Physics of Singing

Since most of my life is spent in my voice studio, in room practicing or performing I figured it was time to write about some of the physics that go into singing. Recently, we learned that sound waves must travel through a medium. The medium in singing is air, so technically, sound could simply be described as moving air molecules or vibrating air molecules. One of the hardest things to master as a singer is perfect pitch and what pitch really is frequency of a sound wave or moving air particles. Therefore, when I sing in a lower register, my frequency is lower and in higher registers it is at a higher frequency. Being able to change back and forth between frequency makes for very successful singers as they can sing in both a high and low range. Singers spend years learning how to make a larger sound and a larger sound is created by larger amplitudes of sound waves. The higher the amplitude of the sound wave, the louder we perceive the sound being and the lower the amplitude of the sound wave, the softer we perceive the sound being.