Physiological and acoustic characteristics of the male music theatre voice

Abstract

Six male music theatre singers were recorded in three different voice qualities: legit and two types of belt ("chesty" and "twangy"), on two vowels ([e] and [ɔ]), at four increasing pitches in the upper limit of each singer's belt range (∼250-440 Hz). The audio signal, the electroglottographic (EGG) signal, and the vocal tract impedance were all measured simultaneously. Voice samples were analyzed and then evaluated perceptually by 16 expert listeners. The three qualities were produced with significant differences at the physiological, acoustical, and perceptual levels: Singers produced belt qualities with a higher EGG contact quotient (CQEGG) and greater contacting speed quotient (Qcs), greater sound pressure level (SPL), and energy above 1 kHz (alpha ratio), and with higher frequencies of the first two vocal tract resonances (fR1, fR2), especially in the upper pitch range when compared to legit. Singers produced the chesty belt quality with higher CQEGG, Qcs, and SPL values and lower alpha ratios over the whole belt range, and with higher fR1 at the higher pitch range when compared to twangy belt. Consistent tuning of fR1 to the second voice harmonic (2f0) was observed in all three qualities and for both vowels. Expert listeners tended to identify all qualities based on the same acoustical and physiological variations as those observed in the singers' intended qualities.

Multidimensional Timbre Spaces of Cochlear Implant Vocoded and Non-vocoded Synthetic Female Singing Voices

“…One possible device issue that may impact the perception of vocal timbre in CI users concerns spectral slope. Some singing voice styles (Sundberg et al, 1993Thalén and Sundberg, 2001;Stone et al, 2003;Björkner, 2008;Bourne and Garnier, 2012;Bourne et al, 2016) and singing voice registers (Sundberg and Kullberg, 1999;Sundberg and Högset, 2001;Roubeau et al, 2009) are differentiated primarily or partially by changes in glottal configuration that manifest in changes in spectral slope. Because CIs typically implement various degrees of amplitude compression, it may not be possible to detect some of the distinctions between voice styles and/or voice production types.…”

“…A detailed description of these factors is beyond the scope of this paper; however, as a starting point, the reader is directed to Johan Sundberg's chapter in The Psychology of Music (Sundberg, 2013). Generally, these factors may be described as (a) variations across pitch and loudness (Echternach et al, 2016), (b) variations based on singing style (Sundberg et al, 1993Thalén and Sundberg, 2001;Stone et al, 2003;Björkner, 2008;Borch and Sundberg, 2011;Bourne and Garnier, 2012;Guzman et al, 2015;Sundberg and Thalén, 2015;Yang et al, 2015;Bourne et al, 2016;Hallqvist et al, 2017), (c) variations based on vocal register (Titze, 1994;Sundberg and Kullberg, 1999;Sundberg and Högset, 2001;Roubeau et al, 2009), and (d) variations based on the need for a singer's formant cluster (Sundberg, 1974(Sundberg, , 1994(Sundberg, , 2001(Sundberg, , 2013Dmitriev and Kiselev, 1979;Bloothooft and Plomp, 1986;Barnes et al, 2004;Johnson and Kempster, 2011;Mainka et al, 2015;Story, 2016). Thus, while speakers may keep a relatively constant glottal excitation source spectral slope and exhibit relatively small variations in VTL during speech, successful professional singers must learn to purposefully modify both the glottal excitation source and the vocal tract filter, resulting in vocal productions that are physiologically, acoustically, and perceptually much different from those of speech in many cases.…”

Clarification et correction d'indices segmentaux : une étude pilote sur les consonnes occlusives du français

“…Pour le naturel du jeu, le corpus comportait également . Suivant la même procédure que celle développée avec des experts statisticiens, appliquée à l'analyse de plusieurs jeux de données précédents (Bourne et al 2016), nous avons commencé par simplifier chaque modèle en excluant toute interaction non significative entre les facteurs. Une fois le modèle simplifié, nous avons vérifié sa validité en examinant ses résidus.…”

Lip hyper-articulation in loud voice: Effect on resonance-harmonic proximity

“…For example, R1: 𝑓 " tuning has been observed in a professional woman singer (Sundberg, 1975), but has been subsequently observed in trained and untrained singers (Joliveau et al, 2004;Garnier et al, 2010;Henrich et al, 2011). R1:𝑛𝑓 " tuning for 𝑛 > 1 has been reported in both men and women singers of different musical styles (Bourne et al, 2016;Bourne and Garnier, 2012;Henrich et al, 2007Henrich et al, , 2011Sundberg et al, 2011). Resonance tuning has also been suggested in the case of some stage actors (Raphael and Scherer, 1987).…”