Direct measurements of vocal tract resonances and of output spectrum in the 2-4 kHz range in Western operatic singing

Henrich N., Smith J., Wolfe J.

The 2-5 kHz range in Western operatic singing has attracted particular attention because male operatic singing voices often exhibit an enhancement of radiated power in this range. A strong spectral peak at a frequency near 3 kHz is called a singer's formant and one explanation for the phenomenon, due to Sundberg, is that the narrowing of the epilaryngeal tube may give rise to a clustering of the third, fourth and fifth vocal tract resonances (R3, R4 and R5), and therefore to the formants they produce.
We studied 14 professional male and female opera singers. As well as recording the sound, we used electroglottography to study the glottal source and we simultaneously studied the resonances using the technique of injecting broad band sound at the mouth. Here we discuss the frequencies of resonances lying between 2 and 4 kHz for three different vowels (those found in the words “hard”, “heard”, and “hoard”) over the whole tessitura and in speech. For most singers, the separation between R3 and R4 varies little through the tessitura and has a value between 500 and 1000 Hz. For a few singers, however, an extra resonance is observed in the range normally occupied by R3 and R4.

Nathalie Henrich, Ph.D.
http://www.icp.inpg.fr/~henrich/
GIPSA-lab (Grenoble Images Parole Signal Automatique)
UMR5216 - CNRS, INPG, Univ. Stendhal, Univ. Joseph Fourier
Département Parole et Cognition 46,
Avenue Félix Viallet,
F-38031 Grenoble Cedex 1 - France
Tél. +33 (0)4 76 57 45 34 Fax. +33 (0)4 76 57 47 10
Courriel : Nathalie.Henrich@icp.inpg.fr