Singing vowels are very important. Without perfect—or close to perfect—vowels, you’ll run into a bunch of vocal problems, and you’ll never sound as amazing as you are capable of sounding.
I have a video on this exact subject (below) if you prefer to watch that! If not, read on!
What are singing vowels?
Singing vowels are the very special way we pronounce and shape words when we sing.
Although we call them vowels, they aren’t the same vowels we know and love from English class: A, E, I, O, U and sometimes Y.
Singing vowels are A, E, Ah, O, and Oo.
In essence, saying each of these vowels correctly (as well as shaping your mouth in a very specific way as you do so) forms your mouth into a very specific shape. So you can also think of singing vowels as mouth shapes.
Each of these five singing vowels—mouth shapes—are the only five mouth shapes or vowels you’ll ever use while singing. This is because each of these five vowel sounds are the ONLY five different sounds that make up every word you’ll ever sing. No matter what you do, you will always find yourself using one of these five.
But this specific way we shape our mouth to sing is quite different from how we shape our mouth when we speak.
So, why is it important how we pronounce and shape words when we sing? Why can’t we pronounce things the same way both speaking and singing?
Because when we speak, we don’t care about how our tone sounds. We don’t need our voices to sound angelic. We just need to communicate. When you’re trying to sound pretty, however, that has to do with how you pronounce things and how you shape your mouth to say them.
It all has to do with that air you’re breathing out.
In the breathing post, we talked about how it’s important to take in enough air and release it at a controlled pace, but we also have to consider how you shape its exit.
Think of mouth shape and air the same way sound reacts in a room. A spacious room that has hardly any furniture or carpeting to absorb the sound and no open windows or open doors (such as a cathedral or a bathroom) gives singers and musicians great acoustics. The sound circulates freely and it’s very concentrated; it has nowhere to escape. On the other hand, if you’re singing in a room that has open windows and open doors and plenty of furniture for sound to absorb into, it has plenty of room to escape. You don’t get that glass-like, beautiful tone that you get in a church.
The same idea goes for how air circulates in your mouth.
Your mouth shape is your room, your breath is your voice. The more space you have in your mouth and the smaller/narrower the opening of your mouth, the more clear and beautiful your voice comes out. If your mouth is open too wide, that’s like opening the windows in the room. You’re letting the air escape and breaking that glass-like tone of your voice. (Not to mention causing a bunch of other issues).
Singers like Ariana Grande and Kelly Clarkson have beautiful glass-like tone because their vowels—their mouth shapes—are so perfectly shaped. Both Kelly and Ariana are classically trained singers, and classically trained singers are usually taught very perfect vowels. Anyone can achieve glass-like or autotune-like tone if they perfect their vowel shapes.
The 5 Singing Vowels
By now you're probably wondering how to even form these mouth shapes. Have no fear! I have pictures to help.
The shape of singing vowels is the most important part to get right. This is where many singers go wrong—they understand that there are singing vowels, they know what they are and how to find them in words. But... they aren’t shaping their mouths correctly.
The most important thing to keep in mind when shaping your mouth is to narrow the opening. Pretty much, you want the corners of your mouth to be closer together; not so wide. The wider your mouth is open, the more air escapes, and the less space you keep in your mouth.
Remember that we’re thinking about our mouth as the “room” our voice sings in—like that cathedral. We want a nice big room with no open windows. So, to make that nice big room, we want our mouth shape to be tall and the opening to be more narrow. My chorus teacher from high school always told us to “imagine an upright egg sitting on your tongue.” Do that now—pretend there’s an upright egg in your mouth. Feel your tongue lower and the back of your mouth lift higher.
This is the kind of space we always need to have.
So, we want the inside shape of our mouth to look more like this (these photos are from my Vowels video, where I discuss all this stuff, except in video-form!):
And less like this:
These 5 singing vowels help you to keep that shape with everything you sing.
The Fish Face Tool
There’s a helpful tool I used when I was first learning my vowels and it’s one I use to teach all my clients (and a tool I learned from that same chorus teacher—thank you!). Pretty much, you’re going to make your face into a fish face.
Step 1: Take both hands and open them, making a “high five” hand with both, but don’t put your hands together.
Step 2: Now, flip your hands upside down, toward each other, so that your fingertips point toward the floor, and your wrists are at a right angle. The backs of your hands will now face each other.
Step 3: Now, lift both hands in that position, and press the backs of your hands to your cheeks (one hand on each cheek). If you’re hitting your cheek bone with your wrist, move your hand down so it’s beneath your cheek bone.
Now, push your cheeks toward each other, so that your lips get closer together in a fish face. This isn’t forceful or hard, but make sure your fish face is very, well, fishy. If you’re doing it right, you’re gonna look pretty dumb. Just like me, in this still photo from the video:
The corners of your mouth should be fairly close to each other (not wide, like they are in a smile), and you should feel like you have more space in your mouth. That’s the entire point of vowels—to get more space in your mouth. You should imagine having that upright egg in your mouth—think tall.
This feeling is also the EXACT same as you naturally drinking or blowing through a straw. Notice how much taller your mouth becomes? That's what it feels like to sing with vowel shapes!
This is how your mouth will be shaped as you sing. (You won’t look this dumb in the future, thank goodness; you won’t need to do this hand tool as it becomes natural).
Now, go through and say each vowel sound: Ah, A, E, O, and Oo, while pushing the corners of your mouth in like that, and not moving your hands at all even when you change vowels. This is NOT forceful! Try some singing like this, and hear how already this is changing the tone of your voice into something much more clear and smooth!
Here’s an idea of the mouth shapes your lips form (and feel free to look up performances from singers like Kelly Clarkson, Beyoncé, Ariana Grande, Adele and Josh Groban, who have some of the best vowels I've ever seen! So if you want to learn to sing like Ariana Grande, or to sing like Kelly Clarkson or any of these awesome singers, vowels are where to go!):
Ah - it's almost a circle with your lips. But it’s still more narrow than a perfect circle.
(Ariana Grande)
O - this one is like an oval. Narrow and tall, like a more open “Oo.”
(Josh Groban)
E - E will look like a square with your lips. Really get the corners of your lips to push in for this one. It will deepen the sound of that E.
(Adam Lambert)
Oo - Oo is the easiest shape to get, because we pretty much do this already when we say words like “do” and “too”.
(Kelly Clarkson)
A - this is where the corners of your lips are at their widest. A is a more open vowel.
(Miley Cyrus)
To give you an idea of how each are pronounced, I’ll give you examples:
A - say, day, way, pray, gate
E - see, be, tree, breach
O - so, low, throw, though
Ah - saw, draw, thaw
Oo - do, true, lose, soothe
When you're new to this, it's a very unnatural feeling. It’s very unnatural (but not uncomfortable), because we never do this. When we speak, we don’t need all that space. Our vowels aren’t tall when we speak; they're very wide. So, it’s going to take quite a while for this to become second nature. It’s a muscle-memory thing.
Just to see how much muscle memory it’s going to take, pick a vowel, and say it using your hands as a tool. Then, remove your hands and hold that shape. Notice just how different it is from how you speak. Notice the muscles in your cheeks that have to work hard to get your mouth shape to stay like that without your hands as a crutch. (In time, it will not be hard at all to do this).
The most different of all these vowels is e, because when we speak e (as in “see”), the corners of our mouth are at their widest, like we’re smiling. But with singing, e is the second smallest vowel (second only to Oo). That’s going to take some getting used to for sure. But trust me, it's so worth it!
(If you want to see what this looks like from a total pros, click on the links underneath each photo! Their vowels are absolutely top notch!)
Finding Vowels in Words
Now that we know why we need to use vowels, and how to shape them, let's figure out how to find the correct vowel to use in the words we sing.
The first thing to know about finding singing vowels is to find the correct singing vowel in a word, it doesn’t matter what letters are used in the word; it matters what sound the word makes.
First let's revisit the five singing vowels. And they are: A, E, Ah, O, and Oo.
Now, you’re probably wondering where are i and y? Why isn’t 'i' a singing vowel?
Remember: it doesn’t matter what letters are used; it matters what sound the word makes.
Think of singing vowels as singing vowel sounds. These 5 vowels are the 5 core sounds that make up every single word you’ll ever sing. You’ll never need a 6th.
Right now, say i out loud, slowly. As you do, you’ll hear this: “ah……e.” Notice that when you say i, you have two different sounds in that one word “i”.
“i” is comprised of the vowel sounds ah and e.
Do the same thing with y, or the actual word "why". Say 'y' out loud, slowly. You’ll hear yourself say: “whaaah…e.”
In speaking, it doesn’t matter if vowels have two different sounds in one word. Remember; we don’t care how we sound when we speak as long as we get our point across and can be understood.
But in singing, if you sing the word “i” the way we pronounce it while speaking, you’ll hear, “ahhhhhhhhheeeeeeeee” and if you try singing that now, it sounds very juvenile, unprofessional, and simply not great. But if you instead sing “i" as “ahhhhhhh,e”, with a tiny ‘e’ at the end, hear the difference. Much more professional, and much easier to sing. Do the same with y, but sing the word “why.” Sing: “Whaaaaaaah,e.” Make the majority of that word “ah”, with the tiniest “e” tacked onto the end. (to hear this, check out the vowels video!)
Makes a big difference, huh?
The key to singing vowels is finding which singing vowel is the MAJORITY of the word or syllable of a word you’re singing.
When you’re singing, you have to be very conscious of which singing vowel you’re going to use while singing every word you sing, one syllable at a time.
Lots of words you sing are going to have more than one syllable. Such as, “specific,” “tomorrow,” or “party.” There’s a singing vowel for each syllable of a word. So, if you have a word that’s more than one syllable, you need more than one singing vowel; one per syllable. Simply split the word into syllables with hyphens, then treat each syllable as one sound. Here's an example:
Story - (sto - ry) - stO-rE
The idea of thinking about vowels as the sound you make rather than the letter you see is very important. Because you can’t always just look at a word such as “weigh” and say, “Well, there’s an e and an i… so it has to be one of those two vowels.” But the vowel for “weigh” isn’t e, or else it would be pronounced out loud, "wee." We know i isn’t a vowel at all, and even though ah makes up i, ah isn’t the vowel for “weigh”, either, because it would sound like, "wah."
The singing vowel for “weigh” is a.
Remember: they’re singing vowel sounds.
The singing vowel mantra: it doesn’t matter what letters are used; it matters what sound the word makes.
If you say “weigh” out loud, you hear a. It rhymes with “pay”, “day”, and “way”. Weigh’s vowel is a.
See how it’s about the sound the word makes, more than the letter you see?
The "Trick" Vowels
Now, there are going to be a few words that are like “trick-words”, because they sound a bit different than the 5 singing vowels. Some words have sounds that are in-between the 5 singing vowels, and that’s mostly because—for those of you Americans, like myself—the way we pronounce English words is very butchered and lazy. Traditional English speakers—I’m looking at you, Brits—speak with much clearer and purer vowels than Americans.
For example, the word cat. The vowel in this word is “ah.” American’s don’t say “caht,” in speaking, though. But UK English speakers do. Say out loud, “caht,” just like that. You’ll appear to be attempting—or achieving—a British accent. That’s because the English pronounce with purer vowels, and already pronounce “cat” in a purer way. When Americans sing, we have to pronounce "cat" the way a British English speaker would. And, to be very honest, if I ever find myself unsure what singing vowel to use for a word, I’ll adopt an English accent to say that word to find out that way. Go ahead and try it now: sing "caht" in an attempted British way. What do you notice? It actually doesn't sound British. It just sounds like professional singing. (Why do you think we all love English accents so much in comparison to American accents? British English speakers' pure vowels are more musical.)
So, whenever you have that weird ‘ayh’ vowel sound like in “cat,” “bat”, “and” or “salad,” you’re almost always going to use the vowel ah. Say “salad” like “Sahlad,” and you’ll immediately sound more British. Yet if you sing it, it sounds perfectly natural.
There are several instances where a word will seemingly not use any of the 5 singing vowels, but rest assured, every word will utilize one of the 5 singing vowels, no exceptions. You just have to find the closest match. For example, the word “of”. The singing vowel for “of” is “ah”. You’re not using O because it’s not pronounced as, “Oaf.” And you’re not using Oo, because you’re not saying, “Oof.” You’re saying, in essence, “Ahve.” See how you can’t rely on only looking at the letters in the word?
When you encounter a word and you don’t know which vowel to use, say the word—or the syllable of the word—out very slowly. Listen to what it sounds like. Oftentimes, you’ll notice immediately. If you do it with the word "of", you'll hear yourself saying ah. Go ahead and try it! “Ahhhhhhhhve.” And as a last resort, go through each 5 vowel sounds. Rule out all the ones that sound wrong, and you’ll find the one that sounds right. “Oof,” “Oaf,” “Ayf,” “Eef,” and “Ahf.” See? It’s not perfect, because Americans don’t always have pure vowel sounds, but “Ahve” is the closest match, and it will sound perfectly natural when you sing it.
Trick-word cheat sheet!
It can be really tricky to find the singing vowel of a trick-word. And a trick-word is just a silly name I gave to a word that has a vowel sound that’s between two different singing vowels, so that it seems like it’s not any of the 5 singing vowels.
The most common trick vowel sounds:
E has a trick vowel sound that is in so many words. Think "speck”, "deck", "desk". In these words, you don't hear a pure vowel sound. The closest one, however, is e. The off-sound in these words is an “eh” sound. Also in words like “very” or “share”. It’s “eh” because that sound is sitting between the vowels “e” and “ah”. However, it’s closer to “e” and we need the “e” mouth shape to get this one across in the best tone. So, almost anything that has the “eh” sound is “e”.
E has another trick vowel. An “ih” sound, like in the word “in” or “lift”. (Or for fans of Disney's Lilo and Stitch, it's what Stitch always says to say he agrees. "ih"). It’s between the two vowels “e” and “ah” but is closest to E.Whenever you have “ih”, you’ll almost always use the vowel e.
Ah - Just like we said in “cat” earlier, when you have that “ayt” or “ayn” in “and” sound that you get in “hat” or “hand”, it’s between the vowels “ah” and “e”, but will almost always be “ah”.
*Your Vowel Choice Does Not Need to Be the Same as Your Neighbor's*
The only rule here is to choose one of the vowels. With that said, it's perfectly okay to choose a vowel that someone else wouldn't, as long as it sounds natural. Because remember: we need to choose one of these five mouth shapes for that perfect shaping of your mouth in order to get that crystal like tone.
However, people can pronounce things they sing in different ways the same way we do when we speak: due to accents. Take the word "girl". The most proper and professional way to sing girl is to pronounce it as "gahl." Try it! You'll sound British speaking it, but you'll sound natural singing it. But if you're a country singer, you'll probably prefer an e vowel, and sing it as "gerl." See what I mean?
As another example, the word "and." It's one of our trick vowels, and it sits between ah and e. In most classical or Broadway-style vocals, you'll hear "ahnd." But in a lot of today's pop music, you'll hear "ehnd", which is closer to how American's say "and" when spoken quickly.
So you do have some freedom in choosing which vowel sound to use, but again, it's all about making sure you choose one of the five, and picking the one that sounds the best.
Adding Consonants
So by this point you might be saying, “Okay, great! I can sing vowels correctly, and I can find them in the words. But... how do I sing on the actual words with that same amount of space?”
This is where consonants come in.
The reason we care so much about vowels is because vowels are sounds made with your mouth open and free, whereas consonants are sounds made by closing your teeth or mouth.
Test it out—without worrying about any of the mouth shapes I talked about earlier, just say the vowel “a” out loud. Then say “e” out loud.
Now, say “N” out loud. This requires you to close your mouth so that your tongue touches the roof of your mouth. You can’t form the sound “N” with your mouth completely open.
Now, try “M”. You mouth actually has to close to form “M”.
Try “P”.
Again, your mouth completely closes.
If you go through the alphabet and say out loud every single consonant, it requires you to either completely close your mouth, or close it enough for your tongue to touch the roof of your mouth or your teeth to touch.
Why is that important to note?
Because, remember—space is the most important element in learning to sing, and learning to sing with beautiful tone.
When we don’t form vowels correctly, or when people sing without knowledge about the importance of these techniques in singing, people tend to sing the way they speak, and we hang onto consonants a lot. For example, if you were to say "and" the way we speak it, you'll hang onto the “N” of “and”, then it sounds like, “annnnnnnnnnnd." Or the “R” in girl, and it sounds like, “girrrrrrrrl.” These are very harsh sounds. Your consonants are crashing down that ceiling in the cathedral.
That’s why we care so much about vowels in singing.
The vowels are the singing.
The consonants simply enunciate, and allow people to understand what you’re saying.
Meaning, that if vowels are the dinner, the consonants are the salt and pepper. If the vowels are the water in a pool, the consonants are the walls.
Bottom line, we only want to use the smallest amount of consonants in our singing—just enough to be understood.
But 99% of your singing is going to be based on VOWELS.
Ever hear a singer that has a beautiful voice, but you can’t understand what they’re saying? (Sometimes, Ariana Grande can be a culprit of this). It’s because they know that pure vowels give you the best tone, but they go a little bit too far, and throw away their consonants. They’re trying so hard to keep that glass-like tone in their voice, but they’re sacrificing being understood. There’s a sweet spot where you can have your perfect vowel shapes and small consonants in each word that give you that glass-like quality, and allow you to be understood. That is the singer you want to aim to be. When you can’t be understood, you lose a lot of impact as a singer. Work hard to achieve that glass-like tonal quality, but please remember to enunciate.
What do I mean, “use small consonants”?
This is super easy!
Just take the word, “and.” The vowel in “and” is ah. Now, sing the vowel, “Ah.” Then, put the tiniest “ND” sound at the end of “Ah.” You’ll hear “Ahhhhhnd.” Wait until you hit the very end of singing the word before you add the consonants, so you avoid singing it like: “Annnnnnd.” Notice that you keep a lot more space in your mouth when you wait to add the consonants until the very end.
This goes for every word you’ll ever sing.
Let’s take a three-syllable word like “Determine.” You’re going to add the smallest consonants right at the end of the vowel you’re singing. Determine’s vowels are: E-E-Ah. So you’ll sing, “Deeetehhhrmaaaahn.” Small consonants!
How to Practice
This process of shaping your mouth into those vowels takes a lot of muscle memory! Meaning, if you try to do this all in one day, your muscles will go right back to clamping down on your space.
The key is to practice slowly and do it a lot.
Here is how to practice:
1. Grab the lyrics of the song you’re working on
2. Write them out or type them out, but go syllable by syllable. Make sure you leave room above each line. For example:
Hap - py birth - day dear some - bod - y
Hap - py birth - day dear some - bod - y
3. Write above each syllable which vowel sound is the majority of the syllable. *Remember: you can’t always look at the vowel that is in the word. Sound out the word, see what sound it makes. Choose the closest vowel of the 5 vowels Ah, A, E, O and Oo.
Ah E Ah A Oo Oo
Hap - py birth - day to you
Ah E Ah A E O O E
Hap - py birth - day dear some - bod - y
4. Now, sing the melody of the song, only on the vowels. So, it’d be like: “Ah E Ah, A, Oo, Oo.” Do this slowly at first, and watch yourself in the mirror to make sure your vowels are tall enough and your shapes are correct. Only increase speed when you can do so without losing the integrity of the shapes.
5. Slowly, switch to the words, using the vowel shapes you just came up with. An optional step before this could be to speak out the words in the vowel shapes. So, speak: “Hahp - pee bahth - day too yoo.” Then, add the pitch doing the same thing, also in front of a mirror.
6. Go full speed, keeping in check your vowel shapes!
Vowel Warm Up
There’s one vowel warm up I’ll talk about here (there are many you can look up on YouTube) but this is what I still do pretty much every day before I sing, that will help you quickly achieve muscle memory for this. Plus, you don't need a piano to play scales for you to sing along with, nor do you have to find vowels in words!
But, again, make sure your vowel shape is formed correctly as you do this, or you're going to be ingraining bad form into muscle memory! The best way to keep yourself in check is by doing this in front of a mirror until you get the hang of it, or doing that upside-down hand trick to keep your mouth shape tall.
Choose a song—any song— and choose one of the five vowels. Then, sing that one vowel over the entire song.
Yup, it's that easy!
For Happy Birthday, it would sound like: “Ah, Ah, Ah - Ah, Ah, Ah!”
Do this with each five vowels. You don’t have to do the entire song on one vowel; when I’m pressed for time, I choose one song and go through all 5 vowels throughout the song. I’ll just do one for the beginning, switch to another for the first chorus, switch to another for the second verse, and so on.
To challenge yourself further, alternate vowels when you do this. So, for Happy Birthday, sing, “Ah, E, Ah - E, Ah, E” then “A, O, A - O, A, O,” and so on. Practice switching from different vowels to different vowels and increase your speed when you get good.
This is the best way to ingrain vowels into your muscle memory.
Eventually, you won’t have to sit down with lyrics syllable by syllable; when you hear a song in the car or you learn a new song on the spot, your muscle memory will kick in and your mouth will simply know what shape to become instantly. But again, that comes from a lot of practice, so don’t be stingy with your practicing!
Because once this becomes second nature for you... Ariana and Kelly are going to have some major competition.
As always, I hope this post helped you! Comment with any questions or with your successes, and if you need any extra help, you can grab an online lesson with me over here!
Happy Singing!
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