Raising your soft palate is REALLY IMPORTANT!

As singers, we all want to have the most open and beautiful sound we can produce.  One of the most important skills to work on is raising your soft palate.  You may be asking, where and what is my soft palate?  Let’s start first with the hard palate.  The hard palate is the area that includes the roof of your mouth right behind your upper teeth. The soft palate is the area that is behind your hard palate going to the back of your throat.  If you put your tongue on the roof of your mouth and slide it back as far as your can you will feel where that hard palpate becomes soft.  When we yawn, we naturally raise the soft palate.  I was told by a voice teacher to practice singing while keeping my throat in a yawn position. That visual, although correct, was a bit too abstract for me. What really helped was to take a flash light and shine it into my mouth while looking in a mirror and actually see my soft palate. You know that little piece of tissue that hangs down in your throat that looks like a punching bag?  That is called your uvula and it is in the middle of the soft palate.  In order to raise your soft palate you have to pull the little punching bag or uvula up as high as you can.  

Once I actually saw my uvula and understood where and what my soft palate was, I was able to practice raising it up.  Then, once I felt the sensation of a high soft palate, I practiced singing while maintaining that feeling of openness in the back of my throat.  The results were amazing! I found singing in general to be so much easier and I had an immediate improvement in the high part of my vocal range.  I think that the results can be amazing for you too.  Give it try and see for yourself an almost immediate improvement!