Can someone explain nasality? (Beginner Voice Lesson)

So I recently came across this post on Reddit

It is confusing!

There’s seems to be this battle of two ideas

1) Nasality is bad. No nasality.

2) Nasal resonance is good!

Today, I want to dive a bit deeper and share with you what teachers actually mean when they talk about this.

I’ll also share some simple exercise that can show you how these 2 ideas don’t actually contradict each other and can actually co-exist.

Real quick! For those of you who don’t know me. My name is Ivan, I love making music and also teaching singing to students all around the world. On this newsletter my goal is to make learning to sing simple. If that’s up your lane, consider subscribing. If you want to improve your voice faster, check out the links down below for ways to work with me

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Anyway let’s dive in

First let’s break down what these generally mean so that you don’t get confused again.

What do people mean when nasality is bad?

Now in general, this nasality is simply when you’re soft palate doesn’t raise and allows airflow to travel through the nose. And it sounds a bit like this?

[DEMONSTRATION]

Now you can probably hear why this isn’t generally advised. There’s a slightly muffledness in the quality.

NOW before you start to antagonise it.

This kind of nasality which we’ll refer to as nasal airflow moving forward.

It isn’t bad!

If anything it’s incredibly necessary, when you sing sounds like N, M, NG. That’s what makes those sounds.

We need to allow this nasal airflow in order to the make the sound.

The challenge is when we colour vowels/consonants that don’t NEED to be nasal as I demonstrated earlier.

Okay so then what do people mean by keeping nasal resonance?

From personal experience I think this refers to a buzz that people notice around nose bridge, behind the eyes, the mask.

Now why is this good?

It often means that there’s a certain level of freedom in your sound making. And I’ve found it correlate with a easy connection/closure of the vocal folds.

Now to caveat, have a clear nasal buzz/resonance is not that SAME as jamming the sound into the nose.

This is where people can really misunderstand. Usually this jamming of the sound into the nose is a constriction/tightening of the throat which gives your voice this more shrilled quality.

Okay so now we’ve dived into both of these ideas. And we’ve recognise that they aren’t the same. Let’s get you to feel this and start to distinguish it.

EXERCISE:

So here’s the progression.

Step 1: Let’s find a easy hum on an NG like this

[DEMONSTRATION]

CUES: Now notice is nasal airflow here. We’ve blocked off our mouth with our tongue. But you might also notice a buzz somewhere up and forward.

Step 2: Let’s gently open up the mouth to an UH vowel and just let the tongue drop down whilst keeping that same general feeling off the HUM

[DEMONSTRATION]

Step 3: Now I want you to go in and out of these 2 sounds. The hum on an NG and the UH vowel

[DEMONSTRATION]

CUE: Notice that you can keep the same buzz whether you’re using nasal airflow or not.

If anything you can try to block off your nose when your mouth on the UH just to see if there’s any airflow at all.

[DEMONSTRATION]

Anyway! That’s all. If you found this episode useful, please share or give it 5 star wherever you’re listening from. This really helps spread the word and means the world to me. If you’d like to study with me, links are down in description. Take care!

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