The Anatomy Of Your Voice Pt. 2

Phase 2: Resonation

The vocal folds produce sound waves that form the core of your voice, but they are not responsible for the final sound of your voice. In fact, sound waves of any kind, in themselves, would amount to very little if they did not have good places in which they could amplify their frequencies—that is to say, resonate. Vocal resonance is created when there is an amplification (intensification) of certain vocal folds and sound frequencies, and a dampening of others; the overall blending of these two frequency orientations results in the resonance of your voice. How vocal sound waves are resonated—amplified and dampened—is directly related to the physical characteristics of resonating areas and how, and to what extent, they modify their dimensions during voice production. The quality of vocal resonance can be quite variable because the vocal tract is highly adjustable.

The primary cavity resonators for the human voice are the laryngopharynx (the throat area right above the larynx); the oropharynx (the throat area at the back of the oral cavity, including the soft palate); and the oral cavity itself. The nasal cavities also play a role in resonation, especially with certain consonant sounds like m and n. The pharynx is composed of very powerful constrictor muscles, which, in addition to guiding food down the throat during swallowing, also move and adjust its width and length in a variety of ways to allow for resonant vowel sound formation. The velum (soft palate) is also composed of highly flexible musculature that is very important to resonance tuning. The oral cavity is the most adjustable structure in voice production—the flexible movement of the multi-muscled tongue, as well as the jaw, cheeks, and lips, make the oral cavity an ideal resonance companion to the pharynx.

The most important aspect of resonance creation is the formation of the various vowel sounds that make up our speech and singing. A vowel sound is a particular configuration of salient resonances (formant structures) of which the larynx, pharynx, oral cavity, soft palate—and to a much lesser extent, the nasal cavities—all participate in creating. Every vowel has a unique vocal formant structure—sound-energy distribution—and every language has its own particular ways of resonating their vowels. (Excerpt from my book A Revolution In Singing Ch. 1)

Tomorrow: Phase 3: Articulation

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