Anatomy
what you're working with
In a nutshell, here's what's happening behind the curtain:
Every process needs a power source, and when it comes to your voice, that source is the breath. We'll be talking a lot more about breath later on, and doing some experiments, but for now, we'll keep it exceedingly simple: when you inhale, your lungs expand downwards.To achieve this, your diaphragm, the dome-shaped muscle that cradles your lungs from below, flattens and descends, nudging your organs (stomach, liver, etc.) out of the way to make room for your expanding lungs. This increased space creates a vacuum, meaning the pressure inside of you is now lower than the pressure outside of you, resulting in air being drawn into your lungs.
What happens next- you guessed it, exhalation- officially begins the sound-making process (called phonation). As the air we've inhaled rises from our lungs and passes up through our trachea (windpipe), it encounters our larynx, which houses our vocal folds (cords). When we're simply breathing, the folds open easily to let the air pass, but when we're vocalizing, our abdominal muscles engage to control the airflow. This engagement is necessary because in order to create sound, there needs to be some amount of tension in the folds so that they can vibrate.
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