Physics of Human Voice: Factors Affecting Volume

[a87pal]

Hi everyone. I have a basic question about the biomechanics of speech. If this is already answered please direct me to the solution.

I'm trying to determine the main factors which determine the volume of a voice.

What I think I know: when a human produces sound, air is forced out of lungs and hits various parts of the vocal passage causing them to vibrate and produce sound. Intuitively, I originally thought to increase volume, I simply needed to increase energy, and thus increase the speed the air by exhaling faster.

While this does work. I know there are ways to increase volume without increasing the speed of exhale. I'd like to know how these mechanisms would work. Any thoughts?

 

[Drakkith]

Well, I don't know myself, but the wikipedia article seems to have a lot of info. This is focused on developing the singing voice, but I would think at least some of it applies to normal speech as well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vocal_pedagogy