How to Improve Your Singing Voice
Hi.
Aaron here from HowtoSing.com and we're going to be talking about how to improve your singing
voice.
Now, I know that's kind of a broad topic.
So I just want to narrow it down for this particular video to eliminating nasality,
that really kind of annoying sound that is often in the voice and just talk about kind
of how to get rid of that and a little bit about that process and even give you an exercise
at the end as well.
So let's get right to it.
That nasal kind of ahh, that tone, what it does is it squashes the resonance, that kind
of full, big, resonant tone that you want.
It kind of squashes that down.
It has an annoying quality that you don't really like in the first place and don't really
want but it also kills the resonance so you don't have that full kind of powerful sound
as well.
So how do we get rid of it?
Where does it come from, all that?
The nasal tone primarily comes from the soft palate.
Now the soft palate, if you take your tongue and you're feeling the roof of your mouth,
that's the hard palette right there.
If you follow it back, back to there where it gets kind of like softer there, that's
your soft palate.
So the soft palate is the ngaaa the nasal tone.
What happens is that that soft palate is lowering.
It's lowering excessively and so actually try this with me.
See if you can find it first of all and I want you to find it.
Give it like a little yell, like a haww.
Notice what the soft palette does when you do a yawn.
It raises way up and actually your throat kind of opens up too and your larynx lowers.
The yawn is a great way to kind of see where you need to be and what it needs to feel like
kind of when you're singing.
Now, it's an exaggerated form.
You don't want to sing like [vocalizes].
I mean some opera singers do but you don't want to necessarily sing like that but you
want that kind of motion with the soft palate that's up a little.
You want your throat nice and wide and then your larynx should be pretty steady.
Your larynx tends to raise up for the higher notes but you want to keep that relatively
steady.
So during that motion, you kind of feel the soft palate and what it does, how it raises
up.
So let me talk a little more about now when it's down, what it does is like the N-G sound,
that consonant when you do a song if you're singing the word song or any N-G sound.
What it does is it cuts off go ahead and do an N-G and then try to blow it out of your
mouth.
You can't because it blocks the air from coming out your mouth.
So all the air comes out of your nose and so you're getting this kind of nasal tone.
So when you're doing N-G or even like a T sound, that's different than the soft palate
but anytime your tongue, the back of your tongue or the front of your tongue raises
up to do a consonant sound, you want to get right back down where it's supposed to be
behind the teeth right there.
That's where you're seeing that.
So anyway, I'm kind of going all over the place but this is mainly talking about the
nasality.
So the N-G consonant is something that you need to do and the nose has that nasal sound.
It has a function.
I mean you do want air coming out of your nose when you're singing but primarily you
want it coming out of your mouth.
Your sinus cavity, your nasal cavity, it is a resonator but it's more of a kind of a secondary
resonator and it's a resonator when you're in your head voice.
I won't get into head voice and chest voice but primarily you want the air coming out
of your mouth and so when it's mostly coming out of your nose, that's when the nasal sound
comes.
Try this with me.
This is an exercise to kind of get you to feel what it feels like to raise and lower
your soft palate.
Plug your nose and you're going to get that kind of a nasal sound, right?
Now see what you have to do.
Just say like an E or something.
So you're going, Eeehhh.
Try to get the nasal out of your voice.
Watch what you have to do, Eeehhh.
Notice I got the nasal sound out of my voice without unplugging my nose.
What I did is I raised my soft palate so, Eeehhh.
Give it a try a couple of times and you will kind of figure out how to raise up that soft
palate.
Now, you don't want your soft palate raised too high because if it's too high, you start
sounding like Jimmy Stewart or you start sounding like Kermit the Frog.
You don't want it way up there but if it's lower, you start to sound like Lois from Family
Guy or something.
So you don't want it too low.
You don't want it too high.
There is a balance of where you want it.
Chances are that if you're having this nasal sound of your voice, then it is typically
too low and you need to raise it slightly.
But again if you raise it too much, it starts getting kind of weird-sounding and it also
kills that natural kind of bell shape you have in the back of your throat that helps
you resonate.
So again you don't want to go too high.
If it's too low, that's where the nasality is kind of coming from.
So I want to give you an exercise real quick of how to loosen up the sinuses and loosen
up kind of the masked area right there and get a feel for that kind of nasal sound and
it will help you when you are singing to kind of avoid that kind of sound.
I call it the nare exercise.
It's just on any scale, I will just do a one, two, three, four, five, four, three, two,
one.
So like [performs singing exercise], real eeehhh kind of that brassy kind of sound but
what that does is it will loosen up here and actually that sound will help you get into
your higher range.
But I will talk about that in a different video but [performs singing exercise].
You can raise the note even, [performs singing exercise] and you can keep climbing or whatever
but anyway, that's nasality.
That's how to eliminate nasality.
You don't want your soft palate up too high.
You don't want it too low.
You want it kind of somewhere in the middle.
If you want to go to my site, HowtoSing.com, I've got a bunch of more kind of tips and
tricks and a bunch of information there and I've actually recently recorded a video of
how to sing high notes and it's like a 10-minute video.
How to sing high notes more easily but how to sing high notes more easily without the
strain which is really the goal.
So anyway, I hope this has been helpful.
I'm Aaron from HowtoSing.com.
Oh, you can actually just click the link below.
Go to HowtoSing.com or just click the link below.
OK.
See you.