The Singing Instrument

 An overview

Your vocal chords are situated in the middle of your neck and are surrounded by a kind of harness which is made out of fairly tough cartilidge. This harness is kept suspended by various muscles and is capable of floating up and down inside your throat. This harness is called your Larynx or voice box.

 When thinking about your body's singing mechanism it's important to understand the function of it's major components. Most people (teachers and students) quite often confuse the functions of different parts of the singing mechanism and some tend to generalise or overly mystify what are really quite specific and logical functions.

 Most singers are aware that they need to do something called 'supporting', but if asked don't really know what it is, they probably have a vague idea that it's got something to do with the diaphragm and thats most probably the extent of their knowledge.

 This information should help to clarify what the different parts of the singing mechanism do and give you some insight as to how to work with and bring this mechanism more under your control.

So it is really important that you understand what we're trying to achieve.

 Important points:

 The major components of the body's singing mechanism arethose concerned with:

• Breath and breath control

• Support

• Resonance

 You could think of the breathing part of the singing mechanism as a fairly large chamber (Chest cavity) which is cut of from the stomach cavity by a sort of elastic floor called the diaphragm. The top of the chamber is closed of by a valve which is made up of two strips of muscle and cartilage which controls the amount of air that is allowed to pass through. This valve (two strips of muscle and cartilage) works in two ways;

1. by stretching (like two elastic bands) which causes them to come together tightly closing off the airway at the top of the lungs and stopping the air from escaping.

2. By relaxing open allowing air to leave the lungs.

 This valve is called your vocal chords. Try to remember playing with a ballon as a child. Did you ever try making squeaking noises by pinching and stretching the mouth bit of the balloon? Well this is actually very similar to how your vocal chords work.

 If you can remember, the wider you were able to stretch the mouth of the balloon the more high pitched the squeak became and conversely, the less the stretch the lower the sound it made. This is a very simple model of how your vocal chords produce sound. Another way to produce a high pitched squeak was to squeeze the body of the balloon. Doing this at the same time as stretching the mouth of the balloon had the effect of making the noise steadier and louder.

 In the above example, your fingers would be you vocal muscles (Arytenoids) which are responsible for stretching the vocal chords and your arm as it steadily squeezed the body of the balloon would be your diaphragm and respiratory muscles. The important thing to remember here is that the vocal chords have two main functions; a) controlling the flow of air as it leaves the lungs, and (b) controlling the pitch of the sounds you make by stretching and relaxing.

 The supporting part of the breathing mechanism as said before is the respiratory muscles (muscles which control breathing in and breathing out) and the diaphragm, and although there are some important differences between how they all work together and the balloon idea, you can still get a fairly good idea of how they act to give support to the breath as you sing.

 The third major part of the singing mechanism is really another system altogether. It's the bit that collects all the airwaves and sound and amplifies it and gives it colour, texture and meaning. There are quite a few areas of the body that are involved in this process and collectively they form the body's resonance system. The body's five main resonators are;

1. The chest

2. The soft palate

3. the hard palate

4. the dental ridge

5. the head

 Resonance as it relates to singing happens when spaces or structures in your body are caused to vibrate either directly or indirectly by soundwaves produced by the vocal chords. Sometimes these vibrations happen because the air has been caused to vibrate by your vocal chords and travels to other places or at other times they occur simply because the place which is vibrating is in some way physically connected to the vocal chords and vibrates automatically. Depending on the singer's ability to work with and manipulate these vibrations, his or her sound can be altered in an astonishing variety of ways, the only real limit to this process is the imagination and ability of the singer!

 Ideally, what we are trying to achieve is a situation where the support system is balanced and working well, the vocal chords are purely responsible for initiating sound and regulating the flow of air leaving the lungs and the body's resonators are solely responsible for shaping and amplifying the sound that is produced.

 This of course is very easy to explain, but in reality will take most good singers many years to master. Please don't be put off by this last statement. In fact, most contemporary pop stars you hear and see on radio, tv and in the newspapers are still learning this art and some are a very long way off in terms of expertise! So why bother? Why not just go out and get your deal and get on with it?

 The idea of learning proper singing technique is to allow the artist to work at the peak of his or her vocal ability and to be able to do this consistently over many years without fading, losing vocal quality or damaging the vocal chords. Many singers who were once famous have slipped from the spotlight because the punishing schedule and impossibly high standards that must be met eventually takes its toll and vocal ability inevitably suffers, in some cases careers have been ended due to the vocal damage that can happen as a result.

 Of course many singers have long, trouble-free and successful careers so don't get too worried! But if you ask them how they've managed to do it, most will tell you that they have had to develop a very disciplined diet, practice and exercise regime which they follow religiously. I don't think this is just a coincidence! Becoming a great singer definitely has a lot to do with attitude. It is a very demanding, but totally fulfilling way of life.