Singing Tips – Stop Manipulating the Soft Palate

What is the soft palate and why are we told to raise the soft palate when singing?

 

Inside this video I’m going to tell you why it’s a bad idea and what to do about it!

 

Singing Tips – Stop Manipulating the Soft Palate – Your Anatomy

Inside the roof of your mouth the front part is hard…you press against it with your finger and feel the bone behind the tissue lining. That’s the hard palate. Trace your hard palate further back and you can feel when the bone ends and it’s just soft tissue. That’s your soft palate.

 

When we sing, our vocal cords send a column of air upwards and depending on the pitch and the vowel it hits our hard or soft palates or both together.

 

The sound waves activate the air in the mouth cavity, the bony hard palate, and the tissue of the soft palate.

 

Sometimes the resonance activates more of the soft palate and uvula (the little hangy-down part in the back of your throat), travels through the soft palate and resonates in the spaces above the soft palate in the nasal cavities and surrounding tissues.

 

Then almost instantly the sound travels out the mouth.  

 

Two Youtube subscribers were talking about sounding nasal.  One suggested the other raise his soft palate to eliminate the nasal sound.

 

He gave the following well meaning suggestions:

 

“Watch yourself in the mirror. Open your jaw in a comfortable position and try to figure it out by putting your finger to your jaw joint and watching yourself. Throat is just a pass-through. Your engine and power comes from the diaphragm.  You basically sing from there, forget your throat.

 

Your neck, tongue, shoulders should always relax. Your throat’s only task is to relax and give way to the sound.  Raising your soft palate doesn’t come with flexing or tension.”

 

Singing Tips – Stop Manipulating the Soft Palate – Problems

Here’s the problem with the direction: “Raise the soft palate”.  As soon as a teacher directs the student to raise the soft palate, the student begins to introduce tension into the throat, neck, mouth and tongue as they try to figure out how to do it.

 

The end result is more tension, the voice is thrown further out of balance and there’s no improvement in tone.

 

The same problems exist with: Place the tone forward. Put it in the mask. Sing from your diaphragm. Open your throat. Etc.

 

Students come to teachers because they don’t know how to do these things in the first place.

 

A better and faster way to is to give vocal exercises that cause the needed results.

 

For example:

• Dopey gee’s will lower the larynx, raise the soft palate and eliminate the nasal sound. [Demo]
• Bratty neys will bring the sound forward. [Demo]
• Narrowing a vowel will allow the resonance to shift above the soft palate. [Demo]

 

It’s called cause and effect. The vocal exercises cause a physical effect which balances and improves the singing voice.

 

 

The singer won’t add more tension manipulating the soft palate or other body parts.

 

You get faster results easier.

 

This is what the exercises do in PowerToSing.com. They cause physical effects that balance and improve your voice.

 

Visit PowerToSing.com, and take the vocal test, which I call the PowerTest. Take the quiz and discover your vocal type. You vocal type is what you tend to do as you sing from chest to head voice.

 

Then go to the Knowledge Center and watch the videos about your vocal type. Download the free exercises. The exercises will cause you to improve your voice rapidly.

 

If you liked this video, be sure to give it a thumbs up and subscribe and share with a friend.

 

I’m Chuck Gilmore with Power To Sing. You can sing higher with beauty, confidence and power.

 

I’ll see you inside the next video.