Week 5! SOVTs

 Summary

Semi-occluded vocal tract exercises, or SOVTs, are partially blocked vocal ease practices that are very popular for working with vocal fatigue and injury or perceived effort. Common examples are straw work, cup and straw, or voiced consonant phonation. 

What?

---SOVT techniques operate with higher air pressure on closed folds to create a smaller sound. What? This means that the folds adduct and oscillate and air passes as if about to sing or intone, but the mouth functions differently or does not open at all. 

------>This is a practice best explained through examples (in my teacher opinion)

----------these can all be applied to warmup exercises or melodic fragments of actual literature

-------------->I like using octave slides or slides of a fifth over pesagio in particular 

Examples of SOVT exercises:

-singing into a straw

---avoid tight lips like a brass or woodwind embouchure

-lip trills/buzz or humming

-voiced consonants

---v as in vampire, th as in breathe, ge (no IPA keyboard!) as in camouflage, z as in zeitgeist, m as in ma'am

Okay I did some...now what?

-repeat exercises without occlusion and notice the change. This may be lower perceived effort, easier adduction, or just a "healthier feeling"

But why?

-SOVTs can be helpful in lots of contexts, but work differently for every voice. Based on my own experiences as a voice student and choir member:

---assist in waking up the voice at the start of the day

---help with cool down after taxing voice use

---lessen pressure on the vocal folds on a fatigued day, high allergy moment, or otherwise difficult singing day

---can be emotionally calming and ground me into practice mentality or prepare for a performance!

---help make the mental connection between thick and thin fold transition or pesagio hurdles

---help hear my own pitch amongst a choir/ensemble by letting the sound resonate in my head cavity:)

Overall-

-The concept of SOVT work is a trendy topic that requires much more research, but also has been backed by speech pathologists and educated voice instructors that recognize its benefits. Understanding why they are necessary and helpful is more important than almost any aspect of these techniques, and having an anatomical understanding of the vocal mechanism is crucial to applying their effects.