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CHAPTER 2. The Science of Singing

I know that this chapter title may remind you of the long, boring days spent in
science class, but I promise that this will be a lot more fun—and useful to you!
Just as you can’t tune a car without understanding what its parts are and how they
work together, so you can’t “tune” your singing voice without understanding how
sound is manufactured and how the parts of your “voice machine” affect its quality.
Understanding Sound

First of all, an overview…. You may be familiar with wind instruments. Examples
are the clarinet, trumpet, and harmonica. These instruments produce sound when
someone blows through them, creating a column of air that causes vibrations at a
range of frequencies, amplified by the resonant spaces inside the instrument. What
result are sound waves.

All sound waves originate from some object that
causes a vibration. The vibration creates a pattern of
disturbance in the air (consisting of energy), which
moves away from the source like a wave. The sound
wave can be modified as it moves outwards,
depending on what surfaces it passes through, reflects
off, or refracts from.

Sound waves can be described using terms such as pitch, tone, and intensity (or
volume). For example, a high-pitched sound will have waves scrunched up close
together (high frequency). A low, deep sound will have very long, lazy waves (low
frequency). A loud sound will have very tall waves (high amplitude). A quiet sound
will have waves that are barely perceptible bumps (low amplitude).


You gotta love sound. Sound is what your voice is. It’s what music is. Without
sound frequencies you wouldn’t have pitch—and that means your C sharps and B
flats would have to be thrown out the door. Without amplitude you wouldn’t have
amplifiers—and that would be a sad world indeed.
The Human Instrument


You are an instrument. You may not have realized it before. But your body
produces sound in the same basic way as a wind instrument. The action of your
lungs pushing air up through your windpipe creates the initial column of air. The air
then interacts with the instrument of your voicebox (or larynx) to produce an initial
sound. That sound is then amplified by the resonant spaces above the larynx before
leaving your lips … and broadcasting your own unique sound creation to the world.
Good Vibrations

Without vibrations, there wouldn’t be sound. As sound travels through your resonant
areas, you will be able to feel the vibrations in your head. Think about the different
parts of your head: the mouth, the throat, the tongue, and the lips. Each will vibrate
differently. Also, different vowel and consonant sounds will produce different
vibrations.


• Try this exercise.
o Hum. Can you feel the vibrations in your head and mouth?
o Make an ‘ng’ sound (as in sing), with the mouth only slightly open. The
sound should feel as if it is coming from your nose, at the back of the
bridge.

􀂃 Now pinch the bridge of your nose. Can you feel it vibrate?
o Make an ‘ah’ sound with your mouth open. Can you feel the vibrations
in your mouth?

What Makes Your Voice Distinctive

You may think that the voicebox is responsible for what makes your voice unique.
Not so. While the larynx produces the initial “buzzy” sound, it is the resonators
(which include the oral cavity, nasal cavity, and pharynx or throat) that amplify and
shape the final sound quality so that it is transformed into your own, unique, personal
voice.

Think about this: Can you change your own voice?
Answer: No more than you could change the range of sounds producible by a
particular instrument without changing its shape.

Articulators finish off the sound by shaping it into clear, understandable words. Your
articulators include your lips, tongue, and soft palate. The soft palate is the soft,
spongy bit in the back of the roof of your mouth that opens up when you yawn.
When you sing, it should naturally be in a slightly raised position.

• Try this exercise.

Yawn, then sing a note. Compare the sensations. Can you feel your soft
palate raise, as it did when you yawned?

The Vocal Cords

The larynx contains the most important organs in the human body for the production
of sound: the vocal cords. The vocal cords are a set of muscles and ligaments
barely over a half-inch in length. Their opening and closing produces sound while
controlling the pitch and intensity of your tone.
Basically, when the vocal cords remain closed, air pressure builds up behind them.
Then they burst open, releasing the air in the form of a sound wave. This happens
at a rate of hundreds to thousands of times per second.

Making a Louder Sound. When there’s an increase in the air flow behind the vocal
cord, the air blows the vocal cords wider apart. As a result, the vocal cords stay
apart longer and increase the amplitude of the resulting sound wave.
Making a Higher-Pitched Sound. When vocal cords are stretched thinner, making
them shorter, they are moved more easily by the air pressure behind them. As a
result, they open and close much faster, producing narrow sound waves that follow
closely on one another. The thickness of the vocal cords, which you cannot change,
also affects how high a pitch you can produce.

Review of the Voice Mechanism

Are you confused yet? Let’s take some time for a little review.
Below is a list of the steps involved in speaking. Put them in order from 1 (the first)
to 7 (the last):
_____ Articulators shape words.
_____ Air passes through the windpipe to the larynx.
_____ The vocal cords blow open.
_____ Sound waves leave your body.
_____ You exhale.
_____ Resonant spaces amplify the sound, augmenting some frequencies and
dampening others.
_____ Air pressure builds up behind the vocal cords.

Now, Getting Back to Singing….
When you study singing, you may hear about a variety of voice problems that require
you to understand vocal anatomy, such as a high larynx, vocal cord tension, or
excess air pushing through the vocal cords.
It’s natural to wonder how you can adjust your vocal cords when you can’t even see
them, wiggle them, or feel that they’re there. Nonetheless, you do have some
important clues as to how they’re functioning.
First and foremost, of course, is the sound of your voice. Clues may be whether
your voice breaks at a certain place in your range, or whether it sounds deep,
wooden, brassy, etc. Another clue is the place in your body that you feel your voice
“coming” from. For example, your singing voice may feel as if comes from the area
around your eyes or nose, while your speaking voice may feel as if it comes from
your mouth. You should also feel physical vibrations when you sing, such as tingling
in the area above your lips.
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Last of all, you need to be wary if you feel tension in your face and throat. Although
singing is a form of physical exertion, your face should not be scrunched up. Your
head should be in a natural position, not craned up or tilted down. If you feel
muscular tension in your neck, chin, or jaw, do some simple stretches—such as neck
rolls, or pretending as if you were chewing a wad of bubblegum—to relax them.
Getting the Best Performance from Your Vocal Cords
Relaxation plays a key role in the optimal functioning of the vocal cords. Ever
noticed that when you were at home singing away, your voice sounded great, but the
minute you stepped in front of an audience, your heart pounding, skin clammy …
that great voice fell all to pieces?
When you are tense, stressed, or trying too hard, your vocal cords suffer. Your
breathing becomes less free and easy, and the air trying to leave your lungs has to
fight its way free. As a result the air that eventually hits the vocal cords is
concentrated and pressurized. The vocal cords react by locking up. It’s almost as if
you’re choking your voicebox.
You need to allow your vocal cords to open and close smoothly through their entire
range of motion, without any strain or pressure. Do that by relaxing your body,
getting rid of the tension, and eliminating any strain. Your voice will thank you.

• Try this exercise.

The next time you feel tension, take deep breaths and visualize opening and
clearing a passage through to your voice and voicebox.
When Do I Get to Start Singing?
Producing a good sound with your voice is the result of good technique—not a result
of a good song. For that reason, instead of starting you off singing songs, I’m going
to take you right back to the fundamentals of sound.

Vocabulary Review
amplitude the height of a sound wave; corresponds to intensity, or volume
articulators parts of the body that shape clear, understandable words
frequency the quickness with which waves follow one another; pitch
hard palate the hard, forward part of the roof of your mouth
intensity volume or loudness
larynx voicebox
pharynx throat
pitch how high or low a sound is; frequency
resonators the parts of the body that reinforce or dampen sound waves,
depending on their frequencies
soft palate the back part of the roof of your mouth
sound wave a pattern of energy (or disturbance) that moves through air
tone the sound of a certain pitch, its quality; a note

History Of Singing

The History of Song
The human voice is the original musical instrument. Singing is such a natural activity
that there isn’t a single culture discovered that does not sing. The earliest musical
sounds people made were likely imitations of sounds found in nature. As human
cultures evolved, music came to play an important part in religious rituals,
celebrations, and as a lyrical record of events. This “folk music” expressed the life of
its community and was usually anonymous, a collective artifact of the culture that
created it.

“Art music,” or music composed as artistic expression, did not emerge until later.
The first cultures to create music for art’s sake were probably located in early
Mesopotamia. These early cultures even had professional musicians, and the
earliest noted music on record is a Sumerian hymn dated before 800 B.C.E.
The Egyptians, Greeks, and Jewish people all valued music deeply and created
highly developed musical cultures. But it was Christianity, under the Roman Catholic
Church, that came to dominate the next thirteen centuries of Western music. The
original plainchant style (also known as Gregorian chant) gave way to polyphony
(music with more than one melodic part) in the ninth century. By the beginning of the
1600s, the theater had emerged as a new secular venue for music, and the grand
age of opera began.

Although opera seems outdated to us today, it was enormously popular for centuries.
Everyone went to the opera—to see their friends, to hang out, to be seen, to make
business deals, to eat … and sometimes to actually watch it. Composers wrote
frantically. New singers with the ability to sing ever-more-difficult parts were sought.
From Spain came the first castrati, or adult men who’d had their testicles removed
before puberty could change their voices. The beginning of the eighteenth century
saw the first divas, as female sopranos claimed their place as the darlings of the
stage.

It wasn’t until after the First World War that popular music would surge in
significance. As classical styles became less accessible and less attractive to
modern audiences, the public turned to jazz, blues, and swing. People no longer
had to go to the opera or concert hall to listen to music, as technology such as the
phonograph and the wireless radio brought music into the home. Electronic
amplification enabled singers to use a more natural, conversational singing style.
Hollywood, taking its lead from Broadway, began churning out musicals with gusto.
By the middle of the century, the appearance of a singer became all important,
especially as television began broadcasting performances. Les Paul’s invention of
the electric guitar after the Second World War prepared the ground for the
development of rock and roll.

Today, popular music is everywhere: on the street, in the buses, in homes, in
workplaces. There are few places you can go without hearing music. Live
performances, in venues ranging from concert halls to local bars, are accessible for

most people. The proliferation of burned CDs and songs in the easily-downloadable
MP3 file format have enabled a wide variety of international musical styles, sounds,
and genres to flourish and find niche audiences.

Making your own music has never been easier. Microphones, amplifiers, keyboards,
and mixing equipment are easily available in models for almost every budget level.
Karaoke bars give anyone a chance to try out their singing skills in front of an
audience, while competitions like American Idol encourage aspiring vocal artists to
dream that they can be a pop star.

Is there any better time to be learning to sing than right now? (If you were living in
the Middle Ages you might be asked to “intone through your nose,” or sing with a
forced nasal tone!) So enjoy the benefits of the modern world you live in, and flip the
page to learn about the science of song.