Vocal Tips
Why So Many Singers Sound Nasal (And Don't Know It)
Nearly every singer I work with has some degree of nasality in their voice, and almost none of them know it’s there until I point it out. It’s one of the most common things I hear in lessons, and also one of the most fixable, once a student understands where it actually comes from.
Here’s the thing that tends to surprise people: nasality is very rarely a natural feature of someone’s voice. It’s a habit, usually picked up from years of unconsciously imitating singers with a nasal vocal style. I’ve had more than one student trace it back to listening to a particular artist on repeat as a teenager. It’s not a flaw baked into your instrument. It’s borrowed.
What nasality is actually doing to your voice
When sound gets directed into the nasal cavity instead of resonating properly in the vocal tract, you lose tone, you lose volume, and you lose fullness. The resonance that should be happening behind the tongue and in the pharynx never gets the chance to do its job, because the sound has already escaped out the wrong route.
In lessons I’ll often watch for a few tells: nostrils flaring as a student starts a phrase, sound being directed into the nose right from the first note, vowels that should sit in the mouth getting pushed up and back into nasal placement instead. Once you know what to listen for, it’s everywhere.
The pinch test: how to actually check
There’s a simple way to test this on yourself, and I use it constantly in lessons. Sing a note and hold it, then midway through, pinch your nose shut. If the tone noticeably changes the moment you do that, the sound was relying on your nasal cavity, which means you’re being nasal. If the tone stays exactly the same with your nose pinched, you’re resonating properly elsewhere and the nasality isn’t there. It’s a quick, honest way to find out what’s actually happening, rather than guessing based on how a note feels.
Your speaking voice already knows the answer
This is the bit I find most useful to point out to students, because it’s instantly reassuring. Most people’s singing voice is more nasal than their speaking voice. When I ask someone to just talk in the pitch and rhythm of the line they’re trying to sing, the nasality often drops away almost completely. They’re not putting on a different voice when they speak. They are when they sing.
Your singing voice shouldn't sound like a different person to your speaking voice. It should sound like you, just with pitch and sustain added.
That’s usually the moment a student gets their clearest, loudest, most resonant sound of the whole lesson. Not from trying harder. From doing less of the thing that was never theirs in the first place.
The fix, step by step
- Lift the soft palate. This is the single most repeated instruction in my lessons, especially on vowels. A raised soft palate opens up space at the back of the mouth and gives the sound somewhere better to go than your nose.
- Change where you’re aiming the sound. Rather than thinking about projecting forward and up, try visualising the voice running along the bottom of the mouth. It sounds like a small adjustment. The change in tone is usually immediate.
- Use your speaking voice as the reference point. If a phrase sounds nasal when sung, say it instead, in the same rhythm and rough pitch shape, and notice how different it feels. That’s the target.
- Don’t just dial it down. Remove it completely first. This is the bit students resist, because reducing nasality slightly feels safer than getting rid of it altogether. But a small reduction often just produces a quieter version of the same habit. Strip it out completely, find the new sound underneath, and only then decide if you want to bring any of the old character back deliberately.
- Check yourself with the pinch test. Once you think you’ve found the new placement, run the test above. It’ll tell you straight away whether the change is real or just a feeling.
One thing worth flagging honestly: when nasality goes, tension can show up somewhere else, usually in the jaw. Keep everything underneath the chin soft and “squishy” rather than letting it lock up as you make this change. It’s all connected, and chasing one fix in isolation tends to just move the problem somewhere else.
It's a habit, which means it can be unlearned
If you’ve sung nasally for years, it can feel like part of your identity as a singer. It isn’t. It’s a pattern you picked up, usually before you even knew you were doing it, and patterns can be replaced with better ones. The students who make the fastest progress with this are the ones who treat it as genuinely learnable, not as a personality trait they’re stuck with.
If you’d like a second pair of ears on what’s actually happening in your own voice, I run a free discovery call where we can have a listen together and work out where to start. You can book one at cityvocalcoach.com.