To start, the cry mode elongates and “thins out” our vocal folds which creates more stability in our singing. As a result, we are able to move through our vocal break and connect to our head voice much more smoothly than otherwise.
Tears can create vocal problems
If you have an impending singing or speaking performance, crying can affect your voice: It swells the vocal cords. Swollen vocal cords do not work very effectively, period. Sinuses also swell.
It is very common to experience a “squeaky” voice when crying, because the muscles around the voice box are tightened, and you are not breathing effectively.
The 'cry voice quality' is a part of the Estill Voice Training Method. Cry voice can be used as an intentional resonance setup and is particularly helpful when it comes to stylistically orientating the voice to ballads. But it's also beneficial when technically negotiating high-intensity phrases.
Some people cry while they sing to get the proper feel of the song. They want to connect with the deep meaning of the lyrics. This helps their singing be more meaningful and soulful. Great singers make an effort to feel the pain of the song and transmit that pain as authentically as possible to their audience.
Emotional singing requires more than expression, you have to engage the audience with your eyes and use expressive body language. The techniques covered here will stop you from losing control of your voice and put less strain on it when you sing with emotion.
Anyone who speaks can get a psychogenic voice disorder. The psychological effects of trauma can impact the voice. Other mental impairments can cause psychogenic voice disorders. Fear of speaking in front of a large group of people may make a person temporarily lose their voice.
Some researchers think these types of changes could be used as objective flags for mental illness. When someone is depressed, their range of pitch and volume drop, so they tend to speak lower, flatter and softer. Speech also sounds labored, with more pauses, starts and stops.
Generally speaking, voice damage will include the onset of severe voice fatigue, reduction in range, inability to maintain pitch as well as a husky, rough or raspy sound that cannot be intentionally controlled or removed by the voice user.
As a singer or musician in a band, you can grow tired of playing your “old material” and performing can sometimes feel repetitive and monotonous! However, there are strategies you can use to keep your performances fresh and engaging, no matter how many times you've sung the same song.
Our voice therapists recommend that for every 60 minutes of voice use, you need 10 minutes of voice rest. Overuse can damage the vocal cords, and if you often find you have lost your voice by the end of the day or after an hour of singing, your vocal cords may be experiencing tissue damage.
Your lacrimal glands are right above your eyes and when you sing you most likely put pressure on them and they release tears into the eye and they are not absorbed into the tear duct fast enough so they spill out as tears. It has nothing to do with emotion at all.
Officially, cry mode is produced on a raised larynx and thinned vocal folds. Cry quality releases glottal hyper-adduction and medial compression, because of the raised larynx, it also has the benefits of releasing pharyngeal constriction. Crying vocal mode is based on the way our voices sound when we're about to cry.
Singing also triggers the release of oxytocin, which helps relieve anxiety and stimulates feelings of trust. And there's a scientific explanation for the immediate sense of pleasure we feel when we listen to music or sing. Inside the inner ear lies a tiny organ called the sacculus.
Negative emotions, such as fear, stress, or anger, can have a deleterious effect on our singing. These emotions inhibit musical expression, often dragging pitch down, introducing bodily tension, hindering supported breathing, and freedom in our singing.
The voice of a depressed person was summarized as slow, monotonous and disfluent on the basis of previous clinical research, which was quite different from that of healthy people [2]. Empirical studies also revealed that acoustic features have significant relationships with the rating of depression [3,4,5,6].
You might notice when talking with a person who is depressed, they exhibit slow speech or difficulty understanding and registering information. It often feels, to the person who is depressed, as if it's very difficult to think and it takes more than the usual effort to do so. Sometimes, it's referred to as "brain fog."
The physical symptoms of depression include: moving or speaking more slowly than usual. changes in appetite or weight (usually decreased, but sometimes increased)
As the field of psychology continues to grow, there is more and more evidence that trauma-informed bodywork and a "bottom up" approach to healing from past hurts is the most effective practice when healing from trauma. Singing is no exception to this rule.
On one theory that has been proposed, some types of voices are best understood as having their roots in memories of early trauma such as neglect, bullying and physical, sexual or emotional abuse. Others might be linked to traumatic life experiences such as bereavement, war or torture.
Puberphonia (also known as mutational falsetto, functional falsetto, incomplete mutation, adolescent falsetto, or pubescent falsetto) is a functional voice disorder that is characterized by the habitual use of a high-pitched voice after puberty, hence why many refer to the disorder as resulting in a 'falsetto' voice.
Singing makes you feel euphoric (out-of-body experiences)
Singing can be so emotionally and mentally elevating that it feels as though you're on another plane of existence, or outside your body, as you sing. At other times, you can feel very much “in” your body, mindful of every sensation and movement.
Singing causes you to concentrate on something other than your worries and everything that makes you sad or anxious. When you sing, you breath more deeply and so you get more oxygen in your bloodstream. Singing works muscles deep inside your body that you usually don't reach, even when you work out at a gym!
Tears and chills – or “tingles” – on hearing music are a physiological response which activates the parasympathetic nervous system, as well as the reward-related brain regions of the brain. Studies have shown that around 25% of the population experience this reaction to music.