Mark is the Midlands' leading Certified Voice Coach, providing professional singing lessons in Nottingham. Mark is known for getting BIG results in voices, fast. – 0115 871 7660 || [email protected]
Category: Voice Science Explained
Unlock the Science Behind Your Singing Voice
Dive into the mechanics of vocal production—from vocal fold vibration and resonance to acoustic formants and register shifts.
This section demystifies how your voice works using clear, accessible explanations. These are all rooted in science and teaching experience.
Whether you’re exploring vocal registers, or learning how sound is shaped in your body, these articles blend theory and practice to help you sing smarter.
Drawing on years of experience as a professional vocal coach, this hub consolidates key insights, corrections to common misconceptions, and proven techniques for developing the singing voice. Whether you’re just starting out or refining your technique, you’ll find answers and direction grounded in real-world expertise.
Featured Articles
1. My Approach to Vocal Technique – Understand the principles that underpin my vocal training method, designed to help singers find freedom, control, and confidence.
2. Common Myths About Singing – Debunking widespread misunderstandings that hold singers back—like needing to sing from your diaphragm, or the idea of a ‘natural’ voice.
3. Can Anyone Learn to Sing? – A direct, experience-backed answer to one of the most asked—and most misunderstood—questions in vocal coaching.
4. Head Voice vs. Falsetto – Learn the crucial difference between these two registers, why most singers confuse them, and why I don’t like falsetto.
5. What is Mixed Voice? – Explore what it really means to sing in a mixed voice—and why chasing it as a technique might be doing you harm.
6. Why You Lose Your Voice – Vocal fatigue and loss are almost always preventable. This article explores how and why voices fail, and what to do about it.
7. Building Vocal Range the Right Way – A collection of articles on the best approach to extending range without forcing, straining, or falling into compensatory habits.
Why Trust My Advice?
I’ve worked with hundreds of singers across a range of styles—from beginners to professionals—helping them unlock their natural sound and overcome deeply held vocal limitations. My approach is grounded in evidence, clarity, and practicality. There’s no fluff, no mysticism, no false promises. While you can’t learn to sing from just reading and watching YouTube videos, my hope is that these articles give you an insight into what it takes to build and grow a voice.
A while ago I wrote an article on what I love about getting sick. But there is an ENORMOUS drawback about getting sick enough I can’t sing… beyond the obvious not being able to sing.
And that is not being able to sing and work on my voice every day seriously impacts on my mental wellbeing.
When I get to sing everyday, the mental, physical and emotional levelling that occurs is really quite remarkable. There is a pronounced difference in my mood when I can use my voice well vs when I can’t. I am GRUMPY when I cannot sing or work on my voice.
But why should this be?
The answer has actually been revealed in many studies done over the years. So I thought I’d cover a few of these here, some of which are quoted from this article.
Your brain gets into a higher state
I notice how elated and positive I feel before, during and especially after a good session of singing and working on my voice. But is all that just in my head, or is something else going on?
“There is also some research which suggests that singing could have similar effects to cannabis. Endocannabinoids are a newly discovered class of chemical compounds naturally found in the body and which have similar actions to the active component of the cannabis plant.
One study involving a group of women over 50 found that singing in a choir increased levels of endocannabinoids in their blood by a whopping 42%!”
Well, I have never used cannabis nor would I ever suggest that people do it either. Nevertheless, this would explain the strong elational high we get to experience when using our voices both individually and in groups. This is made even more enjoyable when we get to make a sound we ourselves find pleasing.
Boosts your immune system
Even the act of PHYSICALLY feeling good whilst singing is connected to the body’s response to singing…
“One of the most surprising findings of recent research is that singing in a group, for as little as one hour, could boost your immune system. One 2004 study compared the impact of singing with the effects of listening to music. The study found that those who sang produced higher levels of immunoglobulin A. This is an antibody which acts as an important first line of defence for the immune system.”
“Dr Fancourt led several studies looking at singing and the effects on our immune system. They found that just single sessions of singing in a choir can lead to reductions in chronic inflammation.”
Reduces depression and loneliness, even when singing by yourself
Dr Fancourt also found the following: “[that] singing can help people with mental health conditions. In one study involving women with postnatal depression, they found that women participating in singing programmes reduced their symptoms by 40% in just a few weeks.”
“Singing can have a myriad of profound psychological and biological effects. It can help build our self-confidence, reduce loneliness, and impact levels of anxiety. “These all occur alongside things like decreases in blood pressure, decreases in muscle tension, decreases in heart rate, and the activation of reward pathways in the brain,” says Dr Fancourt.
She says it has even led to things like improvements in lung function in people with lung disease, and even improvements in posture.”
This makes so much sense to me. Having experienced severe depression, one of the great regulators of low mood in my day-to-day is enjoyment of singing. Even if I have a day where I do not see anyone other than my wife and daughter, I do not feel in any way lonely or down if I have been able to sing.
So this has been my own personal empirical experience. Yet, to see it backed up in such studies is really quite remarkable.
Conclusion: Sing a little every day
The study and article concludes by pointing out that singing is easy to do, and you can do it almost anywhere you like… depending on how much others hearing you sing bothers you.
The benefits to singing and working on your voice are myriad. Unbelievable chemical signals seem to get triggered by the act of singing, and your brain and body are hugely benefitted by the regular act of singing and building your voice.
So if you’re feeling a bit down, a bit low, or maybe feeling a bit under the weather, get those pipes going. Go and do some singing for even 5 minutes, and see how you feel. I’m willing to bet you’ll feel at least a LITTLE better for having done so.
I was watching this video with Dr Peter Attia and James Clear recently. The video is all about the genetics’ role in helping someone to understand how best to leverage what they have. You can watch it below if your interest is piqued!
If you want to know how your genetics affect your voice, then read on.
The chief point of this video is that we all have inherent advantages and limitations conferred on us by our genetic makeup. Where a lot of people get hung up on limitations, these actually don’t make you ask “why bother to train”, they instead helpfully tell you WHERE to train and HOW to maximise your training.
The key take-away I want you know up front, is that some people are luckier than others when it comes to the voice they are born with. Let’s have a look at why.
Point 1: Your voice isn’t like other instruments
When I refer to “your instrument”, this can be a little bit misleading. Your voice is not a separate dedicated instrument like the guitar/piano. I have made many references to how it operates in a similar way (which is still true), but what it glosses over is that every part of your body used for your voice is primarily used for several other things. Your throat is used for breathing, swallowing, speaking. Your mouth and tongue are used for chewing, eating, breathing, smiling. Your larynx’s primary function is actually not making sound at all, but to stop things going into your lungs when swallowing.
As such, we have to view “our voice” as the interconnection of several other parts of our body, and not just a dedicated standalone instrument. Please do bear that in mind as we talk about “your instrument” in the rest of this article.
Point 2: The construction of the voice
As most of are aware, genetics are the blueprint that determine how your body will be constructed. Epigenetic factors, i.e. how your initial genetics are changed by external influences, won’t be covered, as that’s a much bigger topic. Just like with the physique, athletic ability, height, etc, various factors are heavily determined by your genetics, some of which have a greater influence on your sound than others.
NOTE: I’ve discussed how the voice works in numerous articles (like this one), so if you want to know more about this, please do check that out.
Starting with the larynx, the larynx size and position in the throat (in part determining the length of the vocal tract) affects the timbre and even voice type, e.g. bass vs tenor, alto vs soprano.
The length of the vocal tract, as well as the dimensions of the tract at rest/in use can profoundly affect not just the timbre but the ease of control someone has over their voice. Vocal tract length is like pipes in a pipe organ, the longer the pipe the lower the resonance and pitch of that pipe. The same physical principle extends to the voice.
The vocal folds are made up of several layers of tissue, ligaments, muscles, mucosal lining, etc. The muscle component has it’s own unique level of muscularity. The thicker the folds, the weightier the voice will be. The lighter and less substantial the folds, the lighter the voice will be. Generally speaking shorter and smaller-statured individuals will have lighter voices, while taller and larger-framed individuals will have weightier voices.
There is not always the case though, not least because interplay exists between the physical dimensions of someone’s vocal tract and the vocal folds. If you get someone with a physically light voice, but also with a very long vocal tract, this can result in an instrument with remarkably deep resonance, yet with a very nimble and reactive voice at the core of it. The reverse is also true, as you can get someone with a very muscular and weighty voice but with a shorter vocal tract length. This has a different quality and it’s own challenges, but can often yield similar advantages.
SIDENOTE: The whole point of training a voice is to get the instrument to function as well as it can. As such, well-trained voices tend to have common qualities between them.
The Genetic Lottery
In turn, some people’s instruments are ALREADY predisposed towards operating more correctly than others. Their larynx, vocal folds, vocal tract, tissue make-up is already closer to the “optimised ideal” that others might need to train to accomplish. This is like winning the genetic lottery. This can often give the illusion of a trained voice, because the quality of their instrument overlaps so much with trained voices.
The difficulty comes in that these things tend not to last indefinitely, because the body and voice changes as we age. Furthermore, personalities in the driving seat controlling the voice can also change (or refuse to change!) over time, resulting in degradation of quality. Nevertheless, when some singers are often complemented on their voice with little to no training, they are often enjoying some genetic good-fortune that their instrument a) works well and b) it produces a pleasing sound off the bat.
Point 3: Sex-differences
Men and women have different genetic make-ups. This leads to women generally having higher voices than men, but this is not the only difference between the sexes that matters for our voices.
Testosterone
Testosterone is a chief component in driving puberty changes in the voice. Boys turning into men generally experience a much more dramatic change in their voices than do girls turning into women. The whole instrument breaks apart and reforms thicker and more muscular than before for men, whereas women tend to experience a gradual thickening in their voices. There can often be periods of instability for both voices for some years, though this generally settles down by age 25-30… just in time for other changes to start! Oh, joy!
Testosterone also plays a big part in the thickness in the vocal folds. More testosterone = thicker vocal folds. If you’ve ever listened to bodybuilders who have taken extraordinary numbers of steroids, it’s like hearing a pitch-shifted voice, as their voice has thickened so much due to the steroid use.
Collagen?
One other thing that isn’t often discussed is collagen. Collagen is a protein that helps provide structure to tissue in our bodies. There is collagen inside our vocal fold tissues, and these help to provide a level of structure AND suppleness to the folds whilst singing. It has been found that more collagen tends to result in a more robust voice, less prone to fatigue and damage. The reverse is also true. It has also been found that men tend to have 2-3 times more of a substance called hyaluronic acid in their vocal folds than do women, and this helps provide better structure and robustness to the vocal folds.
Some have hypothesised that this is a reason we often see different distributions of vocal problems between men and women. Women seem to be more prone to (say) over-use injuries such as nodules, where they may not be singing with ridiculous force, but the instrument is less capable of taking the wear and tear. In contrast, men’s instruments tend to be more capable of withstanding greater abuse before finally yielding, hence men tend to be more prone to excessive force based injuries such as granuloma’s.
SIDENOTE: There may be similar collagen related variation between ethnicities. At least within the skin makeup of different ethnicities, it has been found that some groups have more collagen in their skin (e.g. African or Caribbean ancestry), whereas other groups have less (e.g. Caucasian). There also appears to be reduced loss of collagen through aging in the higher-collagen groups. Studies are limited on how this may extend to the voice, but if it does, then such a higher collagen quantity may correspondingly provide benefits to vocal robustness and longevity.
Conclusion: It all matters, but some of us are luckier than others
You can probably work out by now, there’s a LOT of genetic factors at play that determine how your voice functions, and what the resultant sound will be like. We all have things working for our voices, and against our voices. Some awareness of these factors can go a long way to identifying how best to improve your voice, AND the pitfalls to which you are likely to be more prone.
Want to leverage your own body’s physiological strengths?
I often talk about tessitura, and how we can increase range and develop comfort over that range to cultivate a new tessitura. This is possible for both male and female voices, but there are definite differences between the male and female instruments that are worth talking about.
In particular, many women who join choirs, or want to sign in a band/music group, often end up singing as a nominal bass, or believe themselves to be an alto. There are still further women who believe they have no bottom end to their voice and sing in a soprano range, but it is often very thin and wispy.
Let’s talk about the three chief differences between training the male and female instruments, and why this makes such a difference in how it feels to be a male or female singer.
1. The Bottom End
We’ve talked about chest voice extensively. Briefly, it is the lowest register of any voice. In normal healthy voices, it is typically the range that most people speak in. As such, when you imagine a friend’s voice in your head, the quality you are likely hearing is their chest voice.
In our prospectus, I give a very basic overview of what we are trying to achieve with training a voice. The third step can be loosely described as clustering vowels. What follows is a brief preamble to outline this process in the context of voice, to lead you in to a very helpful video on understanding this from a brilliant video producer called Tom Scott.
What does ‘clustering vowels’ involve?
Broadly speaking, what we are trying to do is shade each vowel that we need to sing to be more similar than different. Each vowel still needs to be intelligible as recognisable as itself, but most of the time people sing vowels in a way where each is excessively divergent/different from one another.
This results in overall inefficiency in singing, makes singing more difficult, and also restricts the level of smoothness one can rise to in their singing.
A good example of this you will have experienced, is when one line of a sing seems to be super-smooth, then the next line with the same melody feels really jarring… yet the notes contained within are exactly the same. What gives?
Every singer will have experienced this, and it can seem bewildering, but only if you think that hitting the notes right is all that’s going on there. The vowels – shaped predominantly by the vocal tract – also have a critical impact on the resultant sound.
Seeking efficiency gives control
When people experience this difficulty in a given line of a song, it is a perfect illustration of the inefficiency in how most people form their vowels when they sing.
What we need to do is train the voice (specifically the vocal tract, and a few other bits of physiology) to shape each vowel shares a big amount of overlap in terms of it’s actual physiological and acoustic configuration.
This common overlap is what we end up centering every vowel around, so that all vowels and orbit around that commonality. It’s like creating a centre of gravity for all the vowels.
The greater the amount of overlap/commonality we can create, whilst still keeping each vowel identifiable and distinct, the more efficient we make our instrument. The more efficient it is, the more control and the greater ease we unlock.
Now, this might seem very abstract, but linguists and phoneticists recognise that such a vowel exists – it’s known as the ‘schwa’ vowel.
The Schwa Vowel
I know, I know, the ‘schwa‘ vowel seems like a ridiculous name: nevertheless, that’s what it’s called. And it’s a key concept that underpins what we are trying to do when we are clustering vowels to overlap, more than differ.
With that preamble out of the way, have a watch of this very helpful video from Tom Scott.
He covers what the schwa vowel is, how every vowel (a, e, i, o, u) can be substituted for the schwa vowel, how sometimes sentences can end up being almost exclusively populated by such substitutions, and how in other words the schwa vowel can disappear entirely.
In particular, watch out for the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) chart, where you can see how every vowel orbits around the schwa vowel at the centre.
I regularly have conversations with clients and singers about vocal robustness, i.e. being able to sing for long periods, and for sustained touring schedules.
A lot of people see vocal robustness as something wholly separate to vocal technique. Robustness is somehow “just one of those things“, and technique is something separate, primarily determining range, tone, ability to riff, etc. However, they are not at all separate. Vocal robustness is inherently a by-product of good technique, and here’s why… Continue reading “Vocal Technique and Vocal Robustness”
People looking for help with their voice regularly ask me for vocal tips and tricks so they can try to DIY fix a specific issue or to improve their voice. But here’s the money shot up-front:
Without having worked with someone’s voice, there are no vocal tips or tricks one can give that can guarantee improvement
This is a key reason we can’t learn to sing from a book. There are of course helpful things that can be written down, and when a person is going through the process of training their voice, we can discuss more complex topics verbally/in the written word. But the specific set of technical issues that obstruct one singer are typically completely different from singer to singer. Trying to assess that via the written word or just on the say-so of the singer themselves is tantamount to impossible.
Let me give you some examples of the kinds of emails I get looking for written advice to help their voice:
A: “I can reach high notes easily, but I sing high notes more chorally and I’m not able to belt them like in my chest voice. Are you able to give me any tips as to how I might achieve this?”
B: “My range up high is good but my lower notes tend to get quite wispy and weak. Do you have any tricks I can use to solve this?”
C: “My voice sounds OK down low but when I sing higher it sounds strained and often cracks. Can you tell me some quick fixes on how to solve this?”
These are all generalised variations on genuine requests I’ve received over the years. While I totally understand the desire to ask for suggestions to fix one’s voice, the belief that one’s voice can be unlocked just by some string of magic words on a slip of paper/on a screen, is enormously unhelpful. Let’s explain why, starting with the problem of the diagnosis:
Diagnosis: Is their diagnosis accurate?
In the specific examples above, one appears to struggle with the bottom end of their range, another appears to struggle with the top, and still one more appears to struggle with moving between the top and bottom. Assuming each has given an accurate picture of what their issue is, then I have specific exercises that would make sense.
But, if I give the wrong exercise to a given singer, the results can be further harm to the voice. It can even make the issue worse, if the treatment is dished out without an accurate diagnosis to base it on.
As such, if I’ve never heard each singer, the inevitable problem I have with any self-assessment by a singer is simple: how do I know that what they have told me is correct?
The answer? I can’t be certain in any way, so the appropriate treatment cannot be prescribed.
More diagnosis issues
While each singer professes to have a different set of symptoms, different symptoms often stem from the same functional issue. Likewise, similar symptoms can often stem from totally different issues.
In fact, there are also many situations in which any two or all three of these singers could need EXACTLY the same approach… or they could need something similar, or something completely different.
This involves greater nuance and testing/diagnosis needed to correctly prescribe appropriate exercises to remedy what ails them.
Treatment: How does their voice respond to exercises?
In reality, I would need to be able to hear their voice as it is, and see how it responds to a couple of specific exercises to be able to make an accurate diagnosis. Vocal tips and tricks are too generic and not tailored enough.
How their voice responds to such personalised exercises would not only confirm a diagnosis, it would inform me as to which exercises would be most effective for their specific instrument.
On top of this, they could then be shown how to use the tool/vocal exercise properly to elicit the desired change in their voice. People don’t just require an exercise, they need to be shown how to use the tool properly, so whilst they are practicing they can be sure it is delivering the right result.
Self-treatment: The final issue
Even if I HAVE worked with someone’s voice before, I have no idea how someone will take an instruction when they take it away with them and do it by themselves — with no sense-check or professional feedback, (amplified all the more if the instruction is just a written tip/trick). I learned this the hard way in my first year of teaching.
I once had a student ask me how often they should practice. I naively told them regularly, just don’t go nuts. When they asked what would be too much, I replied “oh, just don’t go crazy, like practicing 6 hours a day”. They called me a week later with an exhausted and wrecked voice. What had happened? They’d gone and practiced for FIVE hours every day.
Needless to say, I’ve become far more precise with my language since that experience. This was not an unintelligent person, but their sense-check for their own practice wasn’t quite in place.
Different people can interpret things very differently. As such, the safest and the most direct route to helping people understand what their voice should/shouldn’t be doing, is to walk their voice through appropriate exercises together. No vocal tips and tricks
Conclusion: Voice training cannot be generalised
My point with all of the above is that voice training MUST be 100% personalised, from assessment through to coaching. Fixing a voice is not a “spot fix”, it’s holistic, and the whole voice must be assessed to identify why even seemingly small issues are presenting themselves.
As such, there really are no definitive or general “tips and tricks” that I can give to singers without having worked with them personally, whether one on one, or in a workshop/clinic. The only definitive advice I can give is for people to come and have an initial consultation/assessment and be given something bespoke for their voice. There really is no substitute for this.
DISCLAIMER: This article is not simply going to be another example of an old man yelling at a cloud.
It’s also not going to be a discussion around me staring into the middle distance and yearning for the “good ol’ days“.
But I will put it bluntly
There is an epidemic of shouting masquerading as singing, at least to my mind and my ear. And today I want to talk about why.
Over the years
To begin with, I’ve lost count of the number of events where every singer was just yelling their guts out. I’ve even seen singers step away from the microphone to show how loudly they can bellow their lyrics—it’s part of their performance piece. I’ve seen performers get gigs for not much more reason than they can belt notes louder than their peers. I’ve even been singing as part of a group, where when someone starts yelling their part, people think that equates to a more emotional performance.
What exactly is causing this? And what are the highest quality singers actually doing that sets them apart from some that might be accused of yelling?
Before we judge such singers too harshly…
… are there reasons behind why many resort to yelling? Are there tripwires that cause some singers to miss out on the path to higher quality?
I’m not for a second looking to justify or exonerate bad singing, but I also want to be clear that the voice has its complications. It would therefore be remiss to not discuss some of the physiological factors at play in this trend.
What do I mean by ‘yelling‘?
When you hear someone shouting across a room to get someone’s attention, or yelling at a football match, or bellowing an order to a subordinate, this is yelling. We all intuitively know the sound, both having heard others yell, and having felt it in our own bodies when we’ve done the same.
NOTE: As a very quick prima facie argument against yelling of any kind as a valid foundation for singing, ask yourself: how long do you feel you can keep up any of the above activities before your voice would give out or hurt? How long could you continuously yell as if at a football match before your voice goes hoarse or you feel pain?
Now ask yourself: if you were trying to vocally perform for hours every night, how sustainable would this approach be? Maybe for the odd 10–20 minute set once a month you could get away with it, but it’s far from an optimal or commendable approach.
I trust you now grasp just how unsustainable it is to approach singing like it was all about forcing one’s way to the top notes.
How does this happen?
When someone yells, what is going on mechanically is best described as a megaphone-type structure. The vocal folds at the laryngeal level generate sound, and the vocal tract is wide-open and relatively disengaged. This creates an effect like someone speaking into the narrow end of the cone of a megaphone.
Think back to the last time you heard someone whose singing could be described as shouty. You may have noticed that such singers are not yelling every note. Instead, this shouty quality tends to creep into people’s voices the higher they wish to sing.
This shouty quality typically progresses fairly rapidly as soon as the singer encounters difficulty with singing higher. The phenomenon is highly vowel dependent. Sometimes it is a binary switch, but generally this quality creeps in gradually.
Why does this happen? Why do singers opt for this approach?
As we sing higher, we need higher and higher subglottal air pressure to sustain the note. This increases the air pressure in the vocal tract.
This higher air pressure also acts upon the vocal tract. For less skilled singers, it is hard to know what to do with this sensation. They feel pressure inside their throat and typically experience a physiological response to want to release it.
There is also the tendency of singers to apply excessive force to reach higher notes, even beyond the necessary increase. To sing higher notes well requires fine motor control of the larynx and vocal folds, independently of air pressure. But singers who do not yet have this control tend to apply extraordinarily excessive air pressure to literally force the larynx to tilt.
To the inexperienced singer, they have two options to alleviate this sensation of pressure:
1) Open the vocal tract (megaphone/yelling) — dumps the extra pressure. This initially produces a loud sound but is unsustainable and inefficient.
2) Drop the volume — reduces air pressure across the system. This typically shifts the sound into a lighter head voice/falsetto quality.
In both cases, the singer diverges from their previous approach and from the vocal quality they had been delivering.
In option 1, the vocals become shouty and bellowed (think Idina Menzel – Frozen). In option 2, the vocals suddenly become light (think Sam Smith – Lay Me Down).
So what is the solution?
As it happens, there is a third option, but it isn’t necessarily obvious.
3) Keep the vowel the same, and keep the volume the same.
Start with the correct vowel and a consistent volume, and learn to stay the course. To the inexperienced singer, this can seem like an impossible knife-edge of control.
This means NO yelling. No going light. No bailing out to options 1 or 2. We aim to keep everything controlled as we move higher—controlled, but without tightness or force. This is the third option.
Sidenote: When I say vowel and volume remain “the same”, I’m being imprecise. Subtle vowel modification is required, but the key point is maintaining congruence so the listener perceives no tonal shift.
Conclusion: There are genuine reasons people yell
The physiological difficulties of singing tend to push people toward option 1 or 2 as the easy way out. It’s like lifting a heavy object with poor form: the body chooses a damaging shortcut.
This third option requires significant co-ordination and practice. The higher we sing, the more air-pressure and vocal fold control must be mastered. The higher and more controlled we wish to be, the more precise the instrument must become.
This is fundamentally a high-level skillset. Few people invest the time; most take the short road, even if it’s a short one.
If after reading this, you feel like you are falling prey to this and would like help resolving these issues in your voice, you can book in to work with me below.
