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Your voice – it must be in your throat somewhere. The stretching and vibrating and pressing in your larynx mean that you can "feel" your voice. And this is where it starts, as tiny vibrations on your vocal cords.
But there is more to a voice than that. There is vibration – or "resonance" – throughout your whole body, in your head, in your chest, everywhere. And it is this resonance that you have to make use of. The vocal cords (correctly called the "vocal folds") are like tiny strings that produce a sound. But this sound needs to be amplified by a resonator – your own body. In other words, you are your own instrument.
Pitch depends on the tenseness of the vocal cords. A higher tension produces a higher note, less tension produces lower notes. The many different fine motor adjustments of the vocal cords cannot be controlled and should rather be left to themselves. The brain is able to subconsciously communicate to the vocal cords how the sequence of notes is to be formed. The notes of a tune are formed automatically as soon as the brain has perfectly identified the target note and commanded the vocal cords to "produce this note".
Intonation is improved not by constantly "readjusting" the notes but by singing as directly and freely as you possibly can without reservation or nervousness. If you are well prepared, have practiced enough and are certain of the words and the tune, your intonation, timing, sound and expression will also be correct whenever they need to be.
The only task that breath has in singing is to maintain the fine vibrations of the vocal folds – similar to the way in which a violin bow causes the string to vibrate. Even a very slight flow of air is enough. You need only a small amount of air to produce your notes, no matter how loud you want them to be. Therefore, you must learn not to use up the available air but to control it. A very special breathing technique is used to achieve this breath control. In this technique, something resembling a column of air is established in the body, and the vibration of the vocal cords is then transferred to it, with the result that your whole body becomes part of the vibration.
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