Discover Your Voice: Chapter 15
Emily Cottam
Chapter Summary: Higher notes are naturally louder, so in singing, high notes don’t need amplification. The Bernoulli Effect states that the movement of air (between the vocal folds) creates a natural suction effect; moving air has less pressure than stationary air. Intensity is also known as volume/loudness, measured in decibels. “When two equal tone sources are added together, the intensity level is only increased by three dBs.” The Venturi Effect states that pressure (in a singer’s case, subglottic pressure) automatically increases when the opening becomes smaller when something is flowing through it. The higher the mass of the resonator, the amount of resonance increases. Frequencies of pitch are altered by the shapes of the containers they pass through. Pitches have fundamental frequencies and overtones (excluding sine waves, or pure tones). Resonance is “the intensification/enriching of a musical tone by supplementary vibration.” The beat phenomenon is when two frequencies are only just slightly different, creating a small “wobble” when sound waves clash.
Key Concepts: Becoming familiar with the physics involved in singing can be beneficial; if the voice isn’t generating sound in a way that’s healthy, you can return to basic science concepts to find the source of the problem. It also helps with understanding what you can do to be a more efficient singer.
Key Terms: frequency/pitch, condensations, rarifactions, noise, “natural” vs. “habitual” levels, Bernoulli Effect, “threshold of pain,” Venturi Effect, sine wave, “beat phenomenon.”
Making Connections: I personally found this chapter fascinating because it made me realize that there are so many things that I could be doing to sing more efficiently--something about knowing exactly what’s going on when you’re singing correctly gives me the idea that I can decide when I use better technique (that was confusing, but it made sense in my head).
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