Stretches for the Soft Palate

hello and welcome to good at voice with the tara sampson voice studio i'm tara sampson and today i have a quick set of stretches and exercises to lift and stretch the soft palate let's talk about music [Music] first what is your soft palate touch your tongue to the roof of your mouth this is your hard palate now slide your tongue all the way back to where it gets kind of squishy and slimy that is your soft palate the soft palate plays a huge role in singing speaking and even swallowing it is a very flexible useful muscle that most of us don't even know that we're using so how do we bring awareness to this muscle and how do we use it let's try breathing in so you're about to yawn it might make you really on and that's okay too do you feel how much space you have in the back of your throat when you're about to yawn that's what gives us that kind of really echoing quality when we're trying to speak while we yawn that is your soft palate stretching up so let's try this three more times together to really get the feeling and bring some gentle stretch into the soft palate great another way to get the soft palate moving is to breathe through your nose as though you're smelling your most favorite food in the world for me i like to use the idea of baking brownies do you feel how much lift you get in the back of your throat when you breathe in that way great let's do three more breaths just like that and really pay attention to the feeling of that muscle in the back of your throat lifting up ready great now this next part is a little trickier so it may take you a few tries and that's okay please feel free to pause the video to get the hang of it and then jump back in what we're going to do is we're going to inhale on a g sound as in the word good but we're going to inhale instead of exhale we're not going [Music] to produce the sound we're just using that same musculature so the back of the tongue is going to start by gluing to the roof of the mouth way far in the back just like you're going to form the letter g try that just to get the feeling now you're going to inhale after you've glued the tongue to the roof of the mouth you'll inhale and pop the tongue down to the base of the mouth simultaneously it'll sound similar to a gasp and you should feel the soft palate raise as that tongue is lowering listen three times so pay attention here good now let's try it together five times nice and slowly glue the tongue to the roof of the mouth and inhale and pop the tongue down simultaneously great four more times good hopefully you're feeling that soft palate pop up and really stretch as you do that finally we're going to add on to the previous exercise so now we're going to inhale on the g just as we did before and exhale on a k sound a sound so just try the k exhale a few times to get the feel of it all you're doing is making a hard k sound now we're going to inhale on the g and pair it with the exhale on the k all one movement like this this should be one simultaneous movement and sound not a g those are separate we want one continuous sound you may feel like you have a little bit more air than you're used to so we might feel a little dizzy and that's okay if you're doing it standing and you feel dizzy just sit down you'll be fine you just may have a little more oxygen than your body is used to let's try this five more times together ready good after all of this you should feel a lot more flexibility accessibility and awareness of that soft palate you can use this in your warm-ups in your songs and stay tuned for more videos on how to access and use that soft palate and how to apply it in your singing all right my friends if you have any questions comments or concerns please drop them in the comments section down below and as always keep singing [Music] you

Channel: Good at Voice

Views: 646

Keywords: palate, soft palate, throat, stretch, sing, singer, essential

Id: jyLroC3bmj8

Length: 5min 59sec (359 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 19 2021