Vocal Cords Singing

Many different parts of your body influence how you sing, but understanding how they all work together to produce the best sound is the key to great vocal cord singing. Of course it is important to know about breathing for singing and singing posture, but knowing where the vocal cords - your muscles for singing - are located and how they make tone is just as important. When developing good vocal technique, you need to understand how your breath, posture and tension affect how your vocal cords work.

Where are your vocal cords?

Your vocal cords are inside your larynx (pronounced lar-inks), which is the source of your singing voice. Your vocal cords are two small bands of tissue stretching across your larynx that vibrate to create pitch.

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How do vocal cords create pitch?

Your vocal cords coordinate with your breath to release a pitch by opening and closing (vibrating) as your breath passes through. Each vibration of your vocal cords is called a "cycle of vibration" or "glottal cycle". If you're singing the same note that an orchestra plays to tune their instruments, your vocal cords are vibrating at 440 cycles per second - yes that's fast. So in order to make your vocal cords vibrate quickly, you need to keep your breath flowing otherwise you run out of air and can't sustain the tone.

In addition we have to make sure that our posture is correct. If we are not standing correctly, our breathing mechanism doesn't work well so we can't get the air moving for singing. Allowing ourselves to get too tense also prevents the body from working efficiently, which in turn can affect the vocal cords. Tense jaws, chests, and locked knees all make it impossible to breath and produce good tone.

Male Vocal Cords and Female Vocal Cords

Males and females have different vocal cord sizes. Adult male voices are usually lower pitched and have larger folds. The male vocal folds are between 17mm and 25mm in length. The female vocal cords are between 12.5 and 17.5 in length. The difference in vocal cord size between males and females means they have differently pitched voices. Additionally, genetics also causes variances amongst the same sex, with men's and women's voices being categorized into different singing voice types.

The home singing courses in the table below will provide you with all the information and vocal cord exercises you need to master your voice and sing like a star.