What are Singing Vowels?

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!

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.

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!

This is a basic overview of singing vowels and how to form them, but the second part of learning singing vowels is learning how to find the vowel in the words you sing. This ensures that you're using the correct singing vowel when singing so that it sounds the best, and it feels the best. I made a much longer and more in-depth singing vowels post that includes how to find vowels in words and how to add in consonants, and you can find that post here! (You can also find that information in the YouTube video linked at the top, or here!)

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!