Avoid Singing Through Your Nose

Though nasal singing is appropriate for some styles of music, it’s generally not a pleasant sound to hear. The nasal sound is created when the soft palate on the roof of the mouth is lowered, allowing air to escape through the nasal cavity. Luckily, it’s pretty simple to correct. With some tips and tricks, you can easily outsmart this common vocal roadblock.

Steps

Lifting Your Soft Palate

  1. Identify your soft palate. The roof of your mouth is made up of a hard palate and a soft palate. If you touch it with your tongue, you can identify. [1]
    • The hard palate stays in place. This is what's thought of as the roof of your mouth. It's the part of your mouth encased between your teeth, attached to your skull.
    • When you get further back in your mouth, you reach the soft palate. This is the softer, fleshier area towards the back of the mouth, and includes the uvula. The soft palate can move up and down when you touch your tongue to it. The soft palate. moves whenever you speak, eat, yawn—basically anytime you use your mouth. Lifting your soft palate is key to controlling your voice, and can help you prevent singing through your nose.
  2. Practice lifting your soft palate. Imagine there is a ping-pong ball in the back of your mouth. You would need to have your soft palate lifted if there were an object back there taking up space.
    • Alternatively, you can do a half yawn. Notice that you live your soft palate while you do this. Practicing this will familiarize you with the feeling of lifting your soft palate.
    • You can also practice inhaling a soft K sound.[2] This will naturally lift your soft palate, just slightly, so it is not as dramatic as the lift would be if you had a ping-pong ball in your mouth.
  3. Practice talking with your soft palate raised. Raise your soft palate and speak. You can try talking to yourself or doing something like reading a book out loud with your soft palate raised. It may feel silly and sound silly, but you will train yourself to be able to lift the soft palate on demand. This can also help you learn how to make noise with your mouth while raising your soft palate.[1]
  4. Practice singing with your soft palate raised. Once you are rather comfortable talking with your soft palate raised, practice singing. You should notice a difference in the tone of your voice.[1]
    • Raising the soft palate creates more room for your voice to resonate in your mouth, giving it a richer tone.
    • You may want to compare the sound to the sound you make when you were singing through your nose by first singing like you used to, with your soft palate lowered, and then singing with your palate raised. It’ll be easier to hear the improvement.

Practicing Vocal Techniques

  1. Replace the lyrics of your song with “gah.” This vocal exercise can help get rid of nasal singing. The sound “g” will naturally move your voice further down, adding richness to your tone and bringing it away from the nose. The “ah” makes you drop your jaw and your tongue, which will also add depth to your tone. Try singing your song, but replacing the words with "gah." Simply keep making the noise "gah" while following the tune of a song.[3]
    • Once you’ve practiced your song with “gah” sound, try to incorporate the lyrics back in. You may notice you sound less nasally.
    • If you struggle with sounding nasal at particular places in the song, you can always begin your practice by singing “gah” on those parts of the song before adding the lyrics back in.
  2. Plug your nose while you sing. If you are singing through your nose, this will exacerbate the nasal quality. You may sound more nasally when singing through your nose. However, this method will block the nasal passage so you will have to figure out how to sing through your mouth, rather than your nose. This can help your singing down the road. You may sound less nasally once you have experience singing without being able to channel air through your nose.[4]
  3. Adopt a pleasant expression when you sing. You should strive to sing with your throat open, as this raises your soft palate and can therefore prevent nasally singing. One way to achieve an open throat is to sing with a pleasant expression as this will naturally lift up your throat.[2]
    • Do not attempt to smile, as this can look unnatural. Instead, gently lift up your cheeks. You can do so by slightly lifting the zygomatic muscles. These are the muscles on the side of the mouth you would lift when smiling.
    • During speech and singing, many people have a tendency to pull their facial muscles down slightly. By adopting a pleasant expression when singing, you can combat this tendency. This can create an open throat, making nasally singing less likely.
  4. Find a voice teacher. There are some incredible voice teachers out there, who are experts in the field and can help you on your path to singing without sounding nasally. If you walk through vocal techniques with a voice teacher, he or she can provide more specifics based on your personal style and skill set. Look online or in the local yellow pages to find a voice teacher in your area.

Improving Your Posture

  1. Keep your back straight and shoulders down. This will help you keep your chest lifted, which can help improve the sound of your singing. Allowing air to more easily travel through your lungs can help you sing with your chest and mouth rather than through your nose.[5]
    • The shoulders should not be shoved back, just slightly back so you are not hunching forward.
  2. Make sure your chin is parallel to the floor. You can use a mirror to check that your chin isn’t raised or tucked in too far.[5]
  3. Do not lock your knees. Even if you’re nervous, it’s very important that you keep your knees loose. Locked knees can block some of the veins necessary to get blood to the heart. You could end up losing consciousness.[6]
  4. Stay relaxed. Keep relaxed when you're sitting to sing. Neck muscles and shoulders should be loose. If you’ve had to correct your posture significantly, these new positions will feel uncomfortable for a little while. It may be difficult to relax and loosen up at first. However, keep practicing. A new posture should feel better over time as your body gets used to them.
  5. Engage your ab muscles. You want to make sure that you are engaging your core, but that you are not stiff. You should channeling your breath through your abdomen when you're singing. Try placing one hand on your abdomen. As you breathe, make sure that your abdomen is expanding when you breathe in. This means that it is relaxed. [5]

Tips

  • Singing is as much a mental activity as it is physical. If you think you can do it, you will be able to. Don't let shyness or embarrassment hold you back.
  • Make sure to always sing using your diaphragm.
  • If you lie on your back with one hand on your stomach and breathe with your stomach pushed out and your shoulders not moving you can train your breathing to automatically use your diaphragm. Just remember to breathe out, not up.

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Sources and Citations

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Bos2dE5AdU
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 http://www.singwise.com/cgi-bin/main.pl?section=articles&doc=VocalTractShaping
  3. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-N-P1xvmaA
  4. ↑ https://singwithpower.wordpress.com/2013/03/08/how-do-you-avoid-singing-out-of-your-nose/
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 http://cmed.faculty.ku.edu/gummposture/posture.html
  6. ↑ http://consumer.healthday.com/encyclopedia/first-aid-and-emergencies-20/emergencies-and-first-aid-news-227/fainting-and-loss-of-consciousness-644511.html

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