LARYNGEAL BIOMECHANICS OF THE SINGING VOICE

By transnasal fiberoptic laryngoscopy, patients with functional voice disorders often demonstrate abnormal laryngeal biomechanics, commonly supraglottic contraction, Appropriately, such conditions are sometimes termed muscle tension dysphonias. Singers working at the limits of th eir voice may also transiently demonstrate comparable tension patterns . However, the biomechanics of normal singing, particularly for differ ent singing styles, have not been previously well characterized, We us ed transnasal fiberoptic laryngoscopy to study 100 healthy singers to assess patterns of laryngeal tension during normal singing and to dete rmine whether factors such as sex, occupation, and style of singing in fluence laryngeal muscle tension. Thirty-nine male and 61 female singe rs were studied; 48 were professional singers, and 52 were amateurs. E xaminations of study subjects performing standardized and nonstandardi zed singing tasks were recorded on a laser disk and subsequently analy zed in a frame-by-frame fashion by a blinded otolaryngologist. Each vo cal task was graded for muscle tension by previously established crite ria, and objective muscle tension scores were computed. The muscle ten sion score was expressed as a percentage of frames for each task with one of the laryngeal muscle tension patterns shown. The lowest muscle tension scores were seen in female professional singers, and the highe st muscle tension scores were seen in amateur female singers, Male sin gers (professional and amateur) had intermediate muscle tension scores . Classical singers had lower muscle tension scores than nonclassical singers, with the lowest muscle tension scores being seen in those sin ging choral music (41%), art song (47%), and opera (57%), and the high est being seen in those singing jazz/pop (65%), musical theater (74%), bluegrass/country and western (86%), and rock/gospel (94%). Analyzed also were the influences of vocal nodules, prior vocal training, numbe r of performance and practice hours per week, warm-up before singing, race, smoking, and alcohol consumption.