hardest thing to teach and to learn, and that makes it kind of frustrating.

But today, we're talking about placement, we're taking it apart, we're going there.

Today, I'm working with a student and you're going to see the tips and tricks that I give

her to lower her placement.

Now, I've been teaching pronunciation for years, and in the past month, I've learned

something that's totally new even to me, and that's another tip to help lower placement.

The other night, I was filming a video and it reminded me of a live class that I taught

a couple months ago, and I went bam in my mind, I realized it.

No, I wasn't filming it, I was editing it, and as I was right here focusing on the reduction

of the word was, I realized reductions help lower placement.

So we're going to see an excerpt from a live class where I started to get it.

I'm teaching a woman named Karen, she's Dutch, she has very good English, but we're working

on placement, and also on reductions.

If the word placement is completely new to you, it basically means where in the body

the voice vibrates.

In American English, we have a low placement.

Aahhh.

And other languages have a higher placement often more here, aaah, aaah, but our core

feeling uhhh is lower and that has to do with the neck and the pitch.

-Okay, so you know what vocal cords, you've heard that term?

-Yes, yes.

- Yes, okay, so we have these two mucousy membranes.

The air blows up, they vibrate, and that's what makes ah, a sound.

And we can't change that; that's involuntary.

But what we can change is the voice box around it, and pushing it forward, pulling it back,

lifting it up, lifting it down, and then that affects the shape of the inside of our neck.

And other languages, each language has its own specific neck shape, how we hold our muscles

to produce the core sound.

And in American English, I think that most students need to focus on opening and lowering,

and that changes the shape of the neck in a way that brings the formants down which

makes everything sound placed lower.

If you're watching this and you're thinking, I want to learn more about that, the anatomy

of the voice, what can affect placement, check out my video, the number one accent trick.

We go so deep on anatomy and placement and something called formants which can affect

the sound.

Our vocal cords and our voice box, if it starts to lift up, or

push forward, or pull back, which it might when we're tense, or when we're feeling nervous,

that that is going to negatively impact the overall sound.

And, for some people, it makes it sound really nasal and high, and for other people it's

more subtle, like for you it makes it sound more proper in a way that's a little old fashioned.

Again, not negative, but just sort of different than the way an American would probably present.

An American would speak with a lower pitch, and they would have those

lower vibrations.

Okay, to sound more natural speaking English, you want lower placement.

How do we get that?

Tip one is actually lower your pitch.

Hi, my name is Karen, hi, hi, and then try lowering It, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, my name is

Karen, and just See, with lowering the pitch, What that feels like.

Probably the lower you go, hi, my name is Karen, hi.

Obviously you're not going to speak there, but you should go there and practice to see

and sense what is changing in your throat.

And what you'll find, the lower you go, is that you have to really feel like your throat

is getting wide, and that's sort of the feeling that you want even when you're not speaking

that low.

so you can pretend, you can play with speaking really low, to sort of discover what that

does to your throat, and then try to keep that open feeling as you bring your pitch

up to something that's a little bit more natural.

One question I get asked a lot is when I practice my throat starts to hurt, is that okay?

Someone is saying, "Does it hurt when you lower your pitch?"

It doesn't, and it shouldn't, but if it hurts when

you lower it really low, that's okay, you're only going to do it for a second just to feel

what that is.

But definitely, as you play Karen, do sense strain, because strain, I think, is a sign

of a lifting of the voice box, and we want the opposite.

We want a lowering, opening, so if you ever find, ah, my

Throat is getting really sore, or my neck, or my tongue, you know, your tongue, the base

of your tongue, is attached here to your neck.

And if you're ever feeling fatigued, that's a sign that, okay, stop, take a break, shake

it out.

So if you're having neck pain, take a break, try to think open and low, and relax a little

bit.

Now, let's start working with Karen on reductions.

And I run a business that Helps people sell more.

- Okay, so, and I run a business, beautiful, but a little bit of that formality, and.

Let's try, well, let's try to reduce that.

And I run a business, and I run, and I run, so i'm going to have you Bring in that reduction,

and I run, and i'm going to have you bring down the pitch, and I run a business.

And I run a business.

Right, let's just see what happens if you bring it lower.

And I run a business.

And I run a business.

Right, you know, so the one you just did before that sounded pretty good, but the placement

still felt high and then when you brought it down more, it didn't seem like too much,

and then the feeling was that sort of American chest feeling.

And I run a business.

And I run a business, and I run a business.

So we're doing a reduction, we're bringing in a reduction that she wasn't doing and we're

also playing with lowering the pitch.

Right, and I love that, and I run a business.

Take it down way lower than you know it should be.

And, actually, this is something that will be fun for you to do.

Take one phrase like this, and then record yourself doing all sorts of different things

with it.

And, when you're going back and listening, and be like, "ah, I love that one", and then

play it, imitate it, play it, imitate it, play it, imitate it.

And then these are just things that can help unlock that feeling, and the thing about the

feeling is, once we find that, that affects everything that you say ever, you know, so like working on

placement can really just transform everything about how you speak and for other people out

there who have more varied issues, finding a better placement can often help sounds in

a way that working on just the sound doesn't even make sense, but working on the core concept

of the placement transforms the sound in a way that, just working on the sound, you never

could've gotten there.

And so I always find that really interesting, and I really ask my students do that.

So you lower your pitch, your fundamental frequency, to find a lower placement.

You also relax and open up your neck and throat and if you want more on that, watch my one

accent trick video.

Then also bringing in reductions is something that can help with placement.

I found for my students thinking about lowering placement and letting go of tension in the

neck can be pretty confusing and hard to actually do.

But reductions, these are something concrete that you can do instead of saying aaand, say

and.

Instead of saying thaaat, say that.

Now, if you don't know that much about reductions, I have a full playlist that goes over what

the reductions are in American English.

If you're looking to train more, check out my academy, I have hundreds of audio files

to go with each concept that you learn so you're not just learning it with your head

but you're training it into your body.

And of course, my academy is also where I have live classes once a month like when I

taught Karen.

In this next clip, I'm going to work with Karen on the reduction of the word that.

It becomes that, with a schwa instead of the AA vowel and a stop T depending on the sound

that comes next.

I'm gonna say that helps people, And then you repeat it back That helps people.

- That helps people

- That helps people

- That helps people

- Okay, so one thing, Let's do the reduction.

It's not that, but it's TH, that helps people.

- Yeah, okay, that helps people.

- Right, that helps people.

- That helps people.

- Yeah, loved that.

So, also for everyone else that's listening and noticing, so she had and, I made her do

that reduction.

We had that, I made her do that reduction.

You guys have probably noticed so many of the reductions involved, changing something

to the schwa.

And the schwa has a lower feeling, and so by also taking these words that aren't reduced,

like to, and reducing them to ta, and this kind of thing, we're changing these things

to a sound that naturally feels lower too, which will help with the overall placement

feeling lower.

And it's not something I had really noticed when you were talking, although it makes sense

now when I was sensing formality.

A lack of reductions also creates a sense of formality, in sort of an old fashioned

way.

So that's something, Karen, that you could also do when you record yourself and you're

listening to yourself, is be listening for, am I doing reductions?

'Cause your rhythm is fine, right?

And you were saying that, that, that, but I actually wanted th, th, th, so that's another

thing I would say.

I gotta say I was really excited to find this new trick that reductions affect placement.

I'm always looking for new tips to give students especially with something that's as hard to

teach and understand as placement.

Here's another student that I worked with in that same live class, and placement came

up again.

And here, we're talking about it as it relates to a particular vowel, the UH as in butter

vowel, and you can only get the right quality for that vowel if you do have a low placement.

You know there's one sound I Wrote only down only one word But I heard it a couple Times

that I wanted to tweak With you and this sound Relates to placement so fully.

And it's the uh as in butter sound.

And it was in this word...

- Bummed.

- Yeah, let me hear you say it longer like holding out the vowel, bu-mm-ed.

- Bu-mm-ed.

- Okay yeah, I actually I like that a lot.

When you were talking it was a little bit higher, bum bum.

- I remember it.

- Yeah, bummed I'm so bummed.

That's difference in placement.

The thing that makes that sound different is placement bummed is a very low placement

things have to really open.

And if you have a good uh vowel, like it seems like you do

When you're imitating and thinking about it.

That's a really good core place to go, when you're thinking about your placement u-uh

bummed.

I'm really bummed.

And then as you do it and you build a sentence on it, you try to maintain

That connection that feeling.

Let me hear you say, u-uh.

- U-uh - Right.

- U-uuh, do it again.

- U-uuh.

- Yeah, I like it at the end the quality changes a little bit.

Let me see if I can imitate it.

Uu-uuh, I don't think I really did.

Uh, uh, uh, so it seemed felt to me like at the end

It was a little bit more like uh, instead of u-uh.

Uh, uh do you hear a difference?

- Yeah, I hear it.

- The one is like, it's like

There's this really deep lagoon or something.

U-uh, and the other one it's much more shallow.

And the one that we want is the deep lagoon.

We want the feeling that there's a lot of space down here, not that it's shallow or

gets cut off, Uhh, uhh, butter.

Bummed.

There's this really deep lagoon or something.

Uhhh. And the other one, it's much more shallow.

Uhh bummed.

-Bummed.

Right. Bummer.

Bummer.

Okay buhh.

-Buh -Buh

- Right, that was a lot more buh, buh-uh,

- Bu-mm-er.

- Right, that was right.

That was a lot better.

Did everyone hear that, the difference between buh.

Which is just really shallow.