Tilting – A Vocal Detective Story

Tilting.

It’s a vocal term that means different things to different people, and it’s used in singing lessons a lot.

But what does it mean?

Buckle up, because this is a wild ride…

I’ve been a fan of detective fiction for decades. I grew up reading the British classics Sherlock Holmes, Miss Marple and Lord Peter Wimsey. And I’ve always been intrigued by digging deeper into what we see, hear and experience. I think of the “who, what and why” questions in collecting evidence.

In detective fiction, you can usually identify the who if you can discover the what and the when.

Who, in this case, is which bits of anatomy, including cartilages, bones and muscles.
What is what they do AND what is moving them
Why is why and when you would do that

And there are active participants and passive participants in almost any movement by the body. So we’ll add those too.

Let’s start at the very beginning

It’s a very good place to start, after all. When I studied and became licensed in the Estill model back in the late 1990s I was taught:

1. tilting is stretching the vocal folds by using the Cricothyroid muscles. The thyroid cartilage tilts forwards and pulls the front of the vocal folds down, stretching them
2. you can feel it when you tilt
3. you can hold tilt while singing a phrase on different notes
4. you can tilt anywhere in your range
5. you can add or take away tilt on the same note
6. tilting is Cry (or Sob)
7. tilt is the only way to create vibrato

Let’s take each statement and follow the who, what, why questions.

1. “Tilting is stretching the vocal folds”

We need to break down this first statement in detail because it affects most of the other statements. Here’s how it goes physiologically…

In this scenario, the cricothyroid muscles are the Who (active).
Their action is to contract – the What (active).
The result – the Why – is a change in angle between the cricoid and thyroid cartilages, which stretches and tensions the vocal folds.

So when does this happen? Every time we change pitch. It occurs because the vocal folds are attached to the thyroid cartilage at the front and to the cricoid (via the arytenoids) at the back. When the cricothyroid muscles shorten, those cartilages rotate toward each other, elongating the vocal folds and raising pitch. Releasing the CT muscles has the opposite effect, lowering pitch.

“Tilting” and pitch

In every anatomy book I can find, the Cricothyroid muscles are listed as the primary pitch changers. Their job, in brief, is to tension/stretch the vocal folds when activating, then untension/unstretch them when deactivating. This means that during speaking and singing the CT muscles are constantly changing activation as we go up and down in pitch.

These are tricky concepts to get across in a singing lesson, so we don’t explain it like that. We use shortcut language. We say “the vocal folds stretch”, when in fact the vocal folds are passively tensioned by the action of the cricothyroid muscles on the cartilages.

OK, in short, point 1 is sort of accurate but not fully complete. Tilting IS stretching the vocal folds, but it will invariably cause a pitch change

Side Note

The CT muscles can cause the thyroid to tilt downwards OR the cricoid to tilt upwards. Both versions close the gap between the cartilages, and have exactly the same effect on the vocal folds, stretching and tensioning them. This is because both ends of the muscle are attached to something moveable (the cartilages).

Apparently some of us tilt the cricoid up, and some of us tilt the thyroid down to change pitch, and one is not “better” than the other.

And no, this is not related to Estill’s cricoid tilt. It’s the opposite. See Gillyanne’s 7-minute video “The Problem with cricoid tilt for Belting in Estill Voice Craft”

Let’s move to point 2

2. “You can feel it when you tilt”

This is where things get tricky.

As far as we understand, the cricothyroid muscles do not give us the sort of biofeedback we get, for instance, from our fingers. In essence, we don’t really know what the CT is doing, where it is in space, or what tensioning they are causing on the vocal folds. We are only aware of the outcome (the pitch). An exception to this might be if your CT muscles are “locked” and you may be aware of tension from the muscles surrounding the larynx.

The Estill singers and teachers may recognise what I’m going to describe next… You give yourself the instruction to “tilt and hold” while you sing a phrase on different notes, and you can feel that “tilt and hold”. The thing is, given the information in point 1 above, it can’t be the CT you’re feeling.

Macro versus micro movements

And it boils down to macro versus micro. Changing pitch is a series of micro movements, led by CT. In one of our recent Accreditation trainings, one participant said, “Is the movement really that small?” Yes, pitch change movements are tiny. Given that most singers have between 2.5 and 4+ octaves of workable range, and the gap between the cricoid and thyroid is a couple of millimetres, we’re talking micro-movements.

The “tilting” you feel when you hold a position and then change pitch within it is a macro movement. It’s one you can feel from the inside and from the outside. So you might be able to feel the thyroid moving forwards with your fingers on your throat.

The golden rule of movement

The golden rule of movement is that you can’t have a muscle make a micro movement and a macro movement at the same time. So you can’t have the same muscle dictating micro pitch changes and macro positioning simultaneously.

So what exactly are you feeling? We think it’s a positioning of the entire larynx, and has nothing to do with cricothyroid. At VocalProcess, we call this global tilting, and you can hold a globally tilted position for entire phrases without compromising your pitching mechanism.

So if that’s the What (tilting the entire larynx), let’s look at the Who (which muscles might be active).

Which Muscles?

To tilt the larynx (thyroid AND cricoid) forwards, you need muscles that go forward from the larynx or hyoid bone. So you have a handful of muscles attached to the hyoid that are capable of pulling it up and forwards and bringing the whole larynx with it. These include geniohyoid, mylohyoid, genioglossus and the anterior belly of the digastric. Stylohyoid can also contribute, depending on the individual’s anatomy.

These are all classed as extrinsic muscles. so it’s perfectly possible to activate and hold extrinsic muscles to “tilt” the larynx up and forwards, while allowing the intrinsic muscles (CT and vocalis) to interact for changes of pitch.

All of which is a very longwinded way of saying pitching is led by INtrinsic muscles, global tilting is led by EXtrinsic muscles. And they can act entirely separately. Therefore you can hold a global tilt gesture but still change pitch.

If this is clear, it becomes a lot easier to answer the remaining statements.

3. “You can hold tilt while singing a phrase on different notes”

Holding CT in one position? Nope. Holding the entire larynx (global tilt) in one position while changing pitch with CT? Absolutely you can

4. “You can add or take away tilt on the same note”

Adding or taking away global tilt on the same note? Absolutely you can. Because in global tilt, you move both cartilages together as one unit. So it doesn’t affect the pitching mechanism (CT). Global tilt also causes a change of resonance shape in the vocal tract, and therefore a different “timbre”, not a different note.

Adding or taking away CT? Only in very specific circumstances where you co-opt other muscles to maintain the pitch.

5. “Tilting is Cry (or Sob)”

This is Estill-specific terminology, but there’s a problem with it. It doesn’t describe what you do, it describes the sound that comes out, across a wide pitch range (Sob was originally a variant of Cry but with a lowered larynx and widened vocal tract). So going back to macro versus micro, Cry or Sob are macro movements – you “take a position” and hold it (the macro) while changing pitch (the micro). Since we already know that you can’t get one set of muscles to do both things at the same time, we must be doing different things. Global tilting would explain the macro gesture that is maintained, and CT would explain the micro-movements to change pitch.

In Sob, you’re holding more than one macro gesture: the whole larynx tilts forwards and the larynx itself lowers. These actions can coexist because they use different extrinsic muscle groups.

Having said that, because ALL of the muscles involved in Sob are extrinsic, you can still use CT to change pitch.

We’re on the last lap…

6. “You can tilt anywhere in your range”

Yes, and no. I think we’ve understood by now that “anywhere in your range” means changing pitch, which will require action by CT no matter what note you are singing. We’ll assume that’s a given. Can you hold the global tilting gesture anywhere in your range?

Sort of.

If you think of it as a resonance adjustment, then yes. In real life, there are a couple of great bits and one not-so-great bit. Global tilting is very useful when you’re nearing your main gear change (ie female voice between F4 and C#5, male voice between C4 and G#4). Adding a bit of global tilting seems to help smooth those transition points. In my teaching, I’m using global tilting like the clutch of a manual car – start to add a bit a minor third before the gear change, then once over the gear change you can let go again.

Global tilting is also very good for reaching higher notes with power. But beware. If the instruction in your head is “add more and more the higher I go”, you’ll end up in trouble. It’s the CT that activates more as you go up, and you don’t have conscious control of it. With global tilting, continuing to “tilt harder” as you go up just tightens the supralaryngeal areas more and more, and you might even lose access to your highest notes. So add a bit of global tilt, maintain it, and look somewhere else for high-note assistance (breath flow, how dense your vocal folds are, how much they are resisting, and so on).

Where global tilting doesn’t work is low down, towards the bottom three or four semitones of your range. You need to “unhook the tilt” or remove that global setting. Relaxing the suprahyoid engagement seems to allow freer cricoid-thyroid spacing, which will help de-tension the vocal folds for low notes.

And finally, an oddball one.

7. “Tilt is the only way to create vibrato”

No, that’s not really the full story. There are at least five different techniques to create vibrato plus combinations. I wrote about it in my book Why Do I Need A Vocal Coach

Once you get into the detective mindset, you start to understand what’s beneath a teaching technique or a method, even if the method has got scrambled over the years. It’s major brain energy, but it’s so rewarding. I understand why Sherlock was so lethargic between cases. I’m off for a lie down and a little something (don’t worry, it’s not a 7% solution)

Cheers

Jeremy

 

PS If this made sense to you, please comment below or email. It’s nice to know what I write and share is hitting home.

PPS If this didn’t make sense to you, comment below and let me know why. Be sure to use the who, what, why to explain it though, I’m not accepting blind belief from anyone!

PPPS If you enjoyed this, you’ll love the thought process that led me to change my mind about falsetto https://vocalprocess.co.uk/changing-your-mind-is-human/

 

 

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