Voice

Voice care consists of voice conservation and vocal tract hygiene. Voice conservation is achieved by speaking in a gentle voice with minimal effort. Vocal tract hygiene aims to reduce the intake of anything that might irritate the larynx (such as smoking, drinking alcohol and coffee) and to increase behaviors that promote a healthy larynx (such as drinking plenty of water and taking steam inhalations). Voice care is sometimes generally referred to as vocal hygiene. This article lists positive things to do and things to avoid doing in order to promote and maintain a healthy voice.

Voice care for children, voice improvement and preventing voice disorders requires adults to encourage three things: keeping the voice box (larynx) healthy, reducing vocal strain, and helping the child to monitor their voice production. This article lists positive things to do to improve voice in children and things to avoid doing in order to encourage better use of voice in children.

Development of the voice As with language development and speech development, development of the voice also follows a fairly predictable pattern. First cries There is a remarkable similarity in the quality of babies’ first cries. The pitch is about the note…

Voice disorders are classified as organic, psychogenic or functional. Structural, psychological or physiological impairments affect acoustic features of the voice. Affected features include: pitch, loudness, resonance, quality and flexibility. These impairments lead to aphonia or dysphonia. This article provides examples of common voice disorders.

What is voice? In simple terms, the sound produced in the larynx by the vibration of the vocal folds (vocal cords) is the voice. Certain speech sounds are voiced by this vibration. When the vocal folds are apart they are said to be…

Integrating vocal behaviors We have seen elsewhere (see Effective Voice Projection) that the key to projecting our voice with sufficient loudness, and without exertion, is to integrate a handful of vocal behaviors, i.e. diaphragmatic breathing easy onset relaxation of the head, neck…