Elements of Voice Quality: Perceptual, Acoustic, and Physiologic Aspects

Abstract

This chapter discusses the elements of voice quality and its perceptual, acoustic, and physiologic aspects. Voice quality has been of great interest to many professions concerned with the voice from those in medicine who listen to pathologic voices to those in music who must develop professional voices. Research in voice quality has been abundant, varied, and very often disparate. Phonetically, voice quality changes with each change in vowel. A person makes these quality changes thousands of times a day as he shifts from vowel to vowel to consonant. These phonetic changes are made by most speakers using what may be viewed as a habitual set of the articulators. There are temporary physiologic conditions, such as pain, fatigue, excitement, cold, illness, or physical strain that can effect changes in voice quality. In addition to these unconscious forces that may impose a characteristic color, there are also conscious ways of using voice that may be calculated to soothe, to excite, to control, or to conform. Nevertheless, with all the possible variations, there are some similarities and dissimilarities among all voice qualities