Voice Habilitation and Hygiene

Neutral Vocal Tract

The configuration of the tongue, lips, jaw, velar position and
other articulators at rest. The configuration is determined by genetics, cultural/linguistic background, and the moment-to-moment shifts in equilibrium. While there is not much one can change regarding their hard-wired genetic factors, there are many alterations that can be made to the other two factors. Cultural/linguistic characteristics can be changed with re-programming related to accent reduction/shift and other speech patterns. The equilibrium shifts are easily changed at will through exercises such as lip pursing/protruding/spreading, jaw clenching/dropping, tongue dentalizing/retroflexing, or larynx lowering/raising.

Phonation

Phonatory characteristics from signals obtained externally include sound pressure level, fundamental frequency, formant and harmonic energy for sustained phonation and connected speech. Signals can also be analyzed for perturbation values, spectography, voice onset time, vibrato rate, and vibrato characteristic (amplitude, frequency or both).

Phonation Threshold Pressure

A measure of the minimum amount of air pressure required to initiate phonation and it is captured during a task produced with the quietest voice possible.

Singer’s Formant Cluster

The singer’s formant cluster is a formant grouping created by clustering the third, fourth and fifth vocal tract resonances together within a narrower frequency range, approximately around 2,300-3,500Hz. This clustering of the formants provides amplification of the harmonics within this range.

Physiologically, it is thought that this is a result of narrowing the epi-laryngeal tube exit relative to laryngo-pharyngeal openness. This allows the voice to project through the masking effect of an orchestra (or other accompaniment) on spectral content below ca. 500Hz.

Vowel Modification

As pitch ascends, its harmonic set rises, causing its changing frequencies to migrate through their inherent spectral tone color gradients; furthermore, as source harmonics move into and through vocal tract resonance peaks, their intensity rises and falls, changing their individual contribution to the overall, composite vowel percept. This is especially evident when harmonics rise into and through the first resonance (F1)