97. The science of voice with Dr Noc

Ever wondered why you sound raspy when you get sick? Or how to control your volume or pitch? In this all stars episode Immunologist Dr Noc explains what's going on anatomically!

Follow Dr Noc on TikTok and Instagram @dr.noc

Transcript

Hello it is wonderful to have you with me today, as we journey back to episode 56 The Science of Voice with Dr Noc – another guest who I met on TikTok – and as an immunologist during a pandemic his insights have been highly relevant. Dr Noc is also very funny and entertaining.

I’ve chosen this little snippet today because it describes a bit about what’s physically going on with our vocal cords when we sound a certain way, in my Members Only Masterclass Vault I teach a lot about the anatomy of the voice, and why it’s so important to understand how the posture, the breathing, the vocal cord connection, the placement of the tone, the articulation of the words – how they all come together to create a particular sound.

I’d invite you to join the Members Only Masterclass Vault to access more than 10 specialised masterclasses, the live monthly events and the community so you can learn for yourself how to play the beautiful instrument that is your voice and create a sound that’s influential, clear and most of all sounds like you! Although you may not recognise your best voice at first if you haven’t been taught how to access it.

That’s the Members Only Masterclass Vault.

It’s a one-off fee to join forever, the link is in the shownotes.

So the question to kick today’s all stars episode off, is why do you sound raspy and croaky when you’re sick.

 Dr Noc: That's exactly it. Yep. No, you have it totally correct. And so when you have those gaps between the vocal folds and some of that air is slipping through, that's what results in some of that raspy sound that we end up hearing. And so this can result from a number of different conditions, but the one that's interesting for me right now is, you know, laryngitis, if you have infection of that epithelium around your vocal folds, that can lead to inflammation in the area, which can cause those muscles to not work like they usually do. And so you end up with some basically leakage, similar to what musicians have. If they're playing a reeded instrument, like a clarinet or a saxophone or whatever it is, if it's not assembled perfectly correctly. And some of that airflow, instead of being used to vibrate that read, which is what produces the sound. If it slips through it messes with their tone. And the same thing happens to us when we get sick.

Sally: Yeah. And that's why we can get a bit of a voice like that. And so for people who have long-term damage and they're always speaking with too much air coming out, no matter how loud you try to speak, you can never get any volume.

Dr Noc: Yeah. It's kind of like a whisper hybrid at that point. Oh volume. So that's an interesting thing. There's two things either when you're talking about recorded sound or speech, you've got the amplitude, which is the size of the sound wave. If you're thinking about like pictures of sound waves, when you see them, and then there's the frequency. So the amplitude is the loudness and then the frequency represents the pitch. The same thing happens with your glottis, which is your vocal folds. And so the, the force with which they're flapping together, basically, how far apart they flap before they come back together, represents the amplitude. And so that's how loud your voice is. And that can be modulated by basically how much air you're forcing up through there. And the frequency is how fast they're coming together. And so that's what modulates your pitch. That's why men typically have lower voices than women. They have longer goddesses, longer vocal folds. And so that just results in this very mechanical difference in the flapping, which changes that frequency.

Sally: It's so interesting, isn't it? And that's what I always talk about when you're thinking about volume. Imagine that you're, I say, breathe into your bottom. Dr Noc - a lot of my methods are not very scientific.

Dr Noc: Sometimes those are the ones that stick the best.

Sally: Yeh, so breathing really low and tape and using that air to create the volume rather than straining from the throat. Yeah. I love that. Fantastic.

Dr Noc: So I've got a question for you. You are full of these tips about voice, about how to be your best self in terms of voice. My question for you is have you totally internalized these or do you still have to sometimes consciously pull from these and assess yourself and update it? Or is it just totally automatic for you at this point?

Sally: As far as using the tips that I teach, I do every day, I'm constantly checking in because our voice isn't the same two days in a row. I read somewhere, this is one of the reasons why recording artists, record in one sitting. They won't do one song across two days because the voice might be a little bit different, either that or the recording studio fees. I don't know I read that it was because of the voice. And so I think one of the most important things is for us to be really forgiving. Every day, we've got different stuff going on with our bodies, different stuff, going on with our moods and our voice will sound different. And believe me, I sound different first thing on a Sunday morning, to what I do when I'm delivering my masterclasses. I have to go through, go through the warmups. And some days you just don't sound as good as you'd like to. I'm constantly trying to channel my swim-up cocktail bar voice. You know, when you're at the beautiful resort, everything's relaxed. Everybody sounds amazing when they're swanning up to order their second espresso martini.

Haha I could go a cocktail right about now, but I’ve just started sober November so a few more weeks of cocktail dreaming for me.

Dr Noc is so fascinating to chat to, so I’d highly recommend heading back to episode 56 to hear that full chat.

Only three more episodes until the big 100! Woot Woot!

Sally Prosser