Where the soft palate is concerned, myths and misconceptions abound. I recall being told as a teenager that in order to access my head voice I should lift my soft palate by raising my eyebrows. Some years later, I was taught that a rodent-like sneer would better accomplish this feat.
I’ve heard students express the notion that when you release the breath properly, the soft palate rises and spreads like a parachute. I’ve also heard colleagues caution that raising the soft palate will cause the tongue to depress.
In this column, I will describe the soft palate, discuss its significance for singing, and address common misconceptions about this misunderstood bit of oral anatomy.
The soft palate, or velum, makes up the rear portion of the roof of the mouth. Located behind the hard palate, the soft palate is composed of muscle and connective tissue and surrounded by mucous membrane. It is capable of elevating, lowering, and tensing laterally. The soft palate elevates to close the nasal port during swallowing. In speech, it interacts with the back of the tongue to articulate velar consonants, including [ŋ], [k] and [g].
In singing, the position and movements of the soft palate have a dramatic impact on resonance and articulation.
Raising and lowering the soft palate regulates nasal resonance. “The movement of the soft palate has a profound effect on resonance because it regulates the nasality of the tone: the lower the soft palate, the more nasal the resonance,” writes Melissa Malde in her Journal of Singing article “Mapping the Structures of Resonance.” “Singers must lower the soft palate to create velar consonants like [ŋ] and [k]. It must be in a neutral position to resonate nasal consonants like [m] and [n]. Its position governs the nasality of French vowels such as [ã] and [õ]. Except for these few instances and for character effect, the soft palate is kept high in classical singing.”
Scott McCoy, author of the widely used pedagogy textbook Your Voice: An Inside View, also recommends that the soft palate be raised by default for classical singing. In his JOS article “The Seduction of Nasality,” McCoy recalls a regrettable period in his early performance career when he followed a teacher’s advice and sang with a dropped soft palate to ease production in and above the passaggio, only to find that “the new vocal technique I worked so hard to acquire had substituted nasality for balanced resonance. . . . I was virtually unemployed as a singer until I regained control of my soft palate, which took another 18 months.”
In McCoy’s view, when the soft palate is not elevated, the resulting nasality mars projection, vocal beauty and, most notably, diction. With the soft palate dropped, “projection of plosive, sibilant, and fricative consonants is dramatically reduced, especially in their unvoiced forms (e.g., [t], [p], [s], [f]). All of these sounds are produced by airflow directed through the oral cavity. If some or most of the air escapes through the nose, consonant intensity will be greatly diminished. Voiced stopped consonants (e.g., [b], [d]) require firm closure of the velum against the pharynx, which diverts all airflow into the mouth. If the velum is low, as is the case in a chronically nasalized voice, these consonants are converted into their unstopped counterparts [m] and [n].”
While I am in agreement with those who feel that a consistently elevated soft palate is essential for the resonant bloom characteristic of good classical singing, there are other styles for which incorporating a measure of nasality may be desirable. In So You Want to Sing Rock ’n’ Roll: A Guide for Professionals, Matthew Edwards observes that “depending on the style of music we are singing, we might need to keep the larynx down while the palate goes up (opera and classical), or palate down with the larynx up (country and bluegrass),” reminding us that “nasality is a tool, it is not the desired end result (unless that sound appeals to you).”
Whatever technique you espouse, you must learn to control the behavior of your soft palate in order to regulate your resonance.
It may take some exploration and practice to get a sense of where your soft palate is and how it moves. Enrico Caruso, who believed that he had been singing with his nasal port open and encouraged others to do so, was shocked when an X-ray taken of him while singing provided clear visual proof of a raised soft palate.
“Movement of the palate itself does not generate a huge amount of sensory feedback,” explains Ian Howell, director of the Vocal Pedagogy program at New England Conservatory. He recommends acquainting yourself with the activity of the soft palate by getting a clear visual picture of its movements.
“Anyone with a mirror and a flashlight (or better yet a mirror and an iPhone in video mode with the flash turned on and the rear camera selected) can visualize the palate and train its subtly felt articulation independent of the remaining pharyngeal and tongue muscles,” he advises.
Howell cautions that sensation and movement in the soft palate can become conflated with movements and tensions in the surrounding musculature. “Anyone who swears by the significant sensation they have when raising the palate is likely referring to some other muscular engagement or stretching that may or may not help their technique,” he notes. “If it helps, great. If not, a more nuanced understanding of what we mean when we say ‘raise the palate’ may help to sort the productive effort from the counterproductive.”
Have a look inside your mouth with a mirror or camera. When your soft palate is relaxed, you will see the uvula dangling in the center from the back of the roof of your mouth. The soft palate is the mobile muscular structure from which it is suspended.
The best exercise I have encountered for sensing and engaging the soft palate is the one laid out in Kristin Linklater’s book Freeing the Natural Voice. If it isn’t already on your shelf, it probably should be (especially if you’re having soft palate issues), but I will summarize it here. While continuing to observe your soft palate, slowly say “kakakaka” and observe its movement. The soft palate will be hidden from view by the tongue when you articulate [k], but when your tongue moves into position for [a], you will most likely see your soft palate in a somewhat elevated position. This is because the proper articulation of [k] requires closure of your nasal port, and it will likely remain closed when you move to [a].
Now, without engaging your vocal folds, inhale through your mouth while going through the movements of articulating “kakakaka.” Note that while you do this, the nasal port remains closed—i.e., your soft palate is elevated – and, although the sensation may be subtle, this exercise will hopefully lead to an awareness of that fact.
Another way to get a sense of soft palate elevation and nasal port closure is to imagine diving underwater or to submerge your face in a basin. Your soft palate will elevate to prevent water from invading your airways.
Finally, you can get a sense of soft palate stretch and elevation by making yourself yawn. Using yawning as a kinesthetic tool is a bit problematic, though, because in addition to making your soft palate elevate, yawning will cause your tongue to depress.
This accounts for the misconception I often hear expressed that raising the soft palate causes the tongue to depress. It will not. One of the muscles comprising the soft palate, the glossopalatine, does impact tongue movement, but not in this way. This muscle does not elevate the soft palate but rather depresses it.
“Contraction of the glossopalatine will depress the soft palate, or if the soft palate is fixed, it may raise the sides and back of the tongue,” explains Barbara Doscher in The Functional Unity of the Singing Voice. In other words, one of the muscles that moves the soft palate down may move the tongue up. Moving the soft palate up will not in and of itself move the tongue down.
Will raising your eyebrows or baring your incisors like a rodent help elevate the soft palate? Melissa Malde assures us that “raising the eyebrows, the cheeks, the ‘sneer muscles,’ or any other facial muscle has no physical effect on the soft palate. There is simply no anatomic connection. These muscles need to be free to do the work of expression, not resonance.” She also reports that the soft palate does not loft “like a parachute in the back of the throat. This effort to raise the soft palate may lead to the misconception that the expelled air from the lungs assists in raising the soft palate. The soft palate is lifted by the levator veli palatini and tensor veli palatini muscles from above with no relation to air flow.”
Given how tricky it can be to learn how to sense and control the soft palate, it is easy to see how misconceptions can arise. But with patient observation and practice, you can learn to operate this important component of resonance and articulation with precision and skill.
It’s important that you approach working with the soft palate with the same mindset you would apply to working with the other components of articulation: jaw, lips, etc. If you associate elevation and other movements of the soft palate with vowel definition, repeated practice will cause these movements to become habitual. You should never have to think about your soft palate, or any other mechanism related to your technique, when performing.
Now that you understand what the soft palate is and its role in resonance and articulation, make informed decisions about the role it will play in your technique. As Scott McCoy learned the hard way, some teachers advocate dropping the soft palate as a trick to ease vocal production in and above the passaggio, but there are ways to achieve this that do not require giving up beauty and resonance. Whatever choices you make for your technique, make them for sound reasons and apply them consistently.
Go forth and bloom!
