The Structures of the Larynx

Now, ideally, when you are singing, you are not really thinking about how your thyroid cartilage is tilting toward your cricoid cartilage - but it is useful to get the basic gist of how a larynx tilts and moves to accommodate healthy singing.

In classical singing and most choral singing, the larynx tends to sit a bit lower than in other styles such as pop or country music.

There are 5 main structures that hold together all of the tiny muscles of vocal production.

• Hyoid Bone

1. The Hyoid is the only bone in the throat, the rest is made up of cartilage, which is a more flexible material. The strong hyoid bone anchors your tongue muscles and the thyroid cartilage suspends from the hyoid. When you speak or move your tongue, the hyoid acts like a yoke and pulls up the other structures within the larynx.
2. You can feel the hyoid bone by gently palpating your throat above the Adam's Apple under the jaw (for females this is less prominent, so be gentle). You can feel it move when you move your tongue or swallow.

• The Epiglottis

1. The Epiglottis was taught to me as "the food slide" - while it's not very important in our singing, it's a crucial structure to our survival. This little cartilage is like a flap that covers your trachea (windpipe) when you swallow food to ensure that the food goes into the esophagus and stomach, rather than the lungs!

• The Arytenoid Cartilages

1. These are a pair of cartilages that look like tiny horns at the back of the larynx. The vocal folds attach to these two cartilages, and rotate to open and close the vocal ligament and vocal folds. When viewing videos of the larynx from a laryngoscope, you can see them fairly easily. The vocal folds attach to the arytenoids at the back of the larynx.
2. In the above diagram it isn't super easy to see the arytenoids, but they do have some smaller cartilages on the tips that help with minute vocal fold function.

• The Thyroid Cartilage

1. This structure is most visible on the outside of the body. The thyroid cartilage is not only the structure by which our very important thyroid itself attaches (on the exterior), it is also what protects the very important vocal folds, trachea, and epiglottis on the interior of the structure.
2. During speaking and singing, you may be able to see the thyroid cartilage tilting forward and down. On some singers it is more prominent than others, particularly on bass voices (they usually have the biggest sized instrument, they're like the tuba of the singing world). Our vocal folds attach to this structure in the front of the larynx.

• The Cricoid Cartilage

1. This structure serves as the base (not to be confused with "bass") of the singing world. This ring-shaped cartilage gives framework to the larynx. The singing voice muscles attach to this structure and support the thyroid cartilage's ability to tilt forward, helping stretch the vocal folds to a longer shape (to sing higher notes).

These structures will help you to identify the location of many of the muscles within the larynx. The above diagram is of the front (anterior) and the side (lateral) views of the larynx.

Not pictured above are the muscles themselves. But you can identify based on the names of the structures you have just learned, for example:

The thyroarytenoid muscle (colloquially called TA in the voice world) attaches at the thyroid cartilage and the arytenoid cartilages.

The cricothyroid muscle attaches at the cricoid cartilage and the bottom of the thyroid cartilage.

More on the specifics of these muscles in the next section....

Additional Resources:

Video on cartilages in the larynx

Video animation: How the Larynx Produces Sounds