Long Term Average Spectrum Characteristics of Speaking Voice of Western Operatic Singers

Long Term Average Spectrum을 이용한 성악가들의 Speaking Voice 분석

Background and Objectives : Many studies have described and analyzed singer's formant and it has been shown that the epilaryngeal tube in the human airway is responsible for vocal ring, or the singer's formant. A similar phenomenon produced by trained singers in their speech led some authors to examine the speaker's ring. This study was designed to analyze the speaking voice of the singers and speaker's ring. Baterials and Methods : Ten tenors, fifteen baritones, fifteen sopranos and ten mezzo sopranos attending the music college, department of vocal music were chosen for this study. Fifteen male and fifteen female untrained normal speakers were chosen for control group. Each subject was asked to produce a sample of a sustained spoken vowel /ah/ sound for at least five seconds and read sentence 'Kaeul'. 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 LTA Power spectrum of/ah/ sound, a significant increase was seen in the 2,500-3,500Hz region(p<0.01) in four trained singer group compared with untrained speaker group, and a significant increase in the 9,000-10,000Hz region(p<0.01) in soparano group. Similarly, in sentence 'Kaeul', there was a significant increase in energy in the tenor, baritone, mezzo soprano group compared with the untrained speaker group in the 2,500-3,500Hz region(p<0.01), and a significant increase in all frequency region(p<0.01) in the soprano group. Conclusions : The LTA power spectrum suggests that trained singers group show more energy concentration in the 'singer's formant' region in the speaking voice, and authors believe this region to be the 'speaker's ring'. Further research is needed on the effect of singing training on the resonance of the speaking voice.