Humming in-between words

[Anonymous]

I have recently been humming quite a bit in-between words and I feel that it is making my speech smoother. Has anyone else experienced this?

[Gábor]

Yes, absolutely.

I think it helps us to hold the tone and focus on the melody of our voice (instead of words/struggling) and maybe also has a calming effect, too.

[Tracey Miller]

I haven’t tried this as I’m not sure how to do this technique as I automatically revert into crutch #4 – I’d be grateful if you can explain a few tips. Thank you!

[Javier]

Hi Tracey, it is not easy to explain it verbally, it is much easier explained face to face, but I’ll give it a try anyway.
The idea behind this Crutch is that if not all PWS, then 99% of them are fluent when they sing, right? The reason is because when we sing, we are focusing on our tone, on our voice. We are not thinking about the words, we are not fearing them. So we’re fluent.
Try to sing a word or a few words. Notice that your abdomen is naturally hard when you do it? That’s what happens when we sing. Now do it again, but try remove the melody. You’ll be holding a tone while you speak. If your stomach is still hard, you’re doing it right. The idea is that if you do this and link your syllables and words (making sure you don’t interrupt the air coming out of your mouth), you’ll be fluent. But you can’t do this with many words, or you’ll run out of air and get more nervous, and the risk of getting stuck will increase. So you have to do it in short increments, or, for example, not more than 5 words or so (don’t count the words, just have that in mind).

To get a much clearer idea of what I am saying, you can watch really good videos of the coaches explaining this in our sessions. To watch this you must go to the “Videos” section of this website. Once there, on the left you’ll find a lot of filters to find the mos apropriate videos for you. There are “vide tags”, and I suggest you to use this one: “holding the tone”. If you watch any of those videos, I’m very sure that you’ll get a much clearer idea of what I’m saying.

I hope I explained myself clearly. If not, please do let me know.

[Amine]

I agree with you. Focusing on humming is helpful because it is the base and the core of our speech. Speech is basically movement (of mouth, tongue, lips, etc.) “on top” of humming. You realize that perfectly when you use very very light contacts, as if you are mumbling. Without the humming, there is no voice and movement alone will seem like you are just mouthing words. So the humming is like the river or the sea and movement is like the boat. Without the water, the boat can’t go anywhere. So humming in-between words keep the boat floating. Like anything else, it needs practice but it is surely helpful.

[Author]

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