We Have Been Lied To
It should be no shock. We have been lied to.
Diaphragm Lies
We have been told to sing from the diaphragm by people who have no idea what it looks like, where it is, or how it functions. It’s not your fault. It’s not their fault. They were never taught, but you can be.
Learning is the cure for ignorance.
The diaphragm is relaxed when you exhale. It is the “inhale muscle”. It contracts downward, drawing air into the lungs.
The lungs end at approximately the area of the lowest rib and you cannot fill up your abdomen with air. If air gets into your abdomen, you need emergency treatment and the pain may be intolerable.
Gray’s Anatomy (not the TV show) tells us that muscles of forced expiration are the flat muscles of the abdomen, the oblique, transverse, the rectus abdominis, the triangularis sterni and those are the abs involved in a forced expiration (exhalation). Also the internal intercostals (between the ribs) assist in forced exhalation. Doctors have known this since the 1700s. No one knows why this was ignored by singing teachers and/or some vocal coaches. Many have mislead singers into thinking that they can or do “sing from the diaphragm” and furthermore don’t know it lacks proprioceptive nerves and you cannot feel where it is.
Singing from the diaphragm is a myth and medical science proved that hundreds of years ago.
“Place The Sound.” (Lie)
We have been told to “place the sound”, but there are no sound-placing valves or baffles, to direct sound waves which are exiting your mouth at about 1,100 feet per second.
What you can do, is raise your soft palate, lower your larynx, and sound like a cartoon character, such as “Yogi Bear”.
You can also close your mouth and “sing through your nose”, or have a nasal sound. Is that what you want? Unless I’ trying to be funny, I don’t.
“Open Your Mouth Wider” (Lie)
Did you know that x-rays of the tongue reveal its position in the mouth for vowel sounds?
But wait, there’s more. Have you heard of front vowels or back vowels?
There’s more to this than meets the eye, or the ear, for that matter.
You will distort certain vowels and be unintelligible if you open wide on every one of them. The lyricist would certainly wish for the words to be understood. What about your poor audience?
Tea, Lemon, Honey, Etc.
You have two “tubes” as your throat heads toward you chest and stomach. Have you ever choked on water or even saliva?
One tube is the esophagus and leads to the stomach.
The other tube leads to the lungs and your larynx is at the top of it.
When you swallow something, it goes to the stomach, unless you choke on it. Films made using a fluoroscope reveal the journey of a bolus through the mouth and into the esophagus. The bolus is what you swallow, being food or liquid. I’ve seen the films and also the ones of swallowing disorders.
Unless you have a swallowing disorder, your tea, lemon, honey, or beer go into the esophagus, not into the thing sitting at the top of the trachea, which houses the vocal folds, the larynx.
When you swallow, the epiglottis directs and prevents leakage into the larynx. If it fails, the vocal folds are the “backup system” to keep things out of your windpipe, the trachea. The folds close and seal off the entrance/ If you pay attention, you can feel this squeeze every time you swallow.
If you are a singer and your throat is sore, don’t sing. If it stays sore, consider seeing a doctor. Swollen or irritated vocal folds are more prone to injury than healthy ones.
Many Myths and Many Methods, But…
There are a huge number of myths and worthless misinformation flying around about singing.
We can explore these, expose them to the light of science, and toss them into the trash can.
All methods do not work.
Some are missing information.
Some are pure fantasy.
Some methods ignore science.
Some are harmful and cause injury.