"Ah" vowel exercises

[Rozzy73]

There seems to be a big difference of opinion on doing exercises with an open "ah" vowel. When I took a few lessons with Rob last year, he started me on "eh" "uh" and the Frisell book starts you "oo" and "ee". My current teacher, with whom I focus about 20% on technique and 80% of songs, has me doing a lot of exercises with the "ah". These include falsetto slides, from D5 to as low as I can take it in addition to a few with changing vowels ( mee,eh, ah, oh, oo) and 2 octave ascending arpeggios on ah. For my program, I do a combination of these, TVS exercises, and Kevin Richards exercises. Lately, I've been replacing oo and ee for ah on my descending 5ths, per recommendation of the Frisell book.

So, why do think there is such a variety of opinion the use of ah? For myself, ah exercises and ng exercise with an ah behind it were important to get me to relax my throat. I have also found it fairly intuitive to narrow ah to uh through the passagio into head register. I also use a mah to muh exercise as part of my program and I think it's been helpful.

[Sarit_Aloni]

The Ah is a tricky vowel. What happens is that to make a "ah" there is the instinct to open wide the mouth and let the soft palate to drop.

What is difficult in that vowel is aligning it with all the others...I've found it is very helpful to practice the ee and than a, try not to have many changes between them. Also exercises with GN and A help to get use the tongue to remain in the ng place and get you work with your soft palate (living it high). This is why some will suggest to add in your AH a little ee in it or OH. Anyway I think that doing a warm up starting immediately with the ah vowel is not something I would do. I would rather work on A E I U O together on one note. (rather than a whole scale of Ah)...