The Speech Organs : Part 1

A Handbook of Health
by Woods Hutchinson

(Page 25 of 29)

The Voice, a Waste Product. It is one of the most curious things in this body of ours that what we regard as its most wonderful power and gift, the voice, is, in one sense, a waste product. So ingenious is nature that she has actually made that marvelous musical instrument - the human voice - with its range, its flexibility, and its powers of expression, out of spent breath, or used-up air, which has done its work in the lungs and is being driven off to get rid of it. It is like using the waste from a kitchen sink to turn a mill.

The organs that make the human voice were never built for that purpose in the first place. Unlike the eye and the ear, nature built no special organ for the voice alone, but simply utilized the windpipe and lung-bellows, the swallowing parts of the food passage (tongue, lips, and palate) and the nose, for that purpose, long after they had taken their own particular shapes for their own special ends.

The important point about this is that a good voice requires not merely a large and well-developed "music box" in the windpipe, but good lungs, a well-shaped healthy throat, properly arched jaws, - which mean good, sound teeth, - clear and healthy nasal passages, and a flexible elastic tongue. Of course, the blood and the nerves supplying all these structures must be in good condition, as well. So practically, a good voice requires that the whole body should be healthy; and whatever we do to improve the condition of our nose, our teeth, our throat, our lungs, our digestion, and our circulation will help to improve the possibilities of our voice. There are, of course, many exceptions; but you will generally find that great singers have not only splendid lungs and large vocal cords, but good hearts, vigorous constitutions, and bodies above the average in both stature and strength.

How the Voice is Produced. The chief parts of the breathing machine that nature has made over for talking purposes are the windpipe, or air tube, and the muscles in its walls. In the neck, about three inches above the collar bone, four or five of the rings of cartilage, or gristle, - which, you remember, give stiffening to the windpipe, - have grown together and enlarged to form a voice box, or larynx.

The upper edge of this voice box forms the projection in the front of the throat known by the rather absurd name of the "Adam's apple." This grows larger in proportion to the heaviness of the sounds to be made, and hence is larger in men than in women and boys. When the boy's voice box begins to grow to the man's in shape and size, his voice is likely to "break"; for it is changing from the high, clear boy's voice to the heavy, deep voice of the man.

Inside of this voice box, one of the rings of muscle that run around the windpipe has stretched into a pair of straight, elastic bands, or strings, one on each side of the air pipe, known as the vocal cords, or voice bands. These are so arranged that they can be stretched and relaxed by little muscles; and, when thrown into vibration by the air rushing through the voice box, they produce the sounds that we call talking or singing. The more tightly they are stretched, the higher and shriller are the tones they produce; and the more they are slackened, or relaxed, the deeper and more rumbling are the tones.

This is why, when you try to sing a high note, you can feel something tightening and straining in your throat, until finally you can stretch it no tighter, and your voice "breaks," as you say, into a scream or cry.

All musical instruments that have strings, are played, or produce their sounds, upon this same principle. The thinner and shorter the string, or the more tightly it is stretched, the higher the note; the heavier and longer the string, the lower the note. But no musical instrument ever yet invented can equal the human voice in the music of its tones, in its range, in the different variety and quality of tones it can produce, and in its wonderful power of expression. The human voice is a combination of reed organ, pipe organ, trumpet, and violin; and can produce in its tiny music box - only about two inches long by one inch wide - all the tones and qualities of tones that can be produced on all these instruments, except that it cannot go quite so high or so low.

All the musical instruments in the world, from the penny whistle to the grand piano, are but poor imitations of the human music box. The bellows, of course, of the human pipe organ are the lungs; while the tongue furnishes the stops; and the throat, mouth, and nose, the resonance, or sounding, chambers.

Just as a violin, or guitar, has two main parts, - a string, which vibrates and makes the sound; and a box, or hollow body, which catches that sound and enlarges it and gives it sweetness and vibration and quality, - so the human voice has two similar parts - the vocal bands, which make the sound; and a sound box, or rather series of three resonance boxes, - the throat, the mouth, and the nasal passages, - which enlarge and soften it and improve its quality.

Houghton Mifflin Company
Copyright, 1911, By Woods Hutchinson
All Rights Reserved
Tenth Impression

About the Author

Woods Hutchinson (1862-1930) was an American physician, born at Selby, Yorkshire, England. He graduated from Penn College, Oskaloosa, Iowa, in 1880 and received his medical degree from the University of Michigan four years later. He worked as a professor of anatomy at the State University of Iowa and then became a professor of comparative pathology at the University of Buffalo.