Tougas- McCoy- Ch.5

 This chapter mainly focused on the muscles of the face and jaw and their function in expression and singing technique. I had two main take away from this chapter: 1. Your face placement and how you look really IS the sound that will be produced and 2. It is not simply psychological. 

McCoy explains that usually singers are looking for a brighter, more forward tone so creating a bright look on your face such as surprise or excitement usually puts not only our facial muscles but our soft palate and larynx in the places they should ideally be to produce that kind of sound. Hence why when we tend to sing lower pitches, our eyebrows crease downward to create this push from the face muscles toward every other muscle/ inner body function. In simple terms, McCoy asserts that as we look is how the sound will resonate. 

This leads me to my next point that I always figure that when we sing and are told to raise our eyebrows or think about the sound resonating in the frontal mask of our face, I always considered it to be a psychological factor that helps us align our body to raise pitch and achieve good ring. Yet, through this reading I realized it is very much physical as it is psychological. The more you raise your eyebrows for example, the more you round your cheeks and lower the tension of the eyes, so it in turn creates more space for the mouth muscles, palate, and jaw to open and take in air for your desired sound. Similar to how a baby pushes around organs to make room, the way we utilize the face creates room for better sound.

The same applies to the jaw muscles as he discusses toward the end and how the looser we are, the better the sound becomes. Perhaps we should all take a little trip to hippie town to become better musicians. Live life and rock on.