Vowel equalization is a technique that can be used by singers to achieve a more balanced vocal tone. The technique balances corresponding front and back vowels, which share approximate tongue heights, and also balances high and low vowels in a more neutral or centralized lingual posture. Formants are resonance peaks that define each specific vowel. This study measured shifts in the first and second formants (F1 and F2) of the vowels /e, i, ɑ, o, u/ following training in vowel equalization. Prior to the training, the vowel formants were measured in amateur 15 college-aged singers. They sang the first two stanzas of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and then sustained each vowel for approximately 2 seconds. Following a 15-minute instruction in the vowel equalization technique, the singers repeated the exercises and the formants were re-measured. Shifts in F1 and F2 represent changes in lingual placement within the oral cavity. Vowel equalization pulls the lingual posture of a particular vowel to a more neutral or central position. While singing, a neutral placement is perceived as a pleasing balance between bright and dark tones. This study showed that following training the singers' formant values changed in a manner reflective of a more central tongue posture. These findings support the suggestion that the vowel equalization technique does indeed alter the articulation of sung vowels, shifting the formants to produce the desired chiaroscuro or balance between bright and dark sounds.

No description available.

The modal and spectral characteristic belongs among important human acoustic spaces of vocal tract. They occur at generating vowels and other acoustic aspects of human speech. We can observe the resonant phenomena of acoustic cavity of vocal tract in the human speech spectrum, primary however at vowels generation. However near vocal tract occurs series of frequency tops in the spectrum of vowels, which necessarily may not be resonant origin. That is why sometimes quite difficult assign is right frequency tops to resonant tops of acoustic cavity. It consist in operate of acoustic excitation of vocal tracts. The pronounced of vowels loudly and in a whisper has different excitation of vocal tract. At generating vowels loudly is excited by scheme of harmonic components outspread to fundamental frequency of glottis. At talking in a whisper is vocal tract excited by continuous spectrum generated by turbulent fluxion of exhaled flatus over glottis. We give a name "formant" to a frequency, at which happens to resonance of acoustic space. Aim of this work is analysis of Czech vowels formants generated loudly and in a whisper. Experimental metering of these formants was performed on human vocalic tract for all vowels. Further then on artificially created vocalic tracts for vowels A, I. Then were modal characteristics of vocal cavity for vowels A, I, tested by method of final elements with the help of computing program ANSYS. In this work were surveyed courses of acoustic pressures for individual formants, influence sizes vocal tract and influence of correct mouth opening on formants. Also has been effected computational simulation of harmonic excitation on tract by side of glottis.

This study evaluates an automated formant estimation procedure designed to adapt to speakers and variations in speech. The adaption is achieved by using the formant ceiling with the least variation (in combined estimates of F1 and F2) as the optimal ceiling. This optimization renders the best possible estimations given the data, therefore it could presumably also adapt to variations such as high fo. The procedure has not been evaluated by using material with known formant frequencies. Therefore, this is done here. The performance of the procedure is tested through comparison with a common procedure with fixed ceilings, based on speaker sex. The estimations are carried out on synthetic vowel tokens, systematically varied in formant frequencies and in fo, to match the natural variation within vowels and between speakers. The formant estimations are compared to target values, compared between procedures and to earlier studies. The results reveal that the formant estimation procedure with optimized ceilings does not perform better than the common procedure. Both procedures perform better than earlier methods, but neither deals satisfactorily with high fo. / Denna studie utvärderar en automatisk formantmätningsprocedur utvecklad för anpassning efter talare och variationer i tal. Anpassningen åstadkoms genom att använda det formanttak som uppvisar minst variation (i mätningar av F1 och F2 i kombination) som det optimerade taket. Denna optimering ger bästa möjliga estimeringar utifrån data, därför skulle troligtvis anpassningen även kunna ske till variation såsom hög fo. Proceduren har inte utvärderats genom att använda material med kända formantfrekvenser, varför det görs här. Formantmätningsprocedurens prestation testas genom jämförelse med gängse procedur med fasta formanttak, baserade på skillnader mellan kön. Formantmätningarna utförs på syntetiska vokalexemplar, systematiskt varierade i formantfrekvenser och i fo för att motsvara naturlig variation inom vokaler och mellan talare. Formantmätningarna jämförs mot ursprungsvärdena, procedurerna sinsemellan och med tidigare studier. Resultatet visar att formantmätningsproceduren med optimerat formanttak inte presterar bättre än den gängse proceduren. Båda procedurer presterar bättre än tidigare metoder, men ingen hanterar hög fo på ett tillfredställande sätt.

A hipernasalidade de fala é um distúrbio da ressonância nasal, freqüentemente encontrada em portadores de fissura palatina com disfunção velofaríngea. Constitui-se de uma nasalidade imprópria e excessiva dos sons exclusivamente orais, que pode ser analisada pela espectrografia, que decompõe o sinal de fala em três dimensões de análise: freqüência, tempo e intensidade, gerando um gráfico, o espectrograma. Assim, o objetivo do presente estudo é investigar as características espectrográficas da hipernasalidade de fala de mulheres portadoras de fissura palatina e comparar os achados com os resultados da nasometria e da avaliação perceptivo -auditiva de suas emissões de fala. Contou-se com a colaboração de 30 mulheres sem comprometimentos de fala e do trato vocal, 5 portadoras de fissura palatina não operada e 21 portadoras de fissura palatina operada, na faixa etária de 18 a 40 anos de idade. Emitiram as vogais [a] e nasal sustentadas, separadamente e dentro de uma frase-veículo diante do nasômetro e de um gravador digital. Estas amostras de fala foram avaliadas perceptivo-auditivamente, determinadas suas nasalâncias e características formânticas. Foram encontradas as seguintes características espectrográficas: inserção de formantes nasais e antiformantes dentre os formantes orais nas emissões nasalizadas/hipernasalizadas. Não houve correspondência direta desses achados com a nasometria nem com a avaliação perceptivo- auditiva e nem destas entre si / Speech hypernasality is a nasal resonance’s disorder, come across often in cleft palate persons with velopharingeal disfuction. It is an inappropriate and excessive nasality just oral sounds, that can be analyzed for spectrograph (decompose speech signal in three dimensions: frequency, time and intensity, generating the spectrogram). Hence, this dissertation has the objective of investigating speech hipernasality spectrographic cues of the cleft palate women and to compare the findings with the nasometry results and auditory perceptual evaluation of the speech issues. Thirty women without speech and of the vocal tract problems, 5 cleft palate women no operated and 21 operated (18 to 40 years old) issues [a] and nasal, isolated and within of the carrier phrase in front of the nasometer and digital record. After auditory perceptual evaluation, nasalances and formants cues it was possible to verify nasal formants and antiformants among oral formants in the nasalized/hipernasalyzed issues and don´t have correspondency this findings with the nasometry neither with the auditory perceptual evaluation neither themselves

O objetivo deste trabalho é comparar o padrão formântico da fala atuada com o canto no teatro popular em São Paulo, com base nos estudos de Raposo de Medeiros (2002) e Sundberg (2015). Definiu-se a fonética acústica como área de estudo para a escolha do método, bem como para as análises dos aspectos acústicos investigados. Quanto ao método, o primeiro passo foi selecionar a canção Enchente, da peça Hospital da gente, que pertence ao repertório do Grupo Clariô de Teatro. Em seguida, realizou-se a coleta de dados da qual participou uma atriz profissional, de 33 anos. Solicitamos à atriz que cantasse e falasse o texto da canção como se estivesse no palco. A fala produzida pela atriz apresentou duas características distintas: em alguns momentos foi executada de forma gritada e, em outros momentos, de forma não-gritada, que nomeamos de fala normal. A fala gritada nos chamou à atenção, e consequentemente, despertou-nos o interesse em observar esse aspecto de qualidade de voz, em nossos dados. Após a gravação, tratamento e segmentação dos dados, medimos e comparamos qualitativamente os três primeiros formantes, F1, F2 e F3, bem como a Frequência Fundamental, F0, das vogais do PB na posição tônica, em sua porção mais estável. Com a emergência dos dados de fala gritada, vimos, então, a necessidade de o corpus ser aumentado com uma terceira condição de gravação, a condição de fala neutra, que não pode ser coletada pela atriz por motivos de falta de agenda. Assim, coletamos os dados da autora desta pesquisa para ser utilizada como parâmetro nas análises de qualidade de voz. Em um análise qualitativa foi possível dizer que as vogais da fala apresentam variação em sua produção, o que resulta em valores muitos diferentes intra vogais, por exemplo entre as vogais [e]. Já no canto foi possível perceber que as vogais [a], [] e [] apresentam seus valores mais concentrados, enquanto as demais vogais cantadas, as vogais altas, tendem a mostrar valores mais dispersos mesmo quando cantadas. A qualidade de voz da atriz varia ao longo do texto, mas as ocorrências de fala gritada possuem o F1 elevado; uma das característica descritas na literatura para descrever esse tipo de fala. Essa dissertação tenta aproximar estudos acadêmicos da área linguística, com o movimento artístico da periferia de São Paulo, com o intuito de apresentar aos artistas como a fonética acústica pode auxiliá-los em suas composições, no sentido de dar um pouco de clareza de como funciona o processo de produção de fala. / The objective of this work is to compare the formant pattern of speech with singing in the popular theater in São Paulo, based on studies by Raposo de Medeiros (2002) and Sundberg (2015). Acoustic Phonetics was defined as a study area both for the methodology and for the analysis of acoustic aspects investigated. As for the method, the first step was to select the song \"Enchente\" from the play \"Hospital da Gente\" which belongs to the repertoire of the Clariô Theater Group. Then, a data collection was performed, with the participation of a 33 years old professional actress. We asked the actress to sing and speak the text of the song as if she were on the stage. The speech produced by the actress presented two distinct characteristics: in a few moments she performed it in a shouted way and, at other times, in a non-shouted way, that we call normal speech. The shouted speech caught our attention, and consequently aroused our interest in observing this aspect of voice quality, in our data. After recording, treatment and segmentation of the data, we measured and compared the first three formants, F1, F2 and F3, as well as the Fundamental Frequency, F0, of the PB vowels in the tonic position, in their most stable portion. With the emergence of shouted speech data we then saw the need for the corpus to be increased with a third recording condition, the neutral speech condition, which could not be collected with the actress due to her full agenda. Thus, we collected data from the author of this research to be used as a parameter in the analysis of voice quality. In a qualitative analysis it was possible to say that speech vowels present variation in their production, which results in many different intra vowel values, for example between vowels [e]. In the song it was possible to perceive that the vowels [a], [] and [] present their most concentrated values, while the other vowels sung, the high vowels, tend to disperse even when sung. The voice quality of the actress varies throughout the text, but the shouted speech occurrences have high F1; one of the characteristics described in the literature to describe this type of speech. This dissertation tries to approximate academic studies of the linguistic area, with the artistic movement of the periphery of São Paulo, in order to present to the artists how acoustic phonetics can help them in their compositions, in the sense of giving a little clarity of how it works the process of speech production.

O objetivo deste trabalho é comparar o padrão formântico da fala atuada com o canto no teatro popular em São Paulo, com base nos estudos de Raposo de Medeiros (2002) e Sundberg (2015). Definiu-se a fonética acústica como área de estudo para a escolha do método, bem como para as análises dos aspectos acústicos investigados. Quanto ao método, o primeiro passo foi selecionar a canção Enchente, da peça Hospital da gente, que pertence ao repertório do Grupo Clariô de Teatro. Em seguida, realizou-se a coleta de dados da qual participou uma atriz profissional, de 33 anos. Solicitamos à atriz que cantasse e falasse o texto da canção como se estivesse no palco. A fala produzida pela atriz apresentou duas características distintas: em alguns momentos foi executada de forma gritada e, em outros momentos, de forma não-gritada, que nomeamos de fala normal. A fala gritada nos chamou à atenção, e consequentemente, despertou-nos o interesse em observar esse aspecto de qualidade de voz, em nossos dados. Após a gravação, tratamento e segmentação dos dados, medimos e comparamos qualitativamente os três primeiros formantes, F1, F2 e F3, bem como a Frequência Fundamental, F0, das vogais do PB na posição tônica, em sua porção mais estável. Com a emergência dos dados de fala gritada, vimos, então, a necessidade de o corpus ser aumentado com uma terceira condição de gravação, a condição de fala neutra, que não pode ser coletada pela atriz por motivos de falta de agenda. Assim, coletamos os dados da autora desta pesquisa para ser utilizada como parâmetro nas análises de qualidade de voz. Em um análise qualitativa foi possível dizer que as vogais da fala apresentam variação em sua produção, o que resulta em valores muitos diferentes intra vogais, por exemplo entre as vogais [e]. Já no canto foi possível perceber que as vogais [a], [] e [] apresentam seus valores mais concentrados, enquanto as demais vogais cantadas, as vogais altas, tendem a mostrar valores mais dispersos mesmo quando cantadas. A qualidade de voz da atriz varia ao longo do texto, mas as ocorrências de fala gritada possuem o F1 elevado; uma das característica descritas na literatura para descrever esse tipo de fala. Essa dissertação tenta aproximar estudos acadêmicos da área linguística, com o movimento artístico da periferia de São Paulo, com o intuito de apresentar aos artistas como a fonética acústica pode auxiliá-los em suas composições, no sentido de dar um pouco de clareza de como funciona o processo de produção de fala. / The objective of this work is to compare the formant pattern of speech with singing in the popular theater in São Paulo, based on studies by Raposo de Medeiros (2002) and Sundberg (2015). Acoustic Phonetics was defined as a study area both for the methodology and for the analysis of acoustic aspects investigated. As for the method, the first step was to select the song \"Enchente\" from the play \"Hospital da Gente\" which belongs to the repertoire of the Clariô Theater Group. Then, a data collection was performed, with the participation of a 33 years old professional actress. We asked the actress to sing and speak the text of the song as if she were on the stage. The speech produced by the actress presented two distinct characteristics: in a few moments she performed it in a shouted way and, at other times, in a non-shouted way, that we call normal speech. The shouted speech caught our attention, and consequently aroused our interest in observing this aspect of voice quality, in our data. After recording, treatment and segmentation of the data, we measured and compared the first three formants, F1, F2 and F3, as well as the Fundamental Frequency, F0, of the PB vowels in the tonic position, in their most stable portion. With the emergence of shouted speech data we then saw the need for the corpus to be increased with a third recording condition, the neutral speech condition, which could not be collected with the actress due to her full agenda. Thus, we collected data from the author of this research to be used as a parameter in the analysis of voice quality. In a qualitative analysis it was possible to say that speech vowels present variation in their production, which results in many different intra vowel values, for example between vowels [e]. In the song it was possible to perceive that the vowels [a], [] and [] present their most concentrated values, while the other vowels sung, the high vowels, tend to disperse even when sung. The voice quality of the actress varies throughout the text, but the shouted speech occurrences have high F1; one of the characteristics described in the literature to describe this type of speech. This dissertation tries to approximate academic studies of the linguistic area, with the artistic movement of the periphery of São Paulo, in order to present to the artists how acoustic phonetics can help them in their compositions, in the sense of giving a little clarity of how it works the process of speech production.

The current study examined the association between formant trajectories and tongue and lip movements in the American English diphthongs /aɪ/, /aʊ/, and /ɔɪ/. Seventeen native speakers of American English had electromagnetic sensors placed on their tongues and lips to record movement data along with corresponding acoustic data during productions of the diphthongs in isolation. F1 and F2 trajectories were extracted from the middle 50% of the diphthongs and compared with time-aligned kinematic data from tongue and lip movements. The movement and formant tracks were converted to z-scores and plotted together on a common time scale. Absolute difference scores between kinematic variables and acoustic variables were summed along each track to reflect the association between the movement and acoustic records. Results show that tongue movement has the closest association with changes in F1 and F2 for the diphthong /aɪ/. Lip movement has the closest association with changes in F1 and F2 for the diphthong /aʊ/. Results for the diphthong /ɔɪ/ suggest tongue advancement has the closest association with changes in F2, while neither lip movement nor tongue movement have a clearly defined association with changes in F1. These results suggest that for diphthongs with the lip rounding feature, lip movement may have a greater influence on F1 and F2 than previously considered. Researchers who use formant data to make inferences about tongue movement and vowel space may benefit from considering the possible influence of lip movements on vocal tract resonance.

Adult Japanese learners of English (JLEs) are often stereotyped as being unable to produce or perceive the English phonemes /l/ and /r/. This study analyzed acoustic samples of /l/ and /r/ obtained from intermediate-level Japanese speakers in two variable contexts: word positions (initial/final) and task type (controlled/free). These tokens were subjected to acoustic analysis which is one way of comparing oral productions of native and non-native English speakers. Previous research has identified a lowered third formant (F3) as the hallmark of an American English /r/ as produced by a native speaker, independent of word position or task type. The results indicate that participants can produce appropriate and statistically significant differences (p<.001) between these two phonemes across word position and task type. Other findings indicate that neither task type nor word position had a significant effect on F3 values. These results indicate that Japanese speakers of English may have the ability to distinguish /l/ from /r/ without specialized pronunciation training, but these differences are less dramatic as identified by F3 frequency values that those produced by native English speakers when producing these contrasting phonemes. In most tokens, however, large effect sizes remained between JLE productions and NES standards.

<p>The aim of this paper is to explore the features that combine to make up the distinctive accent of the actor Sir Sean Connery. This study outlines the subject’s basic vowel system and compares it to data collected on the vowel systems of Received Pronunciation (RP) and Scottish Standard English (SSE) from previous research (Stuart-Smith 1999, Hawkins & Midgely 2005, Fisk 2006). Furthermore, this essay examines the degree to which other elements associated with SSE are present in the subject’s accent. These features include the Scottish Vowel Lengthening Rule (SVLR), the presence of dark /l/, rhoticity and T-glottalling. It is hypothesised that the subject speaks a modified variety of SSE yet retains the aforementioned qualities typically associated with SSE.</p><p>The speech analysis software programs Wavesurfer (version 1.4.7.) and Praat (version 4.4.33.) were used to analyse sections of sound taken from a speech given by the subject at an awards ceremony. Instrumental analysis of this nature was deemed appropriate in order to establish a high degree of objectivity in this study. Of the wide range of recorded material available the subject’s acceptance speech was judged most suitable for analysis. This is a passage of spontaneous speech as opposed to a movie script, where the subject talks of his background and career.</p><p>Having analysed the subject’s accent in this way, certain sociolinguistic implications can be drawn. The results suggest that Sir Sean Connery does indeed speak a variety of SSE however rather surprisingly the subject’s accent appears quite typical of his Edinburgh origins. The vowel system not only identifies the subject as an SSE speaker but also indicates traces of his working-class background e.g., the frontal quality to Connery’s realisation of /u/ and his low /I/ are typical of a working-class SSE speaker. Moreover, the general low quality found in Connery’s basic vowel system can be interpreted as revealing a little of his working-class origins.</p><p>Evidence of the other features associated with SSE was also found in the subject’s accent. Durational evidence indicates (albeit tentatively at this stage) that the SVLR operates within his accent while dark /l/ and t-glottalling were also observed.</p><p>While it is also apparent that Connery speaks a rhotic variety of English it is the nature and variety of his /r/ production that is most interesting. The subject appears to produce a retroflex realisation of /r/ which affects other consonants in its environment. This /r/ may be indicative of an earlier Irish influence over Connery’s accent.</p><p>It should be stated that due to the nature and the limited size of this study, all findings are preliminary and more research is needed into this area before any firm conclusions can be drawn.</p>