A prevailing misconception, perpetuated by shows like American Idol, is that only lucky, musically gifted people in this world are able to sing, while others are hopeless causes.
Any experienced singer will tell you that this is not true. Good singing has a physiological basis, and mastering the science of singing is no harder than mastering any other science.
Singing depends on well-trained, well-honed muscle memory. So long as a person has a working set of lungs, from a scientific perspective, he or she can become a good singer in any genre of music.
Aspiring vocalists train physically to be professional singers the way amateur athletes train for the Olympics, but with a focus on the vocal anatomy: the diaphragm, lungs, larynx, pharynx, oral and nasal cavity.
As in sports, the most important part of singing is breathing. To a singer, the phrase, “breathing from the diaphragm” means breathing so that their stomach expands when they inhale, due to the diaphragm muscle (attached to the lower ribs) lowering in instinctive response to the rising air pressure. This allows the singer to take in more air, because it uses a greater portion of the lungs.
Singers are also trained to exhale differently. When air pressure in the lungs drops, the diaphragm naturally flops back up. Because singers need to maximize the amount of air in their lungs while they sing to keep the quality of the sound high, they must acquire the muscular control to keep their diaphragm lowered.
In singing vernacular, “control” is the entire process of exhaling. Singers are always controlling, even while singing difficult material, dancing or acting, or doing all at once.
Singers also learn to naturally amplify the sound that they produce, known as “projection” or “resonating.”
Amplification techniques direct the air to the body’s natural resonators, such as the nasal cavity. When the resonators are vibrating, singers can feel a buzzing sensation in the upper half of their face. Before electronic microphones, this natural amplification was the only way a singer could be heard in a large building.
Classical and operatic singers have perfected this technique over the centuries. Opera singers can perform in the world’s largest theatres without a microphone and still be heard clearly by every member of the audience.
However, none of these techniques can hide a beginner’s “break,” the point that divides the singing voice’s two registers, the chest voice and the head voice.
The chest voice is used to sing lower notes (the depth a singer can reach is a matter of their natural range). These notes are much easier to sing clearly and powerfully because they usually correspond to the normal speaking voice, making this the voice of choice for beginners.
Above the normal speaking range, the head voice (also known as falsetto) is used to sing higher notes.
Moving over the break between the two voices will usually change the tone quality of the sound, or make the singer’s voice crack. It takes years of training to learn to move smoothly from one register to the other without any discernible tone change.
Singers must become adept at these basic elements of singing before moving on to the specific demands of their vocal genre (foreign language diction in classical, the warbling melisma of pop, “scat” singing in jazz, etc.). When it comes to mastering these subtleties, the science of singing blends into art. But the fundamentals are things that the best, or worst musician can learn.
