I. Introduction

The lungs are one of the most important organs in the human body. They oxygen as its breathed in. They let the good things you breathe in spread through your body like oxygen and then get rid of the bad stuff like carbon dioxide. If we didn’t have lungs that functioned correctly our life could be at risk. So the question is, are there ways that we can improve our lung function? Exercise. Whatever way you exercise, your lungs improve their functions. There’s running, which has benefits, but another way that’s less studied is singing or playing a wind instrument. This helps because you have to do breathing exercises that strengthen your lungs to hold out a note longer or to get a higher range. So how do your lungs actually function? …show more content…
If it is breathed through the nose the hairs that line the inside cleanse some of the air in. Next all the air from both the mouth and nose goes through the throat. From the throat it goes through the trachea or as its better known as the windpipe. “The trachea is a passage going from the throat leading air into the lungs” lungsusa.org. The trachea then separates into the two main tubes, the bronchial tubes, and a tube for each lung which will then divide into each lobe of the lung. The right lung has more lobes then the left. The right has three and the left has two. A lobe is the spongy balloon like sections in the lungs. Air moves in and out of these sections of the bronchial tubes. Then there are the pleura, it’s a membrane continuously folded over, it looks like two membranes when it’s actually one. They surround each lung and keep the lungs from touching the chest wall. The bronchial tubes are lined with cilia. They are very small hairs that line the bronchial tubes and sway back and forth continuously in a wave-like motion. The motion from the cilia carries the mucus, which is phlegm, upward and out to where it is either coughed up or swallowed. The mucus takes hold of the dust/germs and other unwanted stuff that comes into the lungs. We get this out by coughing, sneezing, or blowing your lungs. The smallest parts of the bronchial tubes are called bronchioles. At the end of these are the air sacs or alveoli. Alveoli …show more content…
All singers make sound by using their abdominals, back muscles, rib cage, lungs, and the oral cavity. The vocal cords are membranes that open and close while singing and speaking. When enough air pressure builds up against them, the folds will snap together and a sound is produced. When snapped gently, a quite sound is heard. When they snap harshly a loud sound is made. The quicker the cords open and close the higher the pitch will be. Vocal cords actually open and close one hundred times on average during normal speaking. The first step to singing is breathing. The muscles of the larynx pull the vocal cords together. The larynx stay closed until you get enough breath to builds up and a burst of air escapes through the cords. When you run out of breath the vocal cords pull together again. So sound isn’t produced by vibrating vocal cords but by a pressure built up by air. The larynx is in the neck and is made of four main parts. Those parts are intrinsic muscles, the skeleton, mucosa, and extrinsic muscles. There are also things called resonators. They are the oral cavity, sinus cavity, nasal cavity, chest cavity, tongue, pharynx, palate, and other parts that act as resonators for singing. They are all mostly answerable for vocal quality. The vocal cords only produce the buzzing sound. Resonators are necessary to sing and