This article was originally written in Turkish and has been translated into English with the help of artificial intelligence (AI). The translation may contain errors; the original Turkish version is the authoritative text.
Once diaphragmatic breath has been taken correctly, the breath passes through the windpipe, makes the vocal cords vibrate and leaves through the mouth by way of the lower and upper jaw. If we do not use the inside of our mouth well, our voice tires very quickly and only a small sound comes out. And if we put pressure on the voice and overload it with the force of the diaphragm, we cause problems in the voice that are very difficult to repair (gaps between the vocal cords, fluid build-up in the vocal cords, bleeding and so on). So to avoid situations like these, we must give our mouth a shape through the lower and upper jaw, so that our voice does not tire or become hoarse when we sing or speak for hours.
All of you, my dear readers, have surely been inside a mosque, a church or a Turkish bath. Think for a moment about what these buildings have in common. What is it? Their domes, of course. These domes allow the sound to come out bigger and of better quality. Starting from this, let us now turn to the inside of our mouth. If we can shape our mouth, especially the upper jaw, in this way, we will have come a long way.
There is an important organ that prevents us from enlarging the inside of our mouth: the soft palate and the uvula attached to it. Normally this organ sits between the lower and upper jaw and reduces the volume of the mouth. If we can draw it upwards (towards the upper jaw and the front palate), the inside of the mouth becomes larger, and we obtain a more efficient sound from a mouth that resembles the dome of a mosque. This is not so hard to achieve. People generally yawn when they wake up in the morning. If you observe yourself while yawning, you will see that the soft palate attached to the uvula rises. Then, when you are startled by something (haaa…), the soft palate and the uvula rise again. Think of the position your mouth takes when you eat a lemon, or when you accidentally put a very hot boiled potato in your mouth: you involuntarily pull the palate upwards so as not to burn your cheeks. A person in danger of choking also involuntarily raises the soft palate. So I believe it helps us if we think about these things for a while and give free rein to our imagination.
Apart from all this, developing our voice and preventing lip laziness requires a long period of exercise. We teachers call this long period voice training (classical singing training). Both speaking well and singing well are achieved at the end of this training. That is why those whose profession is speaking (broadcasters, teachers, politicians and so on) and those who sing should definitely go through this training. A teacher who gives eight lessons in a row in a day should not be hoarse after the eighth hour. A politician who gives an election speech should still have a full, clear voice for the speech the next day. The voice of a singer or actor rushing from concert to concert or from performance to performance should always be healthy. Their words should be understood one by one by the listeners; the lips of the speaker or singer should work very well — in other words, their lips should not be lazy.
Now let us turn to the teaching part. The teaching part is somewhat difficult for both teacher and student. The teacher explains certain things by drawing on the imagination, so they should choose a way of explaining with many examples, bearing in mind that everyone perceives things differently; and the student should find the explanation that suits them, grasp it and adapt it to their own body. It is like digging a well with a pin. But after a while the work becomes a great pleasure, and alongside the learning, the voice lesson also becomes a kind of therapy. That is why business women and men working at a very intense pace take singing lessons: they leave their worries aside and also learn to speak and sing well. In recent years psychologists have been referring patients to singing lessons, and our work with these patients has produced very positive results. Statistical research has found that people who do voice training and breathing work age more slowly.
In my next article I will discuss lip laziness, how to prevent it and exercises for it.