VOCAL PRODUCTION
1.1 - SPACE
Some/most of you face various problems of not being able to give enough space when singing such as sounding nasal, sounding like kids etc. Though your SLs tell you to drop your jaw and raise your soft palate, some of you may feel like you still can’t seem to sing openly after following their instructions. Well, there are two conclusions one can draw from this: You are either doing it wrong, or there’s another factor that prevents you from succeeding. One such factor is your tongue being raised when you sing. When you sing, your tongue should remain at the neutral position, resting behind your lower front teeth
1.Dropping the jaw
What dropping the jaw does is that it helps to reduce upward larynx movement. This is important for singing with space as it will prevent your throat from closing up too much. When you swallow, you can feel that your larynx goes up all the way. If you’d notice, it’s impossible to sing while swallowing. In the same way, singing with a raised larynx will make it almost impossible to sing relaxed.
Things to note:
With what was mentioned above, you now know that dropping the jaw will aid in allowing you to sing with space. You should note that your larynx shouldn’t go higher as you sing higher. When you sing lower, your larynx shouldn’t go lower either. Try to sing with a neutral larynx throughout your range. One important thing to note: Your throat shouldn’t hurt from trying to keep your larynx neutral. If you do it right, your throat should feel totally relaxed. Also, too much of a good thing is a bad thing: Dropping your jaw too much will tend to make one sound muffled
2. Raising the soft palate
Raising the soft palate will allow one to create more space at the back of his/her mouth, allowing one to sing with enough space and blend. In addition, it can also help to reduce one’s nasal sound. Usually, one tends to sing like in example one because that’s how we usually talk. However, in choral singing it is usually better to sing like in example 2 as it allows one to create a lot more space and blend more easily. Raising the soft palate can be done easily. One can ‘import’ the sensation over from yawning, imagining biting an apple or raising eyebrows. If done correctly, one should be able to sound a lot better over a relatively short period of time
Things to note
Once again, too much of a good thing is a bad thing. If one raises the soft palate too much, he will sound too forward and constricted as tension is created in trying to raise the soft palate. Hence one must raise the soft palate in moderation.
1.2 – PLACEMENT
What placement means in layman’s terms is how high/low your voice sounds like, regardless of whatever pitch you’re singing. Common problems related to placement are sounding too dark and going flat all the time. Here are two solutions to help combat the problem.
1. Win the mental game
Singing has a lot to do with imagination. So, it is actually possible to trick your mind such that you can maintain your placement. One such way is to imagine going up a staircase while singing a descending scale and vice versa.
2. Raise the soft palate
Raising your soft palate not only helps to create more space in the mouth. It also helps to focus your sound more and make it brighter. Here are two examples of singing with/without the soft palate raised. Notice the difference in placement.
Soft palate not raised:
Soft palate raised:
