Day 14: Elevation and Integration
Skill Focus: Exploring Laryngeal Height and Reviewing Weeks 1–2
You’ve spent the last two weeks building awareness, coordination, and control. Today, we pause to connect the dots—and add a simple, tactile tool: laryngeal height.
What Is Laryngeal Height?
Laryngeal height refers to the vertical position of your larynx within your neck. The larynx is a complex structure made of cartilage, muscle, and connective tissue. It houses the vocal folds and sits on top of the trachea, playing a central role in sound production, airway protection, and breathing. It moves naturally: when you swallow, it rises. When you yawn, it lowers. It moves naturally: when you swallow, it rises. When you yawn, it lowers.
You can feel it. Place a hand gently on the front of your throat and try both actions—swallow, then yawn. That bump you feel moving? That’s your thyroid cartilage, part of your larynx.
Why It Matters
Laryngeal height is one of the most direct ways to adjust resonance space. A higher larynx creates a smaller resonating chamber and brighter, twangier sound. A lower larynx increases resonance space and contributes to warmth and depth.
Unlike breath support or fold control, this one gives you immediate tactile feedback. No guesswork—just feel and explore.
It also underpins much of what we practiced this week:
- Brightness and twang (high larynx)
- Ring and depth (low larynx)
- Dynamic transitions (messa di voce)
Each of these is easier to control when you can reliably shift your larynx up or down.
Exercise: Laryngeal Mapping and Review
Step 1: Explore Laryngeal Movement
- Place your hand gently on the front of your throat.
- Swallow. Feel the larynx rise.
- Yawn. Feel it drop.
- Now try humming a comfortable pitch while alternating between a swallow-like position (high) and a yawn-like position (low). Notice how the tone changes—and that your pitch may shift slightly as your larynx moves. That’s expected. The vertical position of the larynx affects resonance..
Step 2: Apply to /nja/
Return to the /nja/ exercise from Day 4 and Day 13. Try chanting /nja/ with a high larynx, then drop into a low larynx position and notice the shift in sound quality. Try sustaining and gently alternating between the two.
Step 3: Review and Integrate
Revisit key exercises from the past week:
- Day 9: Sustained Pentascale (track your durations!)
- Day 10: Mini Voice Range Profile (dB range tracking)
- Day 12: Messa di Voce (with and without brightness)
- Day 13: Messa di Voce with Brightness + Larynx Position
This is a review day—but not a rest day. The real goal is connection: between breath, fold control, brightness, and now vertical space.
Why This Matters
When your larynx moves, your resonance space reshapes—and your voice responds immediately. Learning to feel and shape that movement is a major step toward real control.
You’ve built strength (Day 9), explored range (Day 10), refined coordination (Days 11–13), and now you’re gaining vertical freedom. This opens the door to artistry, not just function.
Reflect
You’ve completed two full weeks of structured, skill-based vocal training.
- Which exercises felt most impactful?
- Which ones do you want to revisit more consistently?
- Are you noticing any physical or tonal changes in your voice?
- Have your VFEs changed in duration or ease?
- What surprised you in the past 14 days?
Take a few minutes to write down your answers. This isn’t just about looking back. It’s about preparing for the next phase: applying these tools to more expressive, real-world vocal tasks.
Tomorrow begins Week 3: Vocal Agility. We’ll start with a simple pitch pattern that challenges clarity and control—not speed—and builds the foundation for clean, agile singing.
