An examination of the historical treatises of Manuel Garcia II and Giambattista Mancini, scientific studies pertaining to glottal closure, and Vocal Function Exercises used in clinical speech pathology led to an exploratory study that attempted to increase the glottal closure in an untrained university male chorus using only choral voice building exercises. The exploratory study used a single group, pre-test post-test design, and data was recorded using audio recordings of the entire chorus as well as electroglottograph measurements of individual subjects. The data show an increase in glottal closure as measured by closed quotient values, and an increase in energy in the upper partials of the recorded acoustic signal from the chorus.

Cette thèse présente une recherche exploratoire sur l'application du Formalisme Microcanonique Multiéchelles (FMM) à l'analyse de la parole. Dérivé de principes issus en physique statistique, le FMM permet une analyse géométrique précise de la dynamique non linéaire des signaux complexes. Il est fondé sur l'estimation des paramètres géométriques locaux (les exposants de singularité) qui quantifient le degré de prédictibilité à chaque point du signal. Si correctement définis est estimés, ils fournissent des informations précieuses sur la dynamique locale de signaux complexes. Nous démontrons le potentiel du FMM dans l'analyse de la parole en développant: un algorithme performant pour la segmentation phonétique, un nouveau codeur, un algorithme robuste pour la détection précise des instants de fermeture glottale, un algorithme rapide pour l’analyse par prédiction linéaire parcimonieuse et une solution efficace pour l’approximation multipulse du signal source d'excitation. / This thesis presents an exploratory research on the application of a nonlinear multiscale formalism, called the Microcanonical Multiscale Formalism (the MMF), to the analysis of speech signals. Derived from principles in Statistical Physics, the MMF allows accurate analysis of the nonlinear dynamics of complex signals. It relies on the estimation of local geometrical parameters, the singularity exponents (SE), which quantify the degree of predictability at each point of the signal domain. When correctly defined and estimated, these exponents can provide valuable information about the local dynamics of complex signals and has been successfully used in many applications ranging from signal representation to inference and prediction.We show the relevance of the MMF to speech analysis and develop several applications to show the strength and potential of the formalism. Using the MMF, in this thesis we introduce: a novel and accurate text-independent phonetic segmentation algorithm, a novel waveform coder, a robust accurate algorithm for detection of the Glottal Closure Instants, a closed-form solution for the problem of sparse linear prediction analysis and finally, an efficient algorithm for estimation of the excitation source signal.