How Does the Singing Voice Function?

​How Does the Singing Voice Function?
Written for Walton Voices by Zoran Milosevic
[email protected]
01932 246 635

In my previous article (here) I discussed the options for improving an amateur singer’s voice. In the few next articles, I will propose a series of exercises that will help in achieving this, but before we go deeper into the singing technique, I would first like to discuss how the vocal mechanism actually works.

All sounds that we hear are produced by oscillating pressure waves of the surrounding air. Therefore, to make a sound, we need (1) a vibrator - something that oscillates (the “source”), (2) a motor – the energy input that moves the source and causes it to vibrate, and (3) a resonator - something that converts those oscillations into an audible air wave. Examples of motors are the drummer’s hand, the breath energy in singing or blowing a woodwind instrument, the guitarist’s finger action, etc. Musial instruments’ oscillators are usually either the strings (violin, guitar, harp) or reeds/mouthpieces (clarinet, trumpet). For human voice it is the vocal folds inside the larynx that oscillate, and it is the vocal tract (the throat, the mouth) that acts as the resonator. Without the resonator the raw source sound would be little more than a quack. It is the resonator upon which depends the beauty of the musical sound, and so is true for the singing voice. The vocal tract is a Stradivarius hidden inside an elite singer’s body.

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