Nasality is a divisive thing and for me it depends on the singer.

This for me is unbearable nasality:



This here is one of my favorite sounds of all time which is also very nasal:



There is also country nasality which involves twang (not a fan this myself)



And stuffy nasality (like someone has a cold, I like this sound):



The process of controlling it is very hard to explain. It involves balancing resonators, adjusting the soft palate/tongue position to either close up or open up the nasal port. Imagining projecting your sound up and out into the 'mask' would help create more nasal resonance too. I would like an anatomical explanation too. As a singer I could control it some subconsciously, but couldn't explain it properly and still have a haphazard understanding.

Keep in mind, all of the above sounds have sold millions of albums, so it is mostly just artistic preference, and you'd have to make a decision as an artist what you would want to do.

Last edited by KillerKu (2012-02-01 17:25:52)

MB20 you asked a very good question. I too have been wondering what "split of the resonance above and below soft pallet" means. That's the main thing about mixed voice, at least how they teach it in SLS. I have a feeling that it's not the same thing as just being nasal. I mean if you can sing in the mix without being nasal, then it's not about nasality. Or maybe nasality can be part of it or help getting into the mix, but it's not essential?

What is the truth about this?

mixed voice is a combination of head and chest register musculature working together. it isn't aided by nasality.

nasality in vocals i.m.h.o., should be given the same status as falsetto....use it sparingly.

Opaa,

That whole idea of splitting the resonance thing is something that has never resonated with me (no pun intended). In hindsight, I can see why they say that, but thinking that is something that has never helped me. Although this is abstract, I like the way Caesari describes it in which he talks about the sound having a point at the end, and depending on how high or how low you are determines where you feel that point drilling at. So, in the low range, it drills more in the mouth cavity, but the higher you go, the more it starts drilling backwards, vertically, up towards the head. He says the rest of the sound beam is not felt as clearly. His description reflects rather closely what I feel.

Anyway, the nasal resonance thing has more to do with twanging than actually being nasal. In that sense, the pharyngeal voice exercises are what help out with that. (Listen to it here as demonstrated by one of Michael Goodrich's singers.) In general, the more one twangs, the more "forward" the sound feels. Often times, people initially mistake the twangy sound for being nasal; it's not, though. With a truly nasal sound, your resonance decreases; when you twang/do the pharyngeal voice, your resonance increases. Also, the twangy vowels/pharyngeal voice vowels tend to lend themselves naturally to increasing nasal resonance. So, that would be most of the front vowels like EE, IH, EH, and AA, and also ER (as in "father"). I don't know if you talked about this in your SLS lessons, but with my teacher, we often talked about mixing the QUALITIES of vowels depending on what kind of effect you wanted. So, if you needed more nasal resonance on your AH, you would approach it more like your pharyngeal AA. It gives the AH a brighter sound. If you wanted to decrease some of the pharyngeal quality, then you use more of the "low larynx" vowels like OO or UH. So, if you wanted a warmer EE (as opposed to a very bright, pingy, in your face one), you would introduce some of the qualities of OO into your EE. This causes the vocal tract to elongate in addition to relaxing the twang a bit.

MB20 wrote:

Also, when I say my sound is nasal, I don't mean like Killer's aforementioned examples (puddle of mud, greenday), but it's like I'm singing with a constant cold. I'm actually getting my adenoids removed soon, which I think may help alleviate this problem.

You might be singing with a HYPOnasal sound as opposed to a HYPERnasal sound which KillerKu showed in his clips. The hyponasal sound, in my experiences, comes from having the soft palate high and sealing off the nasal passage, but in a different way than what one would in normal singing. It tends to produce a weird, honky kind of sound, sometimes sounding like you have a cold. It's really hard to pronounce your vowels clearly when you're in this state. To get out of that configuration, one typically has to think of just pronouncing the vowels more like you would in normal speech. The movements of the soft palate are many and varied, especially when you consider the velum consists of five muscles. A woman several years ago wrote her dissertation on some of the different configurations of the velum found in singers. If I can find the paper, I will link to it.

Oh, and also as a side note, sometimes a person can be twanging AND be hypernasal at the same time, which just serves to further complicate the whole nasality thing. It's good to work with a teacher that understands the difference between all of these sounds.

~~Dante~~

MB20 - If when you sing you feel pressure around your nose that means you are singing a bit under pitch. Some would call it that the position of your singing is (too?) low. When we think "high" and try to open our throat by thinking of yawning, using also a surprised expression on our face that will help you open those spaces to use more than the space in your nose. Of course that you need to learn how to support your singing with the lower part of your body. Anyway on the long run I think that singing "nasals" can also harm your voice. Anther thing: some people when they sing don't pronounce well vocals. this is why sometimes they get into the nose. You need to check what is that you do exactly ....

What i feel when i sing is that along with most likely not manipulating my palette correctly; I am holding my breath in my nose if that makes sense! when I sing and actually think about this I can stop doing it, but it seems to be a habit that translates into my singing. As I Mentioned before, I have trouble with my sinuses and what not. I'm quite excited to have my adenoids taken out though!. Because they're enlarged, removing them will mean more space inside my head to play around with

Another quick question.. should you let air escape through the nose when singing?

MB20 wrote:

Another quick question.. should you let air escape through the nose when singing?

You may feel a tiny bit of air escape through the nose, but there is no need to specifically focus in on it. In general, if one tries to get a lot of air to escape through the nose, they end up nasal.

Also, have you posted a clip of yourself demonstrating the sounds you're referring to? I think you could probably get the most help from that, because without it, we can only hypothesize what is going on.

~~Dante~~

MB20,

I just listened to your clip. You do indeed have nasality, but to my ears, it sounds like a byproduct of something else being out of balance. (Just thinking "non nasal" probably won't help you much.) The source of the constriction could be jaw tension, could be something postural (i.e. sticking your neck forward), could be support, could just simply be the way you're used to pronouncing your vowels. Can't determine more without working with you. In the meantime, could you re-record yourself singing those same couple of lines, once on OO and then again on OH? That might give me a better idea of what you're doing.

~~Dante~~

Last edited by CunoDante (2012-02-02 18:04:29)

@MB20,

Yes, just sing the melody once entirely on the vowel OO (no consonants), and then again on OH.

~~Dante~~