Monday, May 21, 2007
I Cross My 'Bridge'!
Our vocal cords is made up of two long piece of muscles that vibrates when we sing. In order to sing a higher note, most people will switch to 'falseto' aka false voice. The middle portion of the vocal cords is tensed up, causing the only the top part of the vocal cords to vibrate at a high frequency. As a result, a 'bridge' is created in the vocal cords, causing the muscle where the bridge is to tense up everytime a high note is sang. The bad news is due to muscle memory, your brain will automatically tense up when you are singing a high note, where the bridge is. This means that you are restricted access to the high notes except through falseto, which cause your voice to be weak, airy and sometimes hard to control. For the last four months, I have tried not to use falseto. Instead I blow more air through the vocal cords as I sing high notes. Although this has caused my high notes to be weak, it relaxes my vocal cords and slowly allow the muscles near the bridge to 'forget' about tensing up when I sing the high notes. The next thing I did is to strengthen my vocal cords to support the high note as the muscles controlling the high notes has not been used for a very long time. It is so weak that it sounds as though I am born yesterday! I continue this exercise, constantly reminding myself to support the notes using my diaphram and control my vocal cords, until a miracle happened!
Posted by Benjamin at 4:34 PM