How Does Vocal Resonance Work?

Have you ever heard someone pluck an acoustic guitar?

Some of the sound generated from this may bounce off the walls inside of it.

This can make what you hear sharper, deeper, brighter, or darker.

This is what’s known as resonance.

When you speak, you produce speech sounds based on the various shapes you make with your different articulators.

These speech sounds are different depending on how you shape sound as it moves through your larynx and leaves your body.

Your vocal resonance can impact the volume, clarity, tone, and flow of your speech.

If your voice sounds nasally or muffled, or if you get asked to repeat yourself often, you may have a resonance disorder.

Our experienced speech-language pathologists in Washington can help.

In this article, we’re going to take a look at resonance.

Read on to discover more about what vocal resonance is, and how it shapes your voice.

What Is Vocal Resonance?

What you might think of as your voice is made up of many different moving parts.

Each of these can impact how your voice resonates.

First is your oral cavity.

This is the inside of your mouth.

It includes your gums, most of your tongue, your teeth, your hard and soft palates, the area behind your lips, and more.

There’s also your nasal cavity.

This is the hollow space at the back of your nose.

It extends to just above the roof of your mouth.

Then, your pharynx.

This is a muscular tube in your throat.

It connects your oral and nasal cavities to your larynx.

After, comes your larynx.

It’s about halfway down your neck.

It’s a collection of muscles, cartilage, and other ligaments.

Your velopharyngeal valve, involving the closure formed by your upper palate and the sides of your throat, may also impact the sound others hear you make or your perceived vocal resonance.

Your chest, trachea, and sinuses are also involved.

Your voice can resonate in any one of these areas.

This will change the way you sound.

When you make a sound, it starts in your larynx, of course.

That’s where your vocal folds live.

But from there, your voice will resonate in an area of your body, which will influence how it sounds.

What Is “Normal” Resonance?

When you speak, you create acoustic energy in different areas of your vocal tract.

Normal resonance is the balance between the sound energy within your oral and nasal cavity.

The right balance helps you pronounce the sound that you want to make.

But it’s important to note that what we consider normal resonance may depend on our perceptions and cultural backgrounds.

Different people may view different resonances as normal or outside the range of normal depending on what their native language is.

For instance, most English speakers produce vowels with their oral cavity.

On the other hand, some Caribbean Spanish dialects tend to have more of a nasal resonance.

In other words, normal resonance exists on a spectrum, and there is a range of acceptability for what is considered normal.

Part of learning a new language includes learning how to produce resonant sounds in their

A person who is speaking a non-native language to them may sound outside the normal resonance range to a native speaker of that language.

But they may sound within the normal range to another non-native speaker of that language.

What Are The Different Types Of Vocal Resonance?

There are many different types of resonance that differ based on where the sound energy is located.

These different types include:

• Nasal Resonance: The resonance that is provided by your nose as you speak
• Resonance of sinuses: The vibration of your four paired sinuses within your forehead, nose, and cheek regions as you make speech sounds
• Oral Resonance: The vibrations that occur within your oral cavity as you speak
• Pharyngeal Resonance: The vibration of the pharynx or the pharyngeal cavity while you speak
• Laryngeal Resonance: Resonance that occurs when there is greater vibration in the laryngeal area when you speak
• Head Resonance: It involves the vibration of the structures above your neck, including your oral cavity, nasal cavity, sinuses, and upper pharyngeal
• Chest or Dark Resonance: The vibration that occurs within your chest cavity when you speak

How Do Resonance Disorders Affect Your Voice?

There are various resonance disorders that can occur because of an imbalance between the oral and nasal sound energy you make as you speak.

These disorders can occur because of a structural or functional cause.

Structural issues may include a hole that allows sound to pass in and out of your vocal cavity or a muscle that doesn’t contract.

Whereas a functional cause may involve issues with motor planning or some other functional issue.

Let’s take a look at some of them below.

1. Hypernasality

As you speak, does your voice sound overly nasal?

This hypernasality is what happens when most or all the sounds that you speak are being pronounced by air passing over your nose.

There are certain sounds within the English language that should be produced by more air passing through your nose instead of your mouth.

These include ‘m’, ‘n’, and ‘ng’.

However, all other speech sounds in the English language are oral sounds and should involve more airflow over the mouth than the nose.

If you have hypernasality, your oral sounds will be produced using more air flowing over the nose as opposed to the mouth.

This impacts the resonance quality and makes your voice sound nasally or as if there is excessive nasal resonance.

This is typically seen with vowels and sometimes voiced oral consonants, like ‘b’, ‘d’, and ‘g’.

Hypernasality can occur due to a variety of reasons, including:

• Structural differences, like cleft lip or cleft palate
• By habit, when a person allows more air to pass through the nose instead of the mouth while saying oral sounds
• Cerebral palsy or other neurological conditions
• Inability of your soft palate not properly blocking air from getting to your nose
• If you are speaking in a language that is less nasally than your first language

2. Hyponasality

On the other side of hypernasality is hyponasality.

This occurs when most or all the sounds that you speak are pronounced by airflow through the mouth instead of the nose.

Therefore, there is little nasal sound energy when you speak.

Nasal sounds in the English language are impacted, which include m, n, and ng.

These disruptions in nasal resonance may cause ‘m’ to come out as ‘b’, ‘n’ as ‘d’, and ‘ing’ as ‘ig’.

Hyponasality usually occurs when you have some type of structural blockage in your nasal cavity that prevents air from exiting your nose.

Reasons for this could include:

• Cleft lip or cleft palate
• Swelling of the tonsils
• A deviated septum
• Congestion from a cold or allergies

RELATED ARTICLE: How Can Speech Therapy Help With Hyponasality?

3.Cul De Sac Resonance Disorder

Cul de sac resonance disorder occurs when sound resonates in one of the cavities in your vocal tract, but something is trapping it or blocking it from exiting the cavity.

The ‘cul de sac’ in the name references how speech can’t exit.

This can occur because of a structural obstruction in some part of your vocal tract or some type of functional issue in your vocal tract.

You may also experience cul-de-sac resonance disorder because of:

• A nasal blockage
• Swollen tonsils
• An opening in the upper gums known as an oronasal fistula
• Having too small of a mouth opening
• Functional or structural issues with the velopharyngeal valve

If you have cul de sac resonance disorder, there are various symptoms to look out for.

This includes speech that sounds:

• Muffled
• Like there’s something blocking it from exiting
• Like it’s trapped in a bubble
• Low in volume, and you have difficulty being louder
• Difficult for others to understanding

A speech therapist can support you if you are showing symptoms of cul-de-sac resonance disorder.

4. Transgender Voice Therapy

Based on the resonance associated with a specific voice, people may perceive a certain gender to be associated with it.

For instance, a traditionally feminine voice may have a resonance that comes across as softer or lighter.

There may also be less of a buzz.

This is seen as a voice that has a brighter resonance.

On the other hand, a traditionally masculine voice may be heavier, deeper, and contain less buzz.

It may also sound louder.

These differences may have to do with where the voice resonates.

For instance, traditionally masculine voices typically resonate in the chest.

Whereas traditionally feminine voices resonate higher in the body.

If you go through testosterone driven puberty, one of its effects is to change your vocal folds.

In particular, they become longer, thicker, and heavier.

This is what causes you to have a traditionally masculine coded voice.

If you’re a trans woman, hormone replacement therapy can help you in a lot of ways.

Unfortunately, though, it will not impact your voice.

However, there is hope, as voice therapy for transgender women can help you brighten your resonance.

You’ll learn how to move the parts of your oral cavity, including your larynx and tongue, so your voice sounds more traditionally feminine.

For transgender men, you may be happy with the way testosterone changes your voice to sound more masculine.

But if this is not the case, speech therapy for transgender men could help you to darken your resonance.

In the case of nonbinary people, voice training will depend on how you’d like your voice to sound.

This sort of voice therapy can also help any women with hormonal disorders that cause high testosterone levels, like PCOS.

Speech Therapy For Resonance Disorders

If you are showing signs of a resonance disorder, your first step would be to see an adult speech therapist.

They will conduct an evaluation of your oral and nasal cavities and examine how you speak.

Your speech therapist will also look to try to find out what the cause of your resonance disorder is.

Considering the cause, your age, medical, physical, and cognitive status, and cultural or linguistic background, they will develop a treatment plan.

This plan will be tailored to your specific challenges and strengths related to underlying structures and functions that may impact your resonance.

In addition, you may be taken through facilitated activities to help you discover new skills that will facilitate your oral communication.

Lastly, your speech therapist may consider contextual factors.

For instance, barriers to communication may be reduced, and facilitators to communication may be enhanced using appropriate accommodations.

The main goal in doing all of this is to support you in achieving improved resonance so that you have better oral communication.

Book Your Appointment With The Voz Institute Today

Does your voice sound nasally or muffled?

Do people often ask you to speak up?

Are you looking for support with changing your vocal resonance so that you speak more clearly or so that you sound more like the gender you identify with?

If so, our therapy team here at The Voz Institute is here to help.

Book your appointment with The Voz Institute today.