Sarah Brumm's Voice Studio

     We incorporate different techniques and manipulations to produce our sound for singing. One important factor of singing is the knowledge and application of pharyngal and laryngeal placement.       First let's do some body mapping. Start by tapping your face on the outside from the front of your lips to your back teeth. Continue to tap backward and you should feel a very prominent jaw muscle, feel the space behind your jaw that is pharynx; it spans from the top of your nasal cavity to the top of your larynx. By moving the larynx up and down, we can manipulate the pharyngal space which affects resonance and vowel shape.       A common misconception about laryngeal placement is that when we want to produce "classical sounds" we need to lower our larynx, but the larynx needs to move freely so production can be tension free. As singers, things in our bodies move to produce specific sounds and we need to let that happen.   ...

       In my years of singing and teaching, there have been a lot of different techniques and topics to cover. There has never be a time when I felt like "ah yes, I know everything about singing" and this past week I had a major revelation about how I was not feeling or body mapping the function of the vocal folds in their relation to my singing. The idea that I can have intention and control the length of my vocal folds is absolutely baffling because I believed it was just an arbitrary movement done by the body, similar to the function of the diaphragm. I knew the vocal folds opened and closed for vibration but didn't know the degree that I could decide what intentions they were able to move. So let's do some explanation of the vocal folds and they ways you can affect their position.  Photo used from: cvsurgicalgroup.com      Above is a side view drawing of anatomy of the lips to the esophagus, on the left we see a piece labeled as the vocal cord...

Phonation is the function of making sounds with the body to communicate. To discuss phonation, we first need to talk about all the major players on how phonation happens: the lungs, the larynx, and the pharyngal space. These three parts of the body, with assistance from many others, create a power, source and filter relationship to allow vocal communication from the body. The lungs are the power that open to allow air to enter the body, the larynx allows the air to pass through in various ways to create the source, and the pharyngal space is a filter for which air moves back out of the body to communicate.  In order for phonation to happen for singing, there are various factors that are a part of the function. Amount of air intake, laryngal position, vocal folds, positioning of the chin, tongue tension, jaw placement, soft pallet location are some of the many ways that phonation can be affected. Let's take a deeper dive into one of these as it relates to phonation, vocal folds....