If you're familiar with our YouTube channel,
you probably recognize a few voices.
Like, Sam is always going to use a map.
Yeah the best videos always have a map.
And Coleman's just going to show you a photo.
There's usually other photos in there.
Joss is going to drop a bunch of data on you,
but make you feel something.
If you really think about it, our lives
are just line charts.
These are people you don't always see on camera,
but you might recognize them just by their voices.
Chip companies...
We see that the vaccine...
This is the first famous photograph..
As humans, each of us produces
a sound that's about as unique as a fingerprint.
There has never been somebody
before, currently, or in the future
that will sound like you.
So what is it that makes you sound like you?
This is your voice box.
It's called the larynx, and it's located here.
The three main functions are to speak,
to breathe, and to swallow.
Sandra Stinnett is a laryngologist,
which means she treats people who have trouble
with any of these.
We're going to focus on speech.
Obviously.
So you have articulatory function,
resonance function, and then breath support.
Let's start with breath.
If we open it up, we can see
the larynx is hollow.
When you take a breath in,
the air comes down this way into your lungs.
When you speak or sing,
you push air from your lungs up through your trachea
and through the vocal folds,
which you might know as vocal cords.
Laryngologists, we like to call them folds
because they're not cords.
They're folds.
The vocal folds are very, very like pristine
white bands.
They're made up of mucus
covered muscles and cartilage.
As air pushes through it
forces them open and then they snap close.
You can maybe imagine like a water balloon,
like if you took two water balloons
and slapped them together and they go...
That vibration creates a sound wave.
The faster they vibrate, the higher
pitch the sound is.
For men, it's about 100
to 200 waves per second.
So kind of like a hummingbird wings.
And then for for women, it's
a little bit higher pitched.
So 200-plus waves per second.
So it's fast.
If you try to raise the pitch of your voice,
you stretch the vocal cords.
If you think of having a rubber band
and you sort of pluck the band
and then you stretch the band
a little bit and then it gets to be
a higher pitch.
The vocal folds work like that.
When we're on a low pitch, they're short.
And then when we go higher, they lengthen,
lengthen, lengthen,
and there's a different tension that they have.
Next is where resonance comes in.
That sound wave travels through your larynx
and up into your oral and nasal cavities
where it bounces around.
This on its own
basically produces the sound of your voice.
But to make words,
we need to shape those sound waves
using articulators,
things like our tongues,
lips, teeth, and various other features.
As humans, we all essentially create sounds
in the same way, but differences in the size
and shape of all of these things
make our voices sound different.
Physiologically, we're each incredibly unique.
No two larynges are the same.
There's I mean, it's like a fingerprint.
All of these different shapes
and sizes contribute to you having a totally
one of a kind instrument.
There are other factors at play, too.
On top of our physiological features:
The brain, which is just like
a complicated circuit of nerves
that manipulate pitch
and emotion and inflection in the voice.
So, you know, when you say, hi,
my name is Sandra or Hi, my name is Sandra.
Your life's journey
can impact your voice tremendously.
Where you've lived, what your job is,
who your friends are, or who your family is.
All of these factors change the way
that you communicate and the way
that you use your voice.
So for all of you absolutely roasting me
for this video, respect my journey.
I grew up in Jersey and then moved to Long Island.
I'm lucky I don't sound like Margot Robbie
in Wolf of Wall Street.
Since our voices
are so specific to who we are, it can be pretty jarring
when we go through major changes
like in puberty.
Testosterone in particular
can drastically change a person's voice.
The men have a more rapid change
in the physiology of their voice box.
We see a big change to the vocal cords.
They get bigger, longer,
thicker, more muscular, and the larynx changes
size and shape, too.
That's why you have an Adam's apple.
Those kinds of changes
to the vocal folds and larynx can cause the voice
to drop an entire octave.
But it's not like you're just stuck there.
Just like any other muscle,
we can train our vocal folds
to be more flexible.
The more they can stretch, the wider the range.
Unfortunately, as with
any muscle, your vocal folds
will weaken over time, which is why a lot of elderly people
have that similar shaky, raspy
or scratchy voice.
It's called atrophy
and so the vocal folds
themselves have muscles inside,
and so they may get atrophied.
I like to compare it
to, I'm going to date myself,
Coming to America,
where the guys in the barbershop...
"I stopped liking Cassius Clay,
once he changed his name to Muhammad Ali."
"Wait a second...wait a second..."
Vocal coaches
can help minimize this atrophy.
But you can also make sure you're doing things
like staying hydrated and keeping out of situations
that force you to strain your voice,
like yelling or whispering.
Your voice will inevitably change with time.
But that's not necessarily a bad thing.
The voice itself is like a fingerprint,
but it's also a clue.
A clue to what type of person you are,
whether you're talkative or not,
you know, where you're introverted or not.
I've always thought that, like,
the larynx was a person's soul
because it's so unique
to everybody and it tells you
a lot about a person.
And then we have
way up there.
So that was about an F seven.