Straw Phonation: SOVT Exercises
What is straw phonation and how does it help our voices? There is a huge body of research behind this type of SOVT exercises (semi-occluded vocal tract exercises).
In this post, you will learn why straw phonation is a fantastic way, not only to heal your voice, but also develop strength and coordination. I invited Oren Boder, the creator of a straw, he calls OB1 SOVT straw, to talk about the science behind his straw and practical tips to use straws in daily practice. He is very passionate about this topic as well as very knowledgeable. So, I picked his brain. Here are some topics we discussed:
Meet Oren Boder
K: So, why don't you introduce yourself, tell us who you are and what you do.
O: I always love this question because it's never what people think. I'm a singing teacher and voice researcher. So I work a lot specifically with SOVT semi-occluded vocal tract exercised, with straws. But that's at all how I started. I started in psychology. My undergrad was in psychology and I was specifically looking at improving people's musical ability through new brain stimulation techniques. So that was my entry point into the arts. And then I fell in love with vocology. I love being in this community. I love both teaching students, specifically musical theater, but then as well, educating other trainers and teachers and professionals on this topic.
Why straws?
K: Why straws? You started somewhere completely different and now you are drawn to straws and tube phonation.
O: Basically, I was training myself and the coach that I was working with at the time just told me one day to take one of the straws and to start working with it. He gave me a sort of a brief explanation as to what it did for the voice. And then we did some exercises and we worked on it and we practiced it and it was one of those things that I was an immediate skeptic. And then the second I did it, I was an immediate convert. From then, it just had me hooked. I need to understand what's going on with how these straws affect the voice and the mechanics behind it.
K: Do you remember what it did for you, why you were hooked immediately?
O: I was working on a song at the time, I think it was Prayer from Scarlet Pimpernel and there's some pretty high notes in it. I know we were working on it at the time and I just couldn't get those top notes. We did some straw interventions and that was the first time I was able to reach the pitches that I had and I was blown away, straight away. This did not have the effect I expected, but it far exceeded all of my expectations.
Benefits of Straw Phonation
K: Can you tell us what are the benefits of straw phonation for our voices?
O: There's actually a few different benefits depending on the task that you're doing with the straws, but as well the type of tube or the size and magnitude that you're using, and those factors will determine the benefits.
Principally, there are inherent benefits that are a function of the device that you're using. And then there are secondary benefits.
So, the principal benefits are that it lowers what we call phonation threshold pressure (PTP), which for people that don't quite know what that is, it is the minimum amount of sub-glottal, lung pressure needed to set the vocal folds into oscillation. And so by lowering PTP with a straw foundation work, we in essence make that task easier. And we make the ability to set the vocal folds into vibration far more accessible. So that's one of the principle benefits.
Everything else springboards off of that. We balance out the pressure systems, both above and below and within the vocal folds and the glottis. And we create an environment that encourages more efficient air flow throughout the entire system in a couple of ways. The first is that we shape and align the vocal folds in a more aerodynamic posture. We call it posturing them. We shape them more aerodynamically. The result of that then is they're more complimentary to the athlete, that's moving through them. They resist airflow less, which makes that the use of that energy more efficient. And we also align the tissues and the structure of the vocal folds more optimally for that vibration process to happen. We get a better closure as well.
All of these factors promote the secondary benefits which obviously allow people to sing with ease because we make the process easier.
Depending on what kind of tasks you're doing, you can strengthen the voice to strengthen the intricate muscles of the voice in a more athletic way. Conversely to that as well, depending on what tasks you do, you can actually use these interventions as a therapeutic method to relax the voice and to recover from tired fatigued voices, associated with perhaps performing for long periods of time.
OB1 SOVT Straw
K: Let's talk about your fantastic tool that I have here, your straw and what it can do. I love how you can change the resistance. Can you introduce your straw now?
O: Yeah, of course. I looked at the problems and there's a couple of problems with just using normal straws. The first problem obviously is people use plastic straws, paper straws, that can damage the environment and especially our oceans. We've got to have some other way of doing it so that we don't impact the environment.
So that's one of the reasons why we kind of struck upon this idea, but then obviously more than that is everybody is individual in their anatomy and that their vocal makeup, and using just a fixed size paper straw, fixed size plastic straw or whatever it is isn't going to work for everybody. And so I really wanted to create something that offers a dynamic range of resistant settings, in various different ways that would compliment whoever comes in and decides to use it. The straw comes with an attachment by default on the end. So if you take that off and you just use the straw, it is this in the shorter setting will always be the lowest level of resistance.
The shorter it is, the easier it is. As you extend the tubes out, this is where this linear scaling resistance comes in. With that increase in length, you also start to increase the resistance. And so the task becomes harder as a result. We know that the smaller the diameter, the greater the resistance. When you put the attachment on and you go through it again, you can even more feel that resistance change. So that's in essence how it works.
K: How many resistance levels do you have in this?
O: There's a minimum of 12 levels of resistance.
K: Where should a beginner start?
O: This is so individual and task specific. Male voices might require less resistance to begin with as compared to female voices, simply because of the gender based anatomical differences of the vocal folds and their native impedance.
What I like to say to people, instead of saying, you have it on this setting or this setting, I like to say: Play around with it and find something that is comfortable for you. And then from there you can do a couple of different things with it, depending on what task you're specifically aiming for in terms of, do you want to build vocal strength or do you want to kind of use it as a rehabilitative intervention for vocal fatigue and things like that.
And so if it's athletic from that comfortable spot, you want to increase the resistance. You want to get a little bit more resistance out of it to get a little bit more working of those intricate muscles. And if you want something that's more therapeutic than you kind of back off from that and go with something a little bit with less resistance, just to give you a lighter work load of the vocal folds.
Watch this video to see OB1 SOVT Straw and listen to my conversation with Oren to learn more about straw phonation:
Link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4HNTzBrx-M
Here is the second part of our discussion with Oren:
Link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oV2KJMkd1sQ
Now, that you've learned about straws and their benefits for your voice, it's time to try some exercises. What is your favourite straw exercise?
