The human body, barring congenital defect or system-altering accident, is a perfect vocal instrument from the moment of birth. As all parents know, an infant can coo, cry, babble and scream all night long without vocal fatigue, hoarseness or strain. Watch a sleeping infant to see the ribcage open and contract, the belly rise and fall as the baby naturally breathes diaphragmatically.

Infants and young children have perfect, erect posture that allows the voice to function naturally with no muscular tension. The baby’s vocalization is instinctive. The baby is hungry, his brain responds with “take a breath and yell.” The absence of vocal strain testifies to a naturally functioning instrument.

Perfect Beginning
None of the bad postural habits and tensions have taken up residence in a young child’s body. Perfect alignment leaves the child’s instrument relaxed and open and therefore, free to produce sound with ease.

Young ones are also devoid of preconceived notions of how they “should” sound. The brain is sending signals to the body with no negative self-talk to short-circuit the communication. There is no second-guessing and no fear of making a bad sound. The child’s sound production is free from the judgments of self and others.

The Demise
“I do NOT sound like my mother!” Protesting will do you no good because more than likely you do sound like one or the other of your parental units. Speech is learned by imitating those around you. As you develop speech patterns, you are also adopting breathing patterns, body alignment, tone quality and inflection – right down to the very last bad habit. So if Mom has a nasal quality, most likely Sally Junior will as well. If school pals have southern accents, it is likely Tucker Junior will also, along with Dad’s gravelly quality, too.

Enter peer pressure and fear of judgment, which can begin to collapse the vocal instrument, a.k.a., your body. A bit of slump in the posture appears. Then the teenage years bring the cool slouch and mumbling. The tension of everyday life continues to increase as you mature, causing further interference with your vocal instrument.

As your instrument collapses, you have to work harder and harder to produce sound. Because the breath path is now crooked or crimped, it requires more physical effort to get the breath and sound to move through. This is why most people develop bad muscle memory.

One of the most detrimental of all habits that kids develop is trying to imitate pop singers they hear on recordings. They imitate the twisted body language seen on music videos. They also attempt to imitate the compression (added to the voice in a recording studio) of pop music vocals, which are electronically altered and therefore impossible to imitate. This unnatural approach moves kids even further from their innate breathing, posture, and sound production habits.

 Caution: When you imitate someone like Britney Spears you are trying to imitate an electronically altered sound and not a human voice. Be thankful you are human and cannot imitate that sound. And in the name of vocal health, stop trying to do so immediately.

Remember, learning to vocalize is learning to get out of your own way and returning to the natural instrument of your very young self.

The above except is from Sally Morgan’s cutting edge book, Sing Like You Speak™. You can find lots more information about singing at

About the author

Sally Morgan is a professional vocal trainer with over 30 years of experience. Sally is also the creator and author of SingLikeYouSpeak(TM)!

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