Long Term Average Spectrum Characteristics of Head and Chest Register Sounds of Western Operatic Singers : Extended Study

Ban, Jae-Ho; Kwon, Young-Kyung; Jin, Sung-Min

J Korean Soc Laryngol Phoniatr Logop > Volume 15(1); 2004 > Article

Journal of The Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics 2004;15(1): 31-36.

성악다들의 목소리에 대한 Long Term Average Spectrum 분석 -$2^{nd}$ Singer's Formant의 존재 가능성에 대하여-

성균관대학교 의과대학 강북삼성병원 이비인후과학교실

Long Term Average Spectrum Characteristics of Head and Chest Register Sounds of Western Operatic Singers : Extended Study

Jae-Ho Ban, Young-Kyung Kwon, Sung-Min Jin

Department of Otolaryngology, Kangbuk Samsung Hospital, School of Medicine, Sungkyunkwan University

ABSTRACT

Background and Objectives
: It has been shown that the epilaryngeal tube in the human airway is responsible for vocal ring, or the singer's formant. In previous study, authors showed that in trained tenors, besides the conventional singer's formant in the region of ,5500Hz, another energy peak was observed in the region of 8,000Hz. This peak was interpreted as the second resonance of the epilarynx tube. Singers in other voice categories who produce vocal ring are assumed to have the same peak, but no measurements have as yet been made.
Materials and Method
s : Fifteen tenors, fourteen baritones, seven sopranos and five mezzo sopranos attending the music college, department of vocal music who could reliably produce the head and chest registers were chosen for this study. Each subject was asked to produce an/ah/sound for at least three seconds for the head register sound(tenors ; G4, barions ; E4 sopranos ; F5 and mezzosopranos ; C5) and for the chest register sound (tenors ; C3, baritones ; D3, sopranos ; D4 and Mezzosoprano ; A3). The sound data was analyzed using the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT)-based power spectrum, Long term average(LTA) power spectrum using the FFT algorithm of the Computerized Speech Lab (CSL, Kay elemetrics, Model 4300B, USA). Statistical analysis was performed using the Mann-Whitney test of the Statistical Package for Social sciences(SPSS).
Results
: For head register sounds, a significant increase was seen in the 2,200-3,400Hz region(p<0.05) and the Similar to the head register sounds, there was a significant increase in energy in the four trained singer group compared with the untrained group in the 2,200-3,100Hz region(p<0.05), the 7,800-8,400Hz region(p<0.05) for the chest register sounds.
Conclusion
s : When good vocal production was made for the head and chest registers, an energy peak was observed near 2,500Hz, a frequency already known as the "singer's formant', in all subjects in the study group. Another region of increased energy was observed around 8,000Hz that had not been noticed previously. The authors believe this region to be the second singer's formant.

KEY WORDS： Singer's formant;Register;