Ep 10 Live Q&A – April 24, 2019 Question 1 – How do you control a vibrato that is too fast?

Mike Elson:
Question number one is, I would love to know how to control a vibrato that’s too fast. No one has been able to help me with this. This question comes in … Oh my gosh, I’ll answer that in a second. I have to figure out where I put that. That’s a good question if I can find it.

Matt Edwards:
Good. This one’s tricky, because we still don’t have a 100% definitive answer of what causes vibrato. Basically, every one of the theories requires freedom and airflow, so we can assume that those are two things that can often get in the way of someone having a more even vibrato. In classical singing, they consider the standard vibrato to be about four to seven cycles per second. Then it’s a wave above and below the pitch. That varies. You can’t say it’s a fixed hertz, because as you go up the scale, pitches get further and further apart. So the number on the low end might be small of how much it’s actually varied, and then on the upper end, the actual number of hertz differs.

Matt Edwards:
But it’s usually … We’re trying to not to get more than a quarter step, beyond a quarter step of [inaudible 00:02:36] vibrato. I brought a model larynx today.

Mike Elson:
One question on that. Some of this is going to sound pretty basic, but vibrato is an Italian term. Then, what it is … A user, a listener … Sorry, not a user … A listener, when they’re hearing someone sing, a singer, and they commonly hear … Opera, or even some flavors of musical theater, might have a little more classical sound that they’re making. So they’ll equate a vibrato usually to, oh, that’s opera. But you can still have vibrato in other styles. Maybe you can touch on that a little bit, and just explain a little bit about the [crosstalk 00:03:23].

Matt Edwards:
Vibrato, there’s actually, if you go back into the history of classical singing, there was a time when a lot of the writing seems to suggest that vibrato is bad. So there’s also debate whether or not it really was always a classical trait. There’s an article I read once that said that they think that vibrato became acceptable when people started singing in bigger opera houses. Got to remember, if you’re not an opera singer, opera singers don’t have microphones.

Matt Edwards:
Now, recent research has shown that when you add vibrato, your voice gets louder. So that theory of people started using more vibrato when the opera house got bigger and they needed to sing louder is now backed up to some extent by research that shows that the volume of your voice gets a six-decibel boost as soon as you add vibrato.

Matt Edwards:

It has lots of things that it does for singers. It is, like you said, mainly associated with operatic singing styles, but it’s existent in basically every genre you can think of. Pop rock, a person to go listen to is Rufus Wainwright. He’s got a rather quick vibrato, but it’s pretty darn consistent throughout his singing. If you listen to Broadway cast recordings, you’ll hear a lot of vibrato usage there as well. People tend to straight tone and then allow their voice to go to vibrato.

Matt Edwards:
I can hear vibrato in Adele’s voice, it’s there. If you go back into some of the ’80s and listen to some of the big epic rock ballads, there’s a lot of vibrato in those as well. What happened in the late ’90s, early 2000s is a program called Auto-Tune came onto the market, and most people associate Auto-Tune with just getting the pitch dead center and correcting pitch issues, but Auto-Tune also allows you to go in and highlight a note that has vibrato, and then turn a knob and reduce the vibrato to nothing. I’ve found plenty of articles, I found an article talking about doing it on one of Paul McCartney’s recordings, where they went in and removed vibrato [inaudible 00:05:17] and so on.

Mike Elson:
Wow.

Matt Edwards:
So I think that’s one of the things that young people can be confused by, is they assume that everyone has no vibrato, but in a lot of cases, they do. It’s just Auto-Tuned away.

Mike Elson:
Got it, okay.

Matt Edwards:
So one of the things that will often cause that overly fast vibrato will be these little guys in the back. This is what your larynx looks like if we were looking-

Mike Elson:
Cool, I love the model, man. That’s great.

Matt Edwards:
Yeah. This is the epiglottis, so it would be sitting like this on my neck. I’m going to tilt it forward. We’ll go through this real we know. When it’s sitting here, this is the Adam’s apple or Eve’s apple. You can feel it right about there. If you go up from the Adam’s apple or Eve’s apple, it’s this guy. This is the hyoid bone, and it’s what connects your tongue to your larynx. Then down here, we have the cricoid cartilage, which is the tilting point that allows us to change pitch. Then we have the trachea.

Matt Edwards:
Yeah, you got one in sticks, we can see yours clear.

Mike Elson:
I’m trying to show you.

Matt Edwards:
Yeah, oh, there we go. Nice. All right. Inside that larynx, we have vocal folds. The vocal folds start right behind that Adam’s apple, right down at that point, and then they come up to the back towards these guys, called arytenoids. The arytenoids, when we inhale, they open up. So all of a sudden, the air can come in-

Mike Elson:
You got a little muted. Did you put that on your-

Matt Edwards:
Yeah, I put it on.

Mike Elson:
[crosstalk 00:06:40], say that again.

Matt Edwards:
All right. When we breathe in, the arytenoids open up and allow the vocal folds to part. Then when we go to sing, they come back together to close.

Mike Elson:
Oh, that is so cool.

Matt Edwards:
So it opens, it closes.

Mike Elson:
Yeah. I can feel that. Open and close, yeah.

Matt Edwards:
Yeah. So you have two muscles that really control that, and there’s one muscle on the side and one muscle in between. On video stroboscopes of people who have a very fast vibrato, a lot of times you’ll see those little arytenoids jumping, and they’re just bouncing along the way, whereas in more trained singers, you’ll see that the arytenoids are held more firmly together, but the singer still has vibrato.

Matt Edwards:
So one of the ways that you can test if it’s that is trying to just sing straight tone. If you find that singing straight tone, and you can just go, ah, straight as humanly possible … is going to … What should I call it? It’s going to help bring those arytenoids together, and the lateral [inaudible 00:07:44] arytenoids. Sorry, I was glancing at the comment … to bring them together and help firm up that closure, which a lot of times is going to remove some of that vibrato. The idea then is that you try to sing sustained pitches in that straight tone place, get that comfortable, and then slowly start to exhale more and see if you can get that vibrato to return, but without going crazy on you.

Matt Edwards:
A lot of times, one of the other factors that cause those arytenoids to bounce is too much breath pressure, and I think that’s one of the things they mentioned in their comment, is they feel like they’re using the right breath support. Well, the right breath support varies, as we’ve talked about on this show. It could be that if you’re contracting your abs, you’re actually sending too much pressure at those arytenoids, which is making them bounce. So I would try taking away some of the breath in your lungs, maybe take it down by 50%, so you would breathe in and then exhale … Then after you exhale, you would sing, ah, and keep it as straight as possible. If that’s working, then begin there and just exercise in sustained pitches and start training your body to sing without the extra vibrato.

Matt Edwards:
Sometimes what we’ll see happen-

Mike Elson:
So what I’m hearing there, you’re saying, is take a deep breath, exhale, and then sing and sustain, see if that helps to fix it, because what you’re saying is there’s a flutter in the arytenoids, and I think [inaudible 00:09:10] comment that just said, so I’m going to go off the screen, just because that’s such a great … The larynx model that you have there, just show us again a little bit higher so everyone can see. All right, that’s awesome.

Matt Edwards:
Right. I’ll back up a little bit if I’m on the full screen. This is the thyroid cartilage. This right here is the Adam’s apple or the Eve’s apple, and this is the front connection of the vocal folds. They’re on the inside. This down here is what we call the cricoid cartilage, and the thyroid cartilage rocks on it, so the thyroid cartilage pulls forward. When that pulls forward, it changes the length of the vocal folds inside, which is how we get higher pitches.

Mike Elson:
Wow.

Matt Edwards:
Then if we tilt this guy back up, the above bone up here is called the hyoid bone, and this is where the tongue attaches. So the larynx is suspended from the tongue, and right behind where the tongue connects is a thing called the epiglottis, and this is the thing that has to fold over your vocal folds to make sure that your food or drink goes into your esophagus, and not your lungs.

Matt Edwards:
What we were talking about is when the vocal folds are here, if these arytenoids are trembling a little bit, you’ll get a little bit of a shake, them going ah, and you’ll sometimes hear that tremolo vibrato coming from them. One of the ways you can see if that’s part of your issue is to take that smaller breath. So as I mentioned, taking a full breath, breathe out 50% of it. Then on your 50% of breath, you’re going to try to just sing straight tone and holding everything firmly together. Ah. Now, firmly does not maybe press. Pressing would be going, ah. You don’t want to be pushing as hard as you can. In a comfortable way, try to maintain that straight tone with what’s there.

Matt Edwards:
If that works, then that’s a good indication that you’re overblowing. You have too much air flowing up through the vocal folds, they can’t handle it, it’s just making those arytenoids bounce. You’ve got to remember, under the age of 18, in most women, those arytenoids are too weak to resist a lot of airflows. So if you’re a younger singer and you’re contracting your abs and blowing air up at the vocal folds, you may find that you really struggle to sing straight. Reduce the air, see if it helps. Once you can master that, you can go back up.

Matt Edwards:
One of the other things I tend to see that causes issues with vibrato is action in the tongue. Something in the tongue is putting a downward force on the larynx, and while it’s putting a downward force on the larynx, air pressure is coming up beneath the larynx. So we have the tongue pushing down and air pushing up, and all of a sudden, things start to shake. You can feel that if you just put your hands and fists in front of you like this and push them together. Push them together and you’ll feel that they tremble four to seven times a second, same rate that we usually see with vibrato. That tends to end up getting to be a pressurized vibrato that’s not so healthy.

Matt Edwards:
In that instance, you’re going to want to work on tongue release exercises, trying to get your tongue not to retract and push down, so that way your larynx can be freely suspended, and airflow [inaudible 00:12:12]. All right?

Matt Edwards:
Then, with airflow in general, it’s trying to make sure that when that vibrato comes in, you’re not holding your breath, but rather allowing the air to release the flow because if you’re holding that breath back, you’re going to again cause unneeded pressure that then starts to cause you vibrato issues. You may not see the arytenoids bouncing, but it’s still too much pressure and the vocal folds are starting to vibrate erratically, and that might be the kind of vibrato that you see.

Mike Elson:
Awesome. Thanks, Matt, for answering that, and for the sneak attack with your surprise model that you have. I’m so curious, where did you get that? Did you buy that somewhere, did you make that in your garage? I’m just curious.

Matt Edwards:
No, it’s a medical model. You can buy them online. We have this one I use for the CCM Summer Institute, and they cost $300-700. So get on eBay, sometimes you can find someone selling a used [laryngi 00:13:12]. Otherwise, there are medical supply places [inaudible 00:13:17] as well.

Mike Elson:
Got it. Well, we’ll go to the next question. That one was for Katyan. Katyan, hopefully, that was helpful. If those two possible solutions that Matt just shared with you don’t happen to help you with your fast vibrato issue, write us back in again, and we’ll continue to help to diagnose it. It would also be helpful … Send me a sample of you singing.

Matt Edwards:
That’s what I was going to say, I want to hear it.

Mike Elson:
So we can hear it, and then we’ll use our ears to go, oh, that sounds like this. Here are a couple other things you could try. So, okay, moving-

Matt Edwards:
[crosstalk 00:13:50] say on this too, just for … Unless you’re a classical singer, don’t obsess about your vibrato. Yes, sometimes it’s too much and we can fix it, but I also think that vibrato is one of those voice teacher things that gets thrown out, and everyone thinks they’ve got to master their vibratos, as Randy would say on American Idol, and they’re so worried about the vibratos, where the reality is that if you get the registration balance … which, if you’re not familiar with that, go listen back to last week’s broadcast. We talked a ton about registration. You need to get that registration balance. That’s a huge part of this as well. Then if the registration is balanced, the rest of the mechanism should free up. If all that frees up, your vibrato should come into its own.

Matt Edwards:
Many times, if you try to start attracting the vibrato without having even registration, you’re going to end up causing friction to hold it tight, instead of getting the mechanism set up in a better place.

Mike Elson:
Yeah, absolutely. Registration first, another plug. I absolutely, totally agree.