Vocal Health Part 1: Producing Sound

Vocal Health and You Lesson 1: Producing Sound

EQ: How does the body produce sound?

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The Voice

  • What Is Sound?
    • Vibrations that travel through the air or another medium and can be heard when they reach a person’s or animal’s ear.
  • The voice is controlled by 2 factors:
    • Air
    • Vocal Folds, "cords" (Focus of lesson 1)
  • Vocal Folds
    • Vocal folds require air and vibration to create sound.  It is air pushing up out of our lungs that causes the folds to vibrate and create sound.
  • Vocal Fold Examples:
    • If you pluck a rubber band, the rubber band moving back and forth produces twanging sounds.
      • Sound travels when a string vibrates, it makes molecules of gases in the air next to it vibrate.
        • The molecules squeeze together, then spread apart.
        • A vibration that spreads away from a vibrating object is a sound wave.

 

    • Vocal folds stretch and relax to make high and low pitches, similar to guitar strings.
      • The tighter the string, the tighter and more vibrations, more vibrations, which results in a higher pitch.
      • The more loose a string is the fewer vibrations, vibrations become longer, which results in a lower pitch.

 

What do the vocal cords look like when singing?