Can you sing from your diaphragm? Do your vocal folds move up and down for pitch? And do you really have separate “voices” to switch between? In this episode of Vocal Tips in 10, I'm busting three of the most common vocal function myths and sharing the truth about how your voice really works—so you can sing with more freedom and less tension.
00:00 Myth Busting Vocal Function
01:30 How Your Vocal Folds Move
02:45 You Can't Sing from Your Diaphragm
05:12 How Vocal Registers Workl
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We are doing some more myth busting today, friends. Last week's episode was busting some vocal health myths that we have heard time and time again. So if you're interested in listening to that, I will put the link below. Today we are going to talk about vocal function myths. So things that singers have heard forever and still hear all the time about how our voice works that just aren't true. And I'm going to tackle three biggies today.
And some of you may hear these and be like, well, Amber, I know the answer to that. But I am telling you, so many people do not know the truth about some of these seemingly basic topics. And the only reason why is because they haven't been taught the truth. How are you supposed to know if you haven't been taught it? I see great singers with frequency who are like, yes, I know my anatomy. I know the basics. And then I tell them things like, hey, when you drink that tea, it does not go to your vocal folds.
That's your respiratory system, totally different than your digestive system. And their mind is blown. So we are jumping into today vocal function myths. And like I said, we are going to tackle three of them. So let's get going. The very first one is the myth that your vocal folds move up and down to create higher and lower pitches. And you see singers all the time when they go for a high note, push the chin up, stretch the whole body up.
or when they go for a low note, tuck the chin down, kind of squish everything. And here is the truth. You have two vocal folds that connect to make sound. They don't ever move up. They don't ever move down. I always tell singers I work with, if your vocal folds have jumped up or down, 911 it, friends, because we have a serious medical problem. All that happens is your vocal folds connect to make sound. When you go to sing higher pitches, your vocal folds are stretching.
They're getting thinner and they are vibrating more quickly. And the reality is if you want to get really nerdy, the pitches aren't even going up. Just the vibration is moving more quickly, which sounds like a higher pitch to our ears. I know I need my glasses and I will push them onto my forehead, but it's true. That's all that's happening when you go to sing the lower notes. Your vocal folds are not moving down. Your vocal folds are shortening.
They get thicker, more tissue is touching and the vibration is slower. When that vibration is slower, it sounds to our ear like a lower pitch.
Myth number two, this one is a doozy, that comes up all the time. Sing from your diaphragm. Don't sing from your throat. Sing from your lower abdominals. It's the belief that we can sing from anywhere other than our vocal folds. And that is just completely false. Now don't get me wrong, like all things, this is nuanced, right? So I'm going to assume
that most voice professionals or singers that say, hey, hey, don't sing from your throat, sing from your belly, sing from your pelvic floor, sing from your feet, whatever it is, I've heard all of those. I'm going to assume they know better than that. They know that the only place we can sing from is our vocal folds, which are housed in our larynx, which is housed right here in our throat. It's the only option we have. We can't sing from anywhere else. I'm gonna assume they know that. And what they're trying to do is tell the singer,
Hey, don't squeeze your throat, right? Ground the sound or make sure you're supporting it with breath or you've got good breath flow. and I'm sure some of those cues can be helpful. And I'm a big believer by the way, whether something is exactly true and official or not, if it works for you, meaning it makes things feel easier and sound better, do it to it.
Right? Whatever tool, sing through your unicorn horn. You obviously don't have one of those. But if that visual thinking about the horn going forward really helps you, sing through that horn, friend. There's nothing wrong with that. What I find is so many singers are really confused about where they are supposed to quote, end quote sing from. And I will have singers, high level singers ask me on the regular
I don't know, just, I'm always singing from my throat and I really need to sing from my diaphragm. Or I've been told I need to sing from my pelvic floor. Or I really need to, you know, ground in and sing from my feet. And I always let them know, hey, the reason why you're not doing that well is because it is impossible. There's nothing wrong with you. The only place that you can sing from is your vocal folds. And we go back to number one, they don't move up, they don't move down, they connect to make sound.
As you go higher, they thin out, which makes them vibrate more quickly. As you go lower, they thicken up, which makes them vibrate more slowly, causing the higher and the lower sounding pitches.
And our third vocal myth I'm busting today is another doozy that causes singers so many difficulties that they just don't need to have. So let's just take these difficulties off of the table, off of the list for us as singers, Singing has so many aspects to it. We're thinking about melody. We're thinking about rhythm. We're thinking about tonal quality. wait, I need to take a breath. What is the story I'm conveying here? What does my face look like? There's so many things to think about. Thinking about how do I move?
from my head voice to my chest voice is something we can take off of the table. That is the third myth. Singers hearing and believing that their different registers, chest voice and head voice are the biggies, or you might say falsetto. For me personally, I call falsetto and head voice the same thing because they are similar function. Or if you are saying whistle register, you might say vocal fry, which is your lowest register. But let's just go head voice and chest voice,
Feeling like those are different places, different areas of the voice that you need to learn how to move to and manipulate to. This causes so many issues. And I have singers again ask me on the regular, which voice should I be singing this in Amber? Is this my head voice or is this my chest voice? And I give the annoying answer. I'm sure of how many voices do you think that you have? You have one, two vocal folds like I said that connect to make sound.
If you've ever gotten a scope before, where they go down and look at your vocal folds, or if you've ever watched one, you can Google it, you will find them online, you will see, I always tell people, take a look at those vocal folds. Show me, where's the head voice there? Where's the chest voice? Where's your fry? Where's your mix voice? Which, by the way, is not a register, but we are saving mix voice myths for the following week. So get ready for that, mark your calendars.
You can't see any specific registers. They aren't different places in your voice. What I like people to think about when it comes to registration, so just say head voice or chest voice. Some people call it mode one, mode two. I don't really care what you call it. We are usually talking about one, the actual function of the vocal folds. What is the muscle that is most responsible? Is it the stretching, thinning muscle, your cricothyroid muscle? If so, then the vocal folds are thinning.
They are functioning in a lighter fold setup. The pitches sound higher and lighter. That is considered head voice, so it's the function. And then it's also the tonal quality, what it sounds like. So I can be quite low in my register, but if I let that stretching, thinning muscle, my cricothyroid muscle, my CT, do you need to know the name of that muscle, by the way, as a singer? No, you do not. I'm just throwing it out there in case you wanna join my nerdy team and know it as well.
If that stretching, thinning muscle is dominant, it's going to sound lighter and headier, quote, end quote, in tonal quality no matter where I am in my range. If my thickening muscle, my shortening, thickening muscle that functions much like a bicep, that is your TA muscle, your thyroarytenoid muscle, if that muscle is dominant, therefore the vocal folds are shortening and thickening, and therefore the tonal quality sounds fuller, more connected to my speech, that is your chest voice.
Both of those sounds, both of those registers that we label are just different functioning at the vocal fold level. And really for you as a singer, I don't want you thinking about your baseline vocal folds, because anytime we focus on the vocal folds and think, okay, it's thickening up, out, we're squeezing. What I want you to think about is your resonance, the end of your vocal tract, your mouth. You can also think about breath pressure, how much you're going to use.
or not utilize, we're not thinking about the vocal folds themselves. So really what we're talking about from a sonic component, how you hear it, is the tonal quality. And then that also aligns to a function of the voice. But they aren't different areas of the voice.
You don't need to learn to move to or manipulate to the different places of your voice because there aren't different places in your voice. I want you to think about your voice.
I find it to be most effective as one connected voice because that's what it is. I hope this is helpful, everybody. And again, for some of you, you might be like, well, I know all of those things, Amber. Well, great. These are just reminders that all of these things are true. And if you listen to this and think, what is this woman talking about? My mind is blown. Know that that is okay, too. It doesn't make you less of a singer or better of a singer.
None of us are going to know this information until we talk about it, until we learn about it. That's what this episode is for. Thank you for listening. Like always, I've got freebies for you guys down in the show notes. If you want to hear about some vocal health myths, that was last week's episode. It's down in the show notes as well. And see you in next week's episode. Bye.
