Not long ago, I have introduced "lip trill", a vocal warm up always done by professional singers which helps us to control the rate of exhalation, have a balanced phonation and sing mix voice better. Unfortunately, some people who are "light chest" (with a breathy/airy tone caused by insufficient vocal folds closure) fail to do the lip trill in an early learning stage. But don't worry! There is another option, which has the same function as lip trill.
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【Text version】
1) Benefits of Straw Phonation, highly recommended by Voice Scientist
Reusable straw not only can be used for drinking cold drinks. It can also be used for vocal exercises. Dr. Ingo Titze, a famous voice scientist, is specialised in doing the human vocology research. According to his research, when humming through a straw and produce an "Ooo" sound and doing different vocal exercises (in different scale patterns), you need to exercise your abdomen in order to produce a stable/balanced sound. It can relieve the tiredness of voice and vocal folds. It is also a good method to train our vocal folds.
2） Straw phonation exercises (Scale pattern links available in YouTube description box）
Exercise#1: Glide from low to high, or high to low
Exercise#2: 5-Tone scale 123454321
Exercise#3: Octave Arpeggio 1358531
Exercise#4: Octave Down 8531358531
Exercise#5: 1.5 Octave 1351’3’5’4’2’75421
Song melody practice：Set Fire to the Rain (Adele)
3）Another way of straw phonation : Stick the straw into water and sing through it
Other than the methods I have just introduced, you can also sing through a straw which is stuck into the water. The concept is similar to aqua yoga.
4） Principle of Straw Phonation
Straw phonation is a semi-occluded vocal tract (S.O.V.T.) exercise. Similar to lip trill (also a S.O.V.T. exercise), it increases the pressure above the vocal folds. While resisting the airflow exhaled from our lungs, cancelling out the pressure made on vocal folds and making them easier to vibrate
