Your Body, Your Voice: The Key to Natural Singing and Speaking

Your Body, Your Voice

Other books by Theodore Dimon

The Elements of Skill: A Conscious Approach to Learning

The Undivided Self: Alexander Technique and the Control of Stress

Anatomy of the Moving Body: A Basic Course in Bones, Muscles, and Joints, Second Edition

The Body in Motion: Its Evolution and Design

Your Body, Your Voice

The Key to Natural Singing and Speaking

Theodore Dimon, EdD

Illustrated by G. David Brown

North Atlantic Books

Berkeley, California

Copyright © 2011 by Theodore Dimon. All rights reserved. No portion of this book, except for brief review, may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the written permission of the publisher. For information contact North Atlantic Books.

Published by

North Atlantic Books

Berkeley, California

Cover art © iStockphoto.com/RTimages

Cover and book design by Brad Greene

Illustrations © G. David Brown

Your Body, Your Voice: The Key to Natural Singing and Speaking is sponsored and published by the Society for the Study of Native Arts and Sciences (dba North Atlantic Books), an educational nonprofit based in Berkeley, California, that collaborates with partners to develop cross-cultural perspectives, nurture holistic views of art, science, the humanities, and healing, and seed personal and global transformation by publishing work on the relationship of body, spirit, and nature.

North Atlantic Books’ publications are available through most bookstores. For further information, visit our website at www.northatlanticbooks.com or call 800-733-3000.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Dimon, Theodore.

Your body, your voice: the key to natural singing and speaking / Theodore Dimon Jr.

p.; cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

Summary: Your Body, Your Voice presents the basic underlying design principles of the human voice, addresses harmful patterns of speech and singing, and offers techniques designed to restore the voice to its full potential—Provided by publisher.

ISBN 978-1-58394-320-5

ISBN 978-1-62317-789-8 (e-book)

1. Voice—Physiological aspects. 2. Breathing exercises. 3. Larynx. 4. Voice culture. I. Title.

[DNLM: 1. Voice—physiology. 2. Breathing Exercises. 3. Larynx—physiology. 4. Respiration. 5. Voice Training. WV 501]

QP306.D56 2011

612.7’8—dc22     2010051132

Acknowledgments

There are a number of people who have helped, directly and indirectly, in the making of this book. First I would like to thank Seymour Simmons, my friend and colleague, for his constant support and advice. Thanks also to Dena Davis, who has supported my career practically from the beginning.

I would like to thank Richard Grossinger and North Atlantic Books; Jessica Sevey, editor at North Atlantic Books; Brad Greene for his excellent cover design; and Judy Gitenstein, editor and publishing consultant, for her advice and support.

I would like to thank Professor Vernon Howard, my advisor while I was a graduate student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, for giving me the freedom to pursue my interest in this subject—the beginning of a long and fascinating inquiry into the workings of the human voice.

I would like to thank Jean Clark, my friend, colleague, and teacher, who has so generously helped me over the years to understand different aspects of the voice and the related subject of bodily coordination.

Thanks to Dan Marcus, my friend and colleague, for his invaluable input on the manuscript, and for the wonderful help and support he has given me as a friend and colleague.

Thanks also to Serena Woolf, my agent and personal assistant, who has helped with several aspects of this manuscript.

I would like to thank David Brown for his superb illustrations.

Finally, I want to thank Walter Carrington, whose insights into this subject gave me the initial inspiration for many of the ideas expressed in this book.

Contents

List of Illustrations

Preface

Introduction

1. The Organizing Principle of the Voice

Producing Sound

The Natural Voice

The Head-Trunk Pattern

The Voice and Our Human Design

The Key to the Human Voice

2. Breathing

Why We Breathe

How We Breathe

The Anatomy of Breathing

Breathing and Our Upright Design

The Upright Support System

The Fallacy of Traditional Breathing Exercises

The Key to Breathing

3. The Larynx

How We Produce Sound

Moving the Vocal Folds

Stretchers and Tensors of the Larynx

The Intrinsic Muscles of the Larynx

The Larynx and the Breath

The Larynx and the Brain

4. The Suspensory Muscles of the Larynx

The Suspended Larynx

Depressing the Larynx

The Open Throat and Our Upright Design

5. The Problem of Support

What Is Support?

The In-breathing Tendency

The Natural Controlled Exhalation

Length and Width

The Fiction and Reality of Support

Breathing and the Larynx

The Role of Abdominal Support

The Controlled Exhalation

6. Vocal Registers

Chest and Falsetto Registers

The Two Modes of Vibration

How Registers Work

Patterns of Misuse

Integration of Functions

Our Upright Design

The Head Voice

The Full Head Voice

7. The Singer’s Throat

The Open Throat

The Resonators

The Function of Opening the Throat

The Open Throat (the Low Larynx and Widened Throat)

The Soft Palate

The Mouth and Jaw

The Tongue

Vowel Formation

The Throat and the Upright System

8. Placement

What Is Placement?

The Language of Metaphor

Placement and the Face

Placement and Its Effects

Resonance and Placement

Placement and Our Upright Design

9. Preventing the Basic Pattern of Vocal Misuse

Restoring the Natural System

Preventing the Pattern of Misuse

The Nostrils

Reconstructing the Elements of Speech

The Importance of Preventing Misuse of the Voice

10. The Five Elements of Effortless Vocal Production

Establishing the Foundations of Coordinated Use of the Muscular System

Not Taking Breath in Order to Produce Sound

Controlled Exhalation

Supported Sound Production

Producing Sound

11. Elements of Support and Sound Production

Face and Throat

Controlled Exhalation

The Whispered Ah

12. Producing a Pure Sung Tone

The Problem of Habit

Whispered Ah and Position of Mechanical Advantage

Vocalizing and Nondoing

13. The Voice and Its Total Design

Notes

Bibliography

Index

About the Author

Illustrations

1. The Organizing Principle of the Voice

1-1. The three elements of vocalization: vibrator, power source, and resonator

2. Breathing

2-1. Movement of the ribs during inhalation and exhalation

2-2. Movement of the diaphragm during inhalation and exhalation

2-3. Anatomy of the diaphragm

2-4. Anatomy of the rib cage

2-5. Thoracic and abdominal contents divided by the diaphragm

2-6. Upright support system: the extensors

2-7. Upright support system: the flexors

2-8. The extensor and flexor muscles in relation to head balance

2-9. The broad muscles of the back

3. The Larynx

3-1. Vibration of the vocal folds

3-2. Idealized depiction of the larynx

3-3. Action of the openers and closers of the larynx

3-4. Whisper position of the vocal folds

3-5. Cricothyroid muscle

3-6. Action of the cricothyroids—the stretchers

3-7. Tensors of the larynx

4. The Suspensory Muscles of the Larynx

4-1. Hyoid bone and larynx suspended from styloid processes

4-2. Suspensory muscles of the larynx

4-3. Throat muscles dragging on the skull

4-4. Relation of the throat muscles to the upright support system

4-5. The jaw, the temporomandibular joint, and the muscles moving the jaw

4-6. Muscles on the underside of the jaw

4-7. The relation of the muscles on the underside of the jaw to the upright system

5. The Problem of Support

5-1. Action of ribs and diaphragm during normal breathing and during singing

5-2. Support of trunk during a coordinated controlled exhalation

5-3. The role of the abdominal flexors and diaphragm in producing a controlled exhalation

6. Vocal Registers

6-1. Vocal folds in chest voice

6-2. Vocal folds in falsetto

6-3. Suspensory muscles of the larynx

6-4. Cricothyroid muscle and elevators of the larynx in unsupported falsetto

6-5. Action of the suspensory muscles in supported falsetto

6-6. Foundation for the full head voice

6-7. Concerted activity of the suspensory muscles in the full head voice

7. The Singer’s Throat

7-1. Sagittal section of the pharynx showing the vocal tract

7-2. Human vocal tract and trumpet

7-3. MRI image of vocal tract during normal speech versus tuned vocal tract

7-4. The pharynx and the opposing movements of palate and larynx

7-5. The arched palate and the open throat

7-6. The jaw and temporomandibular joint

7-7. Position of the jaw during speech and during singing

7-8. Muscles on the underside of the jaw

7-9. The jaw and its relation to the throat (showing jaw and hyoid bone attachments); inset showing hyoid bone apparatus

7-10. Position of the tongue during singing

7-11. The vowels and the position of the tongue

8. Placement

8-1. Key placement points

9. Preventing the Basic Pattern of Vocal Misuse

9-1. Head-trunk relationship: basic directions

9-2. The basic pattern of misuse

9-3. Restoring the muscular system: the semi-supine position

9-4. The position of mechanical advantage

12. Producing a Pure Sung Tone

12-1. The position of mechanical advantage and the pure sung tone

Preface

This book describes how the voice can work naturally and effortlessly when we understand how it is designed to work as a complete system. It explains not only how to improve specific vocal functions but also shows how these functions are dependent on the working of the body as a whole. When this larger system works efficiently, the voice is able to function with effortless ease simply by being used according to its natural design. Understanding this holistic design elucidates in a new way how the voice works. It also shows why the most fundamental knowledge the singer or actor needs to possess about the voice is not how to train it, but how it works as a total dynamic system.

This book has been over thirty years in the making and during that time has gone through various stages of development. As a young man I took up singing and guitar, performing sporadically. Over the years I became increasingly interested in the voice and studied vocal technique. In my first year of graduate school I wrote a paper on breathing and its relation to vocalization—a topic that I continued to explore with further papers explaining the importance of controlled exhalation in producing effortless vocal support. These papers provided a foundation for some basic ideas on vocal production and pedagogy. However, in order to communicate the more subtle and complex concepts that underlay a complete treatise on the voice, a larger framework was required to describe how the voice works as a functional system. To this end I spent over a year researching various aspects of the voice and then, in a series of short papers, described each vocal system and how it worked individually; this also provided the key for expressing how they worked together as a functional whole. This body of work made it possible to develop a complete volume on the subject, which includes essential components that have been omitted from other literature on the voice.

The reader may notice that, although the book does contain some anatomical details (as well as quite a few anatomical drawings), I have nevertheless kept anatomical descriptions to a minimum. The reason for this is that I wanted to keep the book as simple as possible and not burden the reader with technical details that obscure the main arguments. At the same time, I became acutely aware, during my own research, of the lack of a unified source of anatomical knowledge on the voice, and wanted to provide such a reference for readers interested in gaining a detailed knowledge of the voice. This book is therefore the first of two volumes; the second book, titled Anatomy of the Voice, will describe the larynx and other vocal systems in greater detail and will be published in the future.

Introduction

The human voice—as anyone who has studied it knows—is a remarkably complex instrument. The lungs and rib cage, the intricate musculature of the larynx, the network of throat muscles that act on the larynx and form the resonator of the throat—all these structures cooperate in the most subtle and marvelous ways to produce sound, and enable us to vary these sounds in an infinite variety of ways.

Perhaps because of this complexity, there are as many approaches to the voice as there are ways of looking at it—and as much disagreement. Some systems stress the central role of breathing in vocalization; others insist on the need to place the voice correctly or to open the throat; still others stress the importance of recognizing and developing separate vocal registers as the basis for awakening the vocal instrument.

But although it is possible to improve the functioning of one or another specific component of the voice, none of these approaches addresses the full complexity of the voice, for the simple reason that it isn’t composed of specific elements but works as a complex system involving the entire body. Long before the larynx evolved as a sound-producing organ, animals were moving on land and breathing air, and this air-breathing mechanism—which involves the entire muscular system—was the basis for the evolution of the sound-producing larynx. The muscles of the throat also evolved millions of years before we used them as part of the vocal mechanism, and they form an essential part of the vocal instrument.

In spite of the dependence of vocalization on this complex and interrelated system, however, remarkably little attention has been given to the overall design of the voice and how it works. Many vocal systems, for instance, give initial and very basic instructions on posture as the basis for learning to vocalize. Some pay a fair amount of attention to breathing, while still others pay attention to tensions and to releasing them. But the vocal system is not simply related to posture, and reducing tension isn’t simply a useful basis for vocalization. Most children are born with a vocal mechanism that functions perfectly; without having to think about it, they are able to use the ribs, larynx, and throat in such a coordinated, effortless fashion as to be able to produce the most piercing and magical sounds with absolute ease and without tiring the throat. Yet how many of us maintain this effortless use of the voice into adulthood? From a young age we interfere habitually with the throat, the breathing, and the larynx, and with such monotonous regularity that most us, by our twenties, are in possession of an impaired vocal mechanism and have completely lost our sense of its true potential, of the vitality we possessed as children, and of how to restore this marvelous instrument to its original state—to say nothing of how to develop its full potential. With training, we learn to restore parts of this system—sometimes to the point that we can hear the full beauty of the voice. But few singers are ever able to regain a truly effortless use of the voice or can command its full potential, even with years of training.

In this book, I will explain the basic underlying design principles of the human voice as a total system, how we interfere with it, and how to restore the effortless and powerful use of the voice as a fundamental element in vocal training. The human voice is not simply a trainable organ but is first