help with æ

Hello Anon.  Here're a few tips I'm trying to remember.  Please judge by yourself if they are effective or not.

#1.  Pronouncing clearly the word "cat," pay careful attention to the movement of your lower jaw.  You'd notice that it gets lowered, dynamically, while pronouncing the vowel sound. 

#2.  Also pay attention to the (fairly strong) resonant sound in your throat. (Compare it with the vowel sound in "cut," for example).

#3.  Hammer this sound and movement of your muscles into your brain.   Once you get the hang of it, you can replace the consonants to get hat, bat, bad, bag, ad, add, etc, etc.  "Cat" is the easiest word to pronounce among them, they say. 

>> hat, bat, bad, bag, ad, add <<

In some dialects ad, add and or bag would not work. If you're learning North American English, you could use the Inland North pronunciation of [ e@ ] for all instances of /æ/. Many dialects pronounce /æ/ as something like [ e@ ] or [ i@ ] before nasal consonants /n/, /N/ (velar nasal), and /m/, except on some high frequency words such as "can". In my dialect, I realize /æ/ as /e/ before /g/ and /N/, thus "ban" and "bang" do not have the same vowel, whereas "bang", "bag" , "beg" and "vague" do have the same vowel. Some people also realize /EZ/ as [ eZ ], thus "measure" would be pronounced as "maysure".

Yep. I'm serious. Here's how I say these words as compared to General American. "N" represents "ng"; upper-case vowels represent lax vowels, and upper case vowels represent tense vowels. I listed the word, first, the General American pronunciation second, and my pronunciation third.
<ul class="anf_list">
<li>Word GA Me
</li><li>bang bæN beN
</li><li>bag bæg beg
</li><li>beg bEg beg
</li><li>vague veIg veg
</li><li>bay beI be
</li></ul>

No, I don't speak a Southern dialect or Ebonics. I have a Western accent. I'm from the Tsawwassen peninsula. Not everyone merges all of those words here, but everyone pronounces them at least close. Certain areas in Northern Wisconsin and the Upper peninsula of Michigan as well as some speakers in Saskatchewan and Manitoba also have the bag-bang-beg-vague merger--so it exists in other areas too. A common phenomenon throughout the West is to pronounce /E/ before /g/ as [ e ], thus making "beg" and "vague" sound the same. Another phenomenon that occurs mostly in the North Central and Northwest is raising ash before /g/ to [ e ] or something close to it. Interestingly enough, in California, the California vowel shift causes /æ/ to shift to [ a ], even before /g/. So, my pronunciation is practically opposite that of Californians. Pronouncing /oU/ and /eI/ as monophthongs is found throughtout much of the prairies as well as some areas in the West.