One of my go-to reminders for singers is: Your Voice ≠ Your Worth.
Learning to use your voice, this wonderfully complex and (can I say?) strange instrument, works best when you can separate your sense of self from the sounds you make. When we loosen that connection, it becomes easier to get curious, experiment, make mistakes, and grow a deeper understanding of how our voices actually work.
Most of us don’t have a clear mental picture of what’s happening inside our throats when we sing, so I’ve gathered a few videos I often share with students. These clips highlight just how intricate (and fascinating!) our vocal anatomy really is, and if you’ve never seen what’s going on when you speak or sing, they might just blow your mind a little.
1. “Let’s Learn about Voices with Vocal-tract Models”
This short video is a great introduction to how the voice actually works. It’s bizarre (and kind of delightful) to hear human vowels coming out of plastic molds—but also strangely humbling. The pacing’s a little clunky, but the information is excellent and really helps build a visual sense of how we create and shape sound.
2. “The Vocal Tract - Vocal Resonance”
This was the video that introduced me to vocal tract model synthesis, and it totally blew my mind! The pacing is a little slow, but it’s full of “image worth a thousand words” moments. Highlights for me include:
(1) seeing a singer inside an MRI (around 4:06), and
(2) the vocal tract model synthesis demo (around 5:16).
3. BONUS: “Resonance Tuning in Singing (Formant Tuning)”
⚠️ Warning: this video is dense! I debated whether or not to include it, because I don’t want to give the impression that understanding the voice is unattainable or overly scientific. But I decided to share it anyway because the demonstration from 1:38–3:10 is just too good not to share.
In that section, the professor demonstrates how the shape and flexibility of the vocal tract affect resonance by using both rigid and flexible tubes. It’s a striking visual for how our own vocal tract can create such a wide palette of tones and timbres simply by changing shape as we move the tongue, lips, and jaw.
The buzzing device he uses around 2:40 is called an electrolarynx. It’s a handheld tool that produces sound vibrations for people who’ve had their voice box (larynx) removed. When it’s held against the neck or cheek, those vibrations travel through the tissues into the mouth, where the person shapes their vocal tract—using the tongue, lips, and jaw—to form words. It’s a fascinating reminder that speech isn’t just about the vocal folds, but about how the entire vocal tract works together to shape sound.
The rest of the video dives deep into acoustics! It’s genuinely fascinating, but it gets quite technical. I had to pause and rewatch sections a few times to follow along. So if your eyes start to cross, know you’re not alone! Don’t feel like you have to watch all of it (or any of it), but if you catch the demo between 1:38–3:10, I think you’ll get a real kick out of it.
So! Here are a few reflections I hope you take away from watching these videos:
The voice is a bizarre instrument!
The tongue is a huge, powerful muscle.
We tend to ascribe a lot of weight and sanctity to “the human voice,” but at its core, it’s simply the result of the shape of our vocal tract—a shape and sound that can even be replicated by a 3D-printed model.
The glottal sound (the vibration of the vocal folds) is surprisingly unremarkable on its own (remember the electrolarynx?). When we think about “working on our voice,” our mental image often fixates on the vocal folds, but how we shape and resonate that sound is equally significant.
Most importantly, I hope these videos help drive home my favorite reminder: your voice ≠ your worth.
Of course, that’s the tagline version of a bigger idea; we’re working with an incredibly complex and still somewhat mysterious instrument. So if you ever feel discouraged while working on your voice, try giving yourself the same patience and grace you’d offer if you were learning guitar, piano, or even something like a different language, oil painting, or salsa dancing 💃🏻🕺🏻 Through that process, your voice can become a genuine source of confidence, and that confidence can absolutely feed your sense of self-worth!
Well, what did you think about the videos? Did anything stand out, surprise you, or shift how you think about the voice? I’d love to hear your reflections in the comments!