How to Use Vibrato Vocal Techniques

Video Transcript

"JAMES MENY: The idea behind vibrato is, and I do know that there's some scientific definition of what vibrato is, but I'm just going to make it as simple as possible. It's sort of a balance between the air pressure going through your vocal cords and the pressure of the cords squeezing against each other. A certain amount of give and take that's allowed in there where vibrato can still happen. But what happens is basically the vocal cords tend to oscillate when it's within this parameter of air pressure versus vocal cord pressure. If you take it out of that, too much air pressure or too little of air pressure, or too much vocal cord pressure or too little vocal cord pressure, the equation doesn't work so well and you lose vibrato. The pluses and minuses of vibrato are, certain musics don't like vibrato as what we've said before but the pluses are, if you sustain a high note, and I'm talking of a sustain like if you think of the song "I Will Always Love You" from Whitney Houston, if you sustain on a straight tone, it will tend to sound a little flat. And if you listen to some of those great singers like the Barbara Streisand's or the Whitney Houston's, usually when they sustain on a straight tone near the end of it or even half way through it, they'll start the vibrato kicking because it create some over tones and some color into that sound that make it sound more pleasing to our ears rather than a straight on straight tone. Okay. So, straight tone is pulling the cords as tight as possible, vibrato is sort of an equalized area of vocal cord pressure versus air pressure."