ELi5: What actually causes vibrato when singing?
In: Biology
I teach voice. There is “natural” vibrato and “forced” vibrato.
Natural vibrato is a slight 1/4-1/2 step fluctuation in pitch above the sung note, cycling about 6 times per second give or take, and occurs when you hit a sweet spot of vocal cord tension vs airflow, which is heard in well-trained voices.
Forced vibrato is when someone produces a similar sound consciously. There are several ways people do this, either by “pulsing” the air to approximate true vibrato (like Stevie Nicks does, which can sound like the bleating of a goat), moving their jaw up and down (although Whitney Houston was a fantastic singer, she relied on this technique), consciously altering the pitch (and if the singer does this to a lower quarter or half-step it sounds “wobbly”), or a combination of these. These methods don’t sound as good as true vibrato, they can be too fast or slow, and sound uneven. They’re also bad for the voice, creating unnecessary tension, tiring out the muscles, and leading to bad vocal production habits which can be very harmful to the health of the vocal cords.
Hope this helps.
Edit: spelling errors.
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