Sarah Brumm's Voice Studio

     In addition to being full-time in the choral conducting graduate program, I have worked as the Director of Music at a local Greenfield church for the last seven years. At the beginning of this semester one of my choir members shared with me some feelings she was having about her voice. She brought up a concern about her vibrato and how she felt like she had no control over it. At the time, I had no useful knowledge that felt would help her. I commented that she hadn't sung consistently for a few years due to the lack of choir because of the pandemic but with consistent practice she would feel more control over her vibrato. I assured her that if I found out any more information, I would try to make it applicable to her situation. I hadn't thought about that conversation until we discussed larygnal tilt in our vocal pedagogy.  Learning that we have direct control over our vibrato because it is activated by the on/off tilt of the larynx was a huge lightbulb moment...

The tongue has been the major troublemaker according to voice teachers for a long time. Teachers believed that tongue tension and placement has been getting in the way of other functions of the vocal tract and have tried to "tame the tongue" for better vocal abilities. But that is simply not true, the tongue to trying to do its job. Tongue is an important structure for swallowing and speech production. It is also the most flexible structure in the vocal tract and has the greatest potential to influence the resonance of the voice. There are four parts that make up the tongue including the tip, the blade, the dorsum, and the root. Each of these parts affects that way that resonance is produced. For this week, we will focus on the dorsum which is explained with the following pictures.  The dorsum has three positions and each produces a unique sound. The first is low dorsum. This is where your tongue lives in the jaw at or below the teeth. The sound produced will with dark and th...

Have you ever heard of the pharynx? Until this past week, I hadn't really either. I knew it was part of the respiratory system as a passage for air but I had no idea of it's function and how it relates to singing. So let's learn about the pharynx together. Pictured below is a side view of the mouth to the esophagus. We will be specifically talking about the area colored in orange which is the mid pharynx.  The mid pharynx also called the oral pharynx is a visible part of the respiratory and digestive system that can be seen when the mouth is open. Its primary function for singing is when we ascend in pitch the mid pharynx will narrow. The mid pharynx will only narrow and move back into a neutral position, no widening at all. When the mid pharynx is narrowed the sound that is produced will be brighter, where a neutral pharynx will have a more neutral sounding timbre.  The mid pharynx is also functions to help produce twang in the voice. By narrowing the mid pharynx we introd...