Singing Without Nasality

The most important reason to take singing lessons, in my opinion, is to develop your own unique sound and style.  Without voice lessons, you sing with the habits given to you by your surroundings that may or may not benefit you.
 
As a singer whose parents are from Chicago and spoke with a slightly nasal tone, my environment conditioned me to sing with a nasal tone.  Through years of voice lessons, I learned to recognize and eliminate nasality from my singing as I sang in genres that ask men to sing with a clear sound that removes all nasality.  Removing all traces of nasality was hard, but because of all those years of work and struggle, I have a bounty of tricks and tools to help you make nasality a thing of the past!

Nasality, like many vocal qualities, is not necessarily "bad."  It all depends on context.  Some music genres want an element of nasality and others use it occasionally for effect.  However, most voice students start off their singing lessons without a choice - they sing nasal without meaning to.  My job, as a voice teacher, is to give you that choice.

The first way to solve a problem is to recognize if you have one!  The simplest way to know if you are singing with a nasal tone, other than listening to yourself on video, is to do the "nose test."  I start my voice students on a simple scale and then ask them to use their fingers to close their nose on the sides.  Then they alternate between opening and closing their nose as they sing the scales.  If you find your sound changes quality as you open and close your nose, that means you are singing with a nasal tone.  Air is traveling through your nose as you sing, which creates a nasal tone when you "unplug" your nose.

The second step is to figure out how your nasality is being created.  There are two possibilities.  The first is that you have a lowered velum - or what we normally call the soft palate of the mouth.  The soft palate is located in the back of the mouth.  You can easily find it by tracing the roof of your mouth with your tongue.  In the back, you will find the tissue is not hard but soft and gives way.  That is your soft palate.  The velum has to be raised while you sing in order to shut off air from the nasal passageway. 
 
The second source of nasality is often your tongue...if you sing with a tense tongue, you often create a nasal tone.  A tense tongue is often heard on high notes as your body tries to compensate for the high pitch by creating tension.  Again, this is easily seen by just a glance in the mirror.  When you sing, check where your tongue is.  If your tongue lies relaxed on the bottom of your mouth and the tip of your tongue rests behind your bottom front teeth, your tongue is probably relaxed.   If your tongue is retracting into the back of your mouth, then your tongue is tense and most likely you are singing with a nasal tone.

Solving the problem of a lowered soft palate or tense tongue requires voice lessons.  I have numerous tricks to solve these vocal issues and they solve nasality remarkably fast.  You then learn how to sing WITHOUT a nasal tone, and then can decide for yourself how much nasality you WANT to sing with.  Remember, voice lessons are not about creating the "correct sound;" it is about giving you the choice on how you want to sound.