On Thu, 17 Jan 2002, Ingo Duckerschein wrote:
> Right now I can produce a slow and uneven rolling 'r' at the back of my
> throat, with the rolling sensation placed at the roof of the mouth.
Problem #1 - it sounds like your tongue is in absolutely the wrong place
for a proper rolled r.
The tip of the tongue should be very lightly against the hard palate,
ideally just behind the upper teeth. At the same time, the sides of the
tongue should be down slightly, so you can feel your upper back teeth
along the top edges of them. Keeping the sides of your tongue in this
place (not rigidly, just inertly), practise raising and lowering the top
of the tongue so that you gently tap the hard palate with it.
The goal here is to eliminate all tension in the tongue. If the sides of
the tongue (and along with them the back) are relaxed but inert, not
tense, the tip should move freely on its own.
Once you've got this movement going smoothly, the next step is to slightly
change the shape of things to set up the tongue position for that rolled
r. To start, the easiest vowel shape to roll the r with is the Italian u -
English oo.
Concentrating on keeping your relaxed, inert tongue in exactly the same
position it was above, gently round your lips into a very narrow "u"
shape. Keep feeling the top back teeth against the tops of the sides of
your tongue, and keep the tip of your tongue very gently against the hard
palate. By creating the "u", your tongue will now feel more "full of
tongue" than it did before, only because you've closed the space around
the tongue. Make sure the lips aren't very tense. You may also feel a
very, very slight awareness of your chin, caused by creating the "u".
Now, with your tongue and lips in this position, try exhaling a very
light, gentle, even stream of breath out through your narrow lips. If the
tongue is in the right position and not overly-tense, the tip of the
tongue should vibrate in response to the breath flow, and that vibration,
because the tongue tip is against the hard palate, should create an
unvocalised rolling r. If you're not sure about the power of the breath
stream, imagine you're trying to do a gentle lip trill - and use the same
kind of breath stream, only with the tongue/mouth configuration I've
described.
Once you get this working - this non-vocalised rolled r - you're ready to
add some sound. Do this by essentially starting to vocalise as if you were
singing the "u" that your lips are shaped in, but keep the tongue exactly
as it was for the unvocalised rolled r. The real key here is to keep the
breath stream even and gentle - if you blast too much air or vary the air
flow, the tongue trill (another name for the rolled r) won't work.
When (if) you finally get this working, just play with it for a while -
i.e., consistently creating and recreating the unvoiced tongue trill, then
adding a single sustained sound to it. Once you've got this "down", you
can start changing the tones, as if you're humming, and actually trill
whole songs and arias. This is actually a really good way to get the
loose and the sound focused forward when you first start warming up.
Something I have observed is that people who can curl their tongues (think
of a taco shell) seem to have an easier time with rolled r's than people
who can't. If you're one of those people who can't, you may well find it
harder to isolate the muscle movments between the back and front of the
tongue, which is part of what I think one needs to EASILY roll one's r's.
Karen Mercedes
http://www.radix.net/~dalila/index.html
***************************************
What lies behind us, and what lies before us
are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
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