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Teacher nose best - dealing with nasality in singing
By Jeremy Fisher
 This
article was commissioned by and appears by kind permission of The
Music Teacher magazine, published by
Rhinegold
Publishing.
Teaching Notes - Teacher nose best
It can be frustrating to hear
once-pure voices developing an unpleasant nasal twang. Jeremy Fisher
has some suggestions that may help.
"You know your students are perfectly capable of
speaking with a clear sound, but they will insist on singing with a
nasal quality. Is it the genre, is it the vocal technique, or is it
the desire to imitate gone wrong?
Before you correct someone for nasal singing, check that they are
actually singing nasally - they could just be singing with a bright
sound. Here’s the only foolproof test I know for nasality.
Start by choosing a phrase with no nasal consonants. 'This is the
house that Jack built' or 'Alleluia' or even 'I love you baby' all
have no n, m, or ng sounds. Say them aloud in your normal speaking
or singing voice.
Now hold your nose closed with your fingers (block your nostrils
with your fingertips, or pinch the sides of your nose together).
Make sure no air can escape out of your nose. Say or sing your
chosen phrase again, and notice whether you can feel your nose
vibrating under your fingers. If you can, you have nasality – air
and sound are leaking into your nasal cavities and trying to escape.
Slight nasality is a common aspect of many English dialects, and for
those of us born in the Midlands or Liverpool, this exercise can be
quite a challenge.
The nasal passages are controlled by a moveable doorway into the
nose: the soft palate. Here is one way to find and work three
different positions of your soft palate.
1. Say 'ng' as in the end of the word 'sing'. All the air is coming
out of your nose. You can check this by holding your nose closed
with your fingers and saying 'ng' again. The sound should stop. The
back of the tongue is touching the soft palate, and the soft palate
has moved away from the back wall of the throat to allow air and
sound into the nose. Do a rapid nose-pinch test (pinching and
releasing several times with your fingers) while maintaining the 'ng'
to make sure that the doorway is open, and the tongue and soft
palate are touching. The sound should stop and start with each
pinch.
2. Now find the middle position. Start by singing a sustained 'ng'
and notice that the airflow and sound are coming out of your nose.
You don’t need to push the air down, it will flow out of its own
accord. Very gently and slowly, keep the airflow coming down your
nose, and drop your tongue to go onto a vowel ('eh' or 'ih' seem to
work best). The movement is tiny, and you should end up with air and
sound coming out of both your nose and mouth. You will hear a vowel,
but when you do the rapid nose-pinch test, the sound alters without
cutting out. The pitch may also change, even though you are
maintaining the same note inside.
3. And finally, the third position. You want to raise the soft
palate to close the doorway into the nose, so that all the sound is
coming out of your mouth.
There are two different instructions that can help here.
a. Start with 'close your nose off from inside and sing a vowel'.
Some students find this position immediately.
b. If that doesn’t work, use the NgGhee ploy. By saying NgGhee you
are moving from a totally nasal sound, through a stopped consonant
(the hard G) onto a totally oral sound (the 'ee'). The most
important part of this exercise is the stopping of the sound on the
hard G. The soft palate has been touching the tongue for the Ng, and
then both of them move up together to touch the back wall of the
throat. This stops all the air and all the sound momentarily. The
tongue then drops back down to allow the air and sound out of the
mouth, leaving the soft palate touching the back wall of the throat,
closing off the nasal cavities.
Again, do the nose-pinch test – once when you are on the Ng (the
sound will cut out), and once when you are on the Ghee (the sound
will not change at all).
Be aware that people feel these movements in different ways – some
feel a raising, some feel a lowering, some a closing and others an
opening. Use the nosepinch test to give feedback to both the student
and the teacher.
Once you have experienced the NgGhee ploy, change the vowels (NgGhey,
NgGah, NgGoh, NgGoo), using the stopped hard G to find the contact
between the soft palate and the back of the throat. Then sing just
the vowels, making sure the doorway into the nose is closed.
Now speak your phrase again, checking for nasality with the
nosepinch test, and then sing it. Experiment with singing the phrase
in different vocal ranges or in different musical styles.
Remember, nasality is a choice, not a way of life!"
Jeremy Fisher is a performance coach and writer, creator of the
Singingcoach blog, and director of the voice training company Vocal
Process
The
latest teaching DVD from Vocal Process, on nasality and how to
control it, is in stock at the Vocal Process offices.
Click here to order your copy of Nasality and the Soft Palate
©
2009 Jeremy Fisher
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Giving the student broader knowledge about the structures of the
larynx can be effective on many levels of their training and
understanding. The 'moveable larynx' has long been the starting
point of Vocal Process courses including Singing and the Actor Training.
Download:
build_your_own_
tilting_larynx.pdf
[2-page PDF, 294kb]
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