Vocal

The human voice consists of sound made by a person using the vocal folds for talking, singing, laughing, screaming or crying. more...

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The vocal folds, in combination with the teeth, the tongue, and the lips, are capable of producing highly intricate arrays of sound; vast differences in meaning can often be achieved through highly subtle manipulation of the sounds produced (especially in the expression of language). These differences can be in the pronunciation of the individual noises, or in the overall tone in which they are uttered.

The tone of voice may suggest that a sentence is a question, even if grammatically it is not, and can display emotions such as anger, surprise, or happiness. In a request, the tone can reveal how much the speaker wants something, and whether that speaker is asking a favor or giving more of an order. The tone of saying, for example, "I am sorry" can change the phrase's meaning dramatically: it may vary from seeming a sincere request for forgiveness to implying something like, "I have the right to do this even if you do not like it".

Singers use the human voice as an instrument for creating music.

Voice types and the cords themselves

Men and women have different vocal cord sizes; adult male voices are usually lower-pitched and have larger cords. The male vocal cords (which would be measured vertically in the opposite diagram), are between 17 mm and 25 mm in length.

Matching the female body, which on the whole has less muscle than the male, females have smaller cords. The female vocal cords are between 12.5 mm and 17.5 mm in length.

As seen in the illustration, the cords are located just above the trachea (the windpipe which travels from the lungs). Food and drink does not pass through the cords but is instead taken through the esophagus, an unlinked tube. Both tubes are separated by the tongue and an automatic gag reflex. When food goes down through the cords and trachea it causes choking.

Cords in both sexes are ligaments within the larynx. They are attached at the back (side nearest the spinal cord) to the arytenoid cartilages, and at the front (side under the chin) to the thyroid cartilage. Their outer edges, as shown in the illustration, are attached to muscle in the larynx while their inner edges or "margins" are free (the hole). They are constructed from epithelium, but they have a few muscle fibres on them, namely the vocalis muscle which tightens the front part of the ligament near to the thyroid cartilage. They are flat triangular bands and are pearly white in colour—whiter in females than they are in males. Above both sides of the vocal cord (the hole and the ligament itself) is the vestibular fold or false vocal cord, which has a small sac between its two folds (not illustrated).

Read more at Wikipedia.org