What determines the pitch of our voices?
In: 2
It’s not just length of the vocal folds (larger, and so lower in men), but thickness, and tension, of the vocal folds too, as well as the size and shape of the vocal tract above the vocal folds
Have you ever played with a guitar and tried to tune it, you can turn that gear at the end of the string to tighten it up, producing a higher pitch. This can be done with the vocal folds too, muscles pulling on and tensing up the vocal folds would achieve a higher pitch.
Have you ever blown into a pan flute, or played with a sandal-piano where you slap sandals onto pvc pipes to make a sound? Same amount and force air going in, but the longer wider pipe makes a lower sound than the shorter thinner one. Blue man group made an adjustable one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOLBn8GKBlA notice how when he makes the pipes shorter, the pitch rises. And when he makes it longer, the pitch lowers. So then a larger longer vocal tract should have a lower pitch. And if muscles were to lift up the larynx that should mean it would be at a higher pitch because the whole path is shorter, and if it were to lower the voice should be deeper. Put your hand on your adam’s apple and make a really high pitch sound, then a really low one. Feel what’s happening? The larynx is moving up and down to help achieve those different pitches. It’s not just the larynx moving either, but our whole mouth and throat shaping and changing to achieve different shapes and pitches.
There’s more too it, but that’s the basics
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