# vocal fold damping



## dricart (Aug 14, 2013)

anyone heard of this technique before? my teacher told me lots of high tenors employ it to make their top more readily accessible. you "pinch" the back/posterior portion of your vocal folds together, and that portion does not vibrate or have air pass through it. so you essentially shorten the length of your folds temporarily, while the damp is still active.

how would you do this?? and is it really used by lots of the pros?


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## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

I've never heard of it before, but it doesn't sound conducive to singing naturally with an unconstrained open throat. There are some strange technical oddities that a number of tenors use, but it seems to me that they are just overthinking aspects of vowel formation, registration or volume (that are the elements of singing technique). Some tenors like to think that there is something special about the tenor voice that means that there is a particular technique for that voice type that is more difficult and sophisticated whereas all the other voices are more easily trained. This is narcissistic nonsense, of course.

I am interested to see if anyone has heard of this technical quirk and has more information about it.

N.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Never heard of it. It sounds like self-torture.


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## dricart (Aug 14, 2013)

i'l provide some more info about it. its been called damping, stop-closure phonation, anterior phonation, and 3/5 glottis phonation.

https://books.google.com/books?id=r...nepage&q=vocal fold posterior damping&f=false

some relevant quotes:

"It will be recalled that Manuel Garcia described two types of glottal closure in singing, which I have called firm and loose closure. He admonished the singer to 'pinch' the glottis in order to clamp the arytenoid cartilages firmly together, resulting in a 3/5 glottis that will produce a bright tone quality and low rates of airflow..."

"When the folds have been tensed and lengthened as much as possible, further increases in pitch must be accomplished by a different mechanism, mainly, damping. The posterior portion of the vocal folds are firmly approximated, and do not enter into vibration. As a result, the length of the vibrating glottis is shortened considerably."

"Wilbur J. Gould, a prominent doctor to the Met...agreed that singers employ damping, using only the anterior portion of the vocal folds, to achieve high notes...Gould did not go as far as Garcia, who maintained that the shortened glottis could be present not merely on the high notes but throughout the vocal range."


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