I am a high school student and have currently began taking private lessons. During a lesson my teacher told me that I do vibrato incorrectly using my throat. He said it needs to be done with the diaphragm. I am haviong a hard time making the vibrato from my throat stop when I try doing it with my diaphragm. Any suggestions?

he is wrong,, it is a natural vibration in the vocal chords, if you do it with your belly it will sound labored

I fully agree with Patrick. I personally feel there is no wrong way to vibrato. My director had told me the same thing and now, years later, I still can't use anything but my throat to make a vibrato. I have also heard that, for some people, it is unavoidable to not vibrato using your throat. It is just natural...
Plus, if you try using your diaphram to vibrato, it sounds a little like you are hiccupping or something that is not very "musical." Hope this helped!

I also agree with you guys, but when it comes down to it isn't your diaphram more important? Of course you need to relax and open your throat to give needed air, but I personally think it's more important to worry about your diaphram. At least that's what I have learned. I learned bery quickly to keep a relaxed, open throat from taking lessons. I had trouble playing long tones since I was so used to playing vibrato, but I overcame that. My teacher taught me so many things that I greatly appretiate. I have been studying Mozart and I now can play his music and know how to phrase things. Yea I'm just blabbing, but my point is don't just do one thing, do it all.

OH yea forgot to add that all of those things helped me beat out others ahead of me in my section and I got a solo. So like I said everything plays a part.

Well, to use a throat vibrato, you don't really tighten your throat, do you? I am afraid I don't know much about the vocal cords at this point... I know that, when I put vibrato into something, my throat doesn't feel tight and my breathing isn't really affected. That's just me, personally. But, I do use my stomach muscles to move air faster or slower depending on the work I am doing to change the vibrato a little. I guess it is the difference of the speed of air traveling through the throat... Like helium balloons. Helium is what makes the air when you are speaking travel past your vocal cords since it has a very low density. So, because it is going so fast (the helium from your lungs) your voice sounds higher. Now, can't that basically be applied to a throat vibrato using different air speeds? I know this might not make sense, but I am trying to word it as best as I can...

All I know is that I am a successful, state ranked musician, and I have never used anything but my throat and how fast or slow I have pushed air out of my lungs to make a vibrato. I am I wrong on this or do I have a good point? Honestly, I have no clue if what I am doing is correct for a good vibrato... it works, but it might not be right.

i think flute vibrato is almost the same as vibrato in singing.
it all depends on how you control the release of air with the help of both throat and diaphragm.

i wory more about my diaphragm but doesn't mean i forgot about my throat.

hmm... i think it's best to practice and learn BOTH techniques(throat and diaphragm) because they have different uses.
both are important in producing an expressive vibrato.

you can practice controlling your vibrato without a flute.
Try putting pressure in your abdominal muscles then speak slowly as if you're conserving the release of air.
it's really hard at first but it's good exercise.






<Added>

ei tiffloser, i know how you feel. it's really hard ang frustrating to learn something that you are not yet familiar with. just practice more then you'll get used to it.goodluck to you:)

Thanks for your thoughts