The Vocal Exercise "Nay"
The "Nay" Exercise Develops the Pharyngeal Resonator
The "nay" vocal exercise is one of the best exercises for developing solid vocal cord closure. The "nay" vocal exercise helps to develop your pharyngeal resonator, which in turn helps to connect your chest voice with your head voice.
When practicing the "nay" vocal exercise, it is important to remember to keep it very nasty sounding. In order to get the best vocal cord closure, you need to make the sound very nasal. As you develop solid vocal cord closure, you can bring the sound to more of a balanced tone, but until then, you will profit the most by keeping the "nay" very nasal and ugly sounding.
The reason why the "nay" vocal exercise works so well is because of the way the consonants and vowels are formed. The "n" sound effectively closes up the vocal cords and seals off any extra air the may try to break through. Try it out for yourself. Now add the "ay" to the end of the "n" sound. The "ay" helps you to release the sound that you have already been building up. When it is all combined and you have done it correctly (the only way you can mess this up is if you try to be breathy), you will be producing a clean sounding tone that resonates well. This is the building block for you to begin forming your mix voice.
Be sure to keep your tongue resting on the back of your bottom front row of teeth while doing this exercise in order to have the most resonance space possible in your mouth. Retracting your tongue causes a lot of tension in your tone and makes your voice squeeze as you go higher into your range.
Whatever you do though, make sure your vocal cords are not hurting after your practice. If this is the case, stop! It is ok for the vocal cords to feel tired after you have practiced, but they should never hurt or feel sore.
You should practice this vocal exercise on octave and arpeggio scales in order to get the most out of it. Experiment with the exercise and make sure you extend into your upper range. You will find yourself improving in no time!
Published by Thomas Griffin
Thomas is an avid singer and loves theology. He is currently pursuing a degree in Business Management at Appalachian State University. He is actively engaged in vocal study and developing quality singing tec... View profile
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4 Comments
Post a CommentThank you. This is really helpful!
I'm practicing it, can you hear me?
Thanks, I'll give it a go! cheers :)
Excellent!!