The field of biological acoustics has witnessed a steady increase in the research into overtone singing, or “throat-singing,” in which a singer utilizes resonance throughout the vocal tract to sing melodies with the overtones created by a vocal drone. Recent research has explored both how a singer vocalizes in order to obtain rich harmonics from a vocal drone, as well as how further manipulations of the vocal apparatus function to filter and amplify selected harmonics. In the field of phonetics, vowel production is quantified by measuring the frequencies of vocal tract resonances, or formants, which a speaker manipulates to voice a particular vowel. Thus, an investigation of throat singing is closely linked to human speech production. Formants are usually detected in vowel spectra obtained using Fast Fourier Transform algorithms (FFTs). An alternative method that provides much higher frequency resolution is external excitation of the vocal tract and measurement of the pressure response signal at the mouth’s opening, which can be used to calculate the acoustic impedance spectrum. We demonstrate the use of such an “acoustic impedance meter” to measure the formant frequencies of common vowels as well as the oscillatory modes of simple resonant pipe systems. The impedance meter accurately measures fundamental pipe modes and a variety of formant frequencies with an uncertainty of 1 Hz. Finally, we assess how the impedance meter may be used to measure the unique resonances achieved by qualified throat singers.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:CLAREMONT/oai:scholarship.claremont.edu:pomona_theses-1024 |
| Date | 25 April 2008 |
| Creators | Foresman, Bryant R. |
| Publisher | Scholarship @ Claremont |
| Source Sets | Claremont Colleges |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Pomona Senior Theses |
| Rights | © 2008 Bryant R. Foresman |
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