A Little Anatomy
1. - The goal is to create a mental image of the bones of the head from which the larynx is suspended, and the bones of the torso to which the larynx is anchored, and this with our skeleton in singing stance and with mouth open for an [a] vowel. That’s as simple as we can say it and if accomplished, understanding the workings of the laryngeal mechanism is possible. We then attach the muscles that stem from these bone, the external laryngeal muscles (ELM) (commonly referred to as strap muscles), and where they attach to the laryngeal mechanism (voice box) is how they communicate with each other and operate the vocal cords, that is, the internal laryngeal muscles (ILM), to include the muscles concerned with pitch and dynamic level. There are other externals, but the strap muscles are the prime movers. They incite every vocal muscle to action. We have no conscious control over the internal laryngeal muscles (ILM). We can have conscious control over the external laryngeal muscles (ELM) that operate the vocal cords (ILM), once we see the effects vowels have on the ELM.
2. - The externals that suspend the larynx from above are the supra hyoids (commonly referred to as the elevators), because they originate above the hyoid bone--the top of the voice box. There is four pair. The externals that anchor the larynx to the torso are the infra hyoids (commonly referred to as the depressors), because they originate below the hyoid bone. There are three pair. (The hyoid bone is the only bone in the body that has no connection to another bone. It floats.) But the over-all term, external laryngeal muscles, refers to a coupled system: elevators and depressors joined together, coupled, as they are, at the voice box. Movement in one system has an equal and opposite response in the other system. The elevators and depressors work together, in conjunction with each other, but to “see” how, one must envision a tarantula doing pushups on a mirror. That’s it! That is, one half of this coupled system initiates the work for the other half, as you shall see. (Elevators and depressors are misnomers. Elevators and depressors only pull.)
3. - When swallowing, the elevators pull the voice box and tongue up to help keep matter from going down the wrong pipe. The depressors easily oblige. The point is the elevators initiate the act, the pull for the physical work of swallowing—a stimulus response, and the depressors have nothing to do with it, but oblige. That is, their response is not diametrically apposed to the pull of the elevators, as the spider’s reflection is to its pushup. But for the physical act of singing it’s forever the opposite; here the elevators and depressors are forever agonistic—the spider doing pushups on a mirror. But the elevators initiate nothing; they are the reflection. The depressors initiate everything and there is the tarantula. The elevators work and work hard resisting the full pull required of depressors to set a top pitch ringing, but that’s their job.
4. - When we open our mouth to yawn, the elevators dome the pharynx, but is that an autonomic response to that involuntary stimulus of a yawn, or is the pharyngeal doming an autonomic response to the lowering of the larynx for the breath?—which breath is an autonomic response required by that stimulus. To understand voice, we need to understand the relationship between the elevators and depressors. Keep in mind that they are connected to each other through their attachments to the voice box. I have not read everything on vocal pedagogy or vocal anatomy, but no where in the major works on the subject has this action, this relationship between the supra-hyoids and the infra-hyoids been accurately defined.
5. - One could apply the yin and yang of Eastern philosophy to the External Laryngeal Muscles: the depressors, yang (male); the elevators, yin (female); the male does the work; the female responds equally. But I prefer what I found on Wikipedia that explains the play between depressors and elevators. Agonist, a muscle (excerpted here):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agonist_(muscle)
The brackets ([]) are mine.
6. - “Agonist is a classification used to describe a muscle that causes specific
movement or possibly several movements to occur through the process of its own contraction. This is typically a term designated for skeletal muscles. Agonists are also referred to, interchangeably, as "prime movers" since they are the muscles being considered that are primarily responsible for generating a specific movement [as in reflective elevators]. For an agonist to be effective as a mover in the skeletal system it must actually cross one or more structure(s) that can move. This is typically where the muscle crosses a joint [voice box] by a connecting tendon.”
7. - The above definition is what we attempt to demonstrate in the video: how the depressors, the prime movers, move the elevators through their attachment to the voice box. And then how the vowels move the depressors that move the elevators and what vowel moves what depressor. I culled the initial info from the prodigious work of two men: Richard Miller and William Vennard, but it was Barbara M. Doscher’s attention to detail that gave helpful insights into understanding vocal physiology. But before we hang the voice box, let us understand muscle.
The Nature of Muscle: What’s in a name?
8. - A rose may do what it does by any other name; not so a muscle. Its name tells exactly what it does. One end of a muscle is rooted in and stems from a place (bone); that place has a name and becomes the first half of the muscle’s name to identify its root. The other end is attached to a place (cartilage or bone); that place has a name and becomes the second half of the muscle’s name to indicate point of attachment. For example: The stylo-hyoid muscle tells us it stems from the styloid process (a bone protruding from the base of the skull in back) and attaches to or inserts into the hyoid bone.
9. - The big news revealed in the name is the direction in which the muscle works—and work for a muscle is pull—because all muscles work or pull in the direction of their root. (That piece of info was instrumental to understanding the voice and how it works.) Thus, the stylo-hyoid muscle is rooted in the styloid process, attaches to the hyoid bone, and when it works it pulls the hyoid bone back and up, in the direction of its root: the styloid process. And the hyoid bone is a laryngeal fixture; that is, the voice box goes back and up with it, as we know when the stylo-hyoid is engaged for swallowing. When it comes to singing, what makes the stylo-hyoid work, or go back and up?
10. - But why does a muscle work or pull in the first place? We contend a muscle has no purpose of its own, and has no idea as to why it does what it does; just as its response to autonomic stimuli is not its own. (Muscle does, however, have a memory.) Muscles pull when they are pulled, as in pull back, because they don’t like being pulled. It’s that simple and a concept we need to explore.
11. - The root for a muscle is home, the base of operation, and muscles behave much as we do; they like to hang around the house. In fact, muscles are so intent on hanging around the house, relaxing, as it were, whenever they are pulled away they resist; they don’t like it and fight it, and accomplish their work by pulling for or returning home. Of course, whatever they are attach to goes with them. In their nature to relax, they work, and that needs to be understood to understand, physiologically speaking, how the voice works.
12. - To repeat: When the depressors go home taking the larynx with it, as in a yawn, the elevators are pulled, stretched, and they respond with a vengeance: they pull back, in degree, and in doing dome the pharynx. (This is a wonderful tug-o-war.) So when a yawn sneaks up on you, and they always do, the engagement of the depressors to open the throat (lower the larynx) for a full breath is autonomic. The elevators that dome the pharynx, the evidence will suggest, is not autonomic to the yawn stimulus, but to the pull of the depressors. This we intend to make clear in stringing up the larynx and in the vocal demonstration.
13. - The strap muscles are all rooted in bone, or processes (processes referring to bone, but protruding from the skull). All elevators are rooted in processes; all depressors are rooted in bone. These bones and processes that anchor the strap muscles are all we need to identify to explain how the voice works. But, as stated, we explicate how the voice works to anchor the singing stance to your psyche and to initiate Lesson One: The Singing Stance.
14. - The words that accompany the following Diagrams relate to the diagrams, independent of my referrals to them. That is, they are words to flesh out the Diagram, so there is repetition, but the repetition won’t hurt; in deed, the repetition will further serve our discussion and the vocal demonstrations.
15. - I suggest you go through the Diagrams at least once to help make sense of the vocal demonstrations. Afterward you may want to return to the diagrams to help clarify the demonstrations. Those who are as familiar with this material as I am, in deed, anatomists may chide me for my plebeian terminology hookin' up them thar muscle. This is not about anatomy;that one can get any where. This is about how the voice works.
Diagram 1
The red digastric muscle in Diagram 1 is the only strap muscle that has two roots; (1) on the inside of the mastoid process and (2) the tip of the jaw and it’s easy to see why. It connects to the hyoid bone by threading a fibrous loop (digastric tendon) attached there and pulls the voice box up for swallowing. It needs two roots to do that work. Note the muscle that comes down from the hyoid bone at that point and swings back behind the big neck muscle, the sterno-mastoid m, and ends at the shoulder blade (see Dia. 2): the omo-hyoid muscle. Behind the sterno-mastoid muscle is another fibrous loop; this one stemming from and rooted in the clavicle, through which the omo-hyoid passes. It is the central tendon of this muscle that maintains the angular form of this muscle. Note this muscle pulls the hyoid bone down by pulling back toward the shoulder blade as soon as the mouth is opened with the head up.
Diagram 2: Two processes, Styloid and Mastoid, suspend the larynx.
Even with all the daunting foreign words with arrows pointing to daunting foreign-word muscles (to learn) removed, Diagram 2 intimidates. With the help of your imagination, we will remove all muscle except the external laryngeal muscles, and show where they attach to the center piece of this muscular web, the laryngeal mechanism proper, and through it work as one organism. Note the mastoid process with the sterno-mastoid m removed exposing the omo-hyoid m with its root at the tip of the shoulder blade (scapula), and where it would thread the tendon if it were present. Also note the styloid process from which three muscles and two ligaments stem. The jaw is shut for the subjects in Diagram 1 and 2. Thus, the depressors are or should be stretched.
Even with all the daunting foreign words with arrows pointing to daunting foreign-word muscles (to learn) removed, Diagram 2 intimidates. With the help of your imagination, we will remove all muscle except the external laryngeal muscles, and show where they attach to the center piece of this muscular web, the laryngeal mechanism proper, and through it work as one organism. Note the mastoid process with the sterno-mastoid m removed exposing the omo-hyoid m with its root at the tip of the shoulder blade (scapula), and where it would thread the tendon if it were present. Also note the styloid process from which three muscles and two ligaments stem. The jaw is shut for the subjects in Diagram 1 and 2. Thus, the depressors are or should be stretched.
Diagram 3: The Laryngeal Mechanism
To the uninitiated, the laryngeal mechanism in Diagram 3 looks as a chicken plucked, but behind its protective cover, the thyroid cartilage, rests the most beautiful instrument in all creation. Every thought, desire, and intention moving blood, sinew, and muscle converge and react here. The communicator of that energy, the pipe-line, is the external laryngeal muscles, which we shall see are operated and moved by voice; specifically, vowel.
We begin with the thyroid cartilage: It is more that a shield for the internal laryngeal muscles; the vocal cords are rooted there, on the inside, just below the thyroid notch or Adam’s apple. They attach in back, stretched over the trachea (wind pipe), to the arytenoid cartilage—which open and close the thyroarytenoid (vocalis) muscle for breath and come together for phonation. That is all we need to know about the internal or intrinsic laryngeal muscles for now.
All fourteen external laryngeal muscles—four pair from above and three pair from below—attach to diagram 3; just where tells us much about the workings of voice.
(Actually, only two pair from above attach to the voice box proper: the digastric m and the stylo-hyoid m. The other two pair attach to the tongue [stylo-glossus m] and pharynx [stylo-pharyngeal m]).
Along with the two elevators that attach to the hyoid bone, you’ll also find the tongue is rooted there, along with the middle constrictor muscle and two pair of depressor m attach there: the sterno-hyoid m and the omo-hyoid m. Needless to say, it’s a busy place.
Another hub of activity is located at the oblique ridge. Here one pair of depressors attaches the sterno-thyroid m, but it also serves as root to the lower constrictor m. The thyro-hyoid m is rooted there also (see Dia. 12), but we pay it no mind, for this external, as with all externals not mentioned, is not a prime mover. If all the strap muscles were removed from the voice box, all that keeps the thyroid cartilage there is its attachment to the wind pipe, the top rung, the cricoid cartilage. On the underside of the inferior cornu is a joint, the crico-thyroid joint. The name tells us the thyroid cartilage is attached to the cricoid cartilage. All the potential play in the thyroid cartilage is possible because of this singular attachment to the crico-cartilage. This joint is the hinge through which the depressors communicate with the elevators. More about that later:
Continued p. 5
To the uninitiated, the laryngeal mechanism in Diagram 3 looks as a chicken plucked, but behind its protective cover, the thyroid cartilage, rests the most beautiful instrument in all creation. Every thought, desire, and intention moving blood, sinew, and muscle converge and react here. The communicator of that energy, the pipe-line, is the external laryngeal muscles, which we shall see are operated and moved by voice; specifically, vowel.
We begin with the thyroid cartilage: It is more that a shield for the internal laryngeal muscles; the vocal cords are rooted there, on the inside, just below the thyroid notch or Adam’s apple. They attach in back, stretched over the trachea (wind pipe), to the arytenoid cartilage—which open and close the thyroarytenoid (vocalis) muscle for breath and come together for phonation. That is all we need to know about the internal or intrinsic laryngeal muscles for now.
All fourteen external laryngeal muscles—four pair from above and three pair from below—attach to diagram 3; just where tells us much about the workings of voice.
(Actually, only two pair from above attach to the voice box proper: the digastric m and the stylo-hyoid m. The other two pair attach to the tongue [stylo-glossus m] and pharynx [stylo-pharyngeal m]).
Along with the two elevators that attach to the hyoid bone, you’ll also find the tongue is rooted there, along with the middle constrictor muscle and two pair of depressor m attach there: the sterno-hyoid m and the omo-hyoid m. Needless to say, it’s a busy place.
Another hub of activity is located at the oblique ridge. Here one pair of depressors attaches the sterno-thyroid m, but it also serves as root to the lower constrictor m. The thyro-hyoid m is rooted there also (see Dia. 12), but we pay it no mind, for this external, as with all externals not mentioned, is not a prime mover. If all the strap muscles were removed from the voice box, all that keeps the thyroid cartilage there is its attachment to the wind pipe, the top rung, the cricoid cartilage. On the underside of the inferior cornu is a joint, the crico-thyroid joint. The name tells us the thyroid cartilage is attached to the cricoid cartilage. All the potential play in the thyroid cartilage is possible because of this singular attachment to the crico-cartilage. This joint is the hinge through which the depressors communicate with the elevators. More about that later:
Continued p. 5