Laryngeal height, modal registers, and modes of phonation contribute jointly to vocal timbre

Abstract

Timbre encompasses every distinguishing quality of a sound other than its pitch, duration, loudness, and sound location. Musical sound makers exploit contrasts in timbre. The voice organ in particular is capable of an impressive array of vibrational patterns with acoustic consequences perceived as timbral changes. As a first step towards determining the dimensionality of perceptual timbre in a singing human voice, we assessed the relation between, on the one hand, production parameters, executed by a well-trained vocalist capable of the articulation control necessary for demonstrations, and on the other hand, the complex spectral and temporal modulations in the acoustic signal of the resulting 50 timbral variants. Production parameters on a high front vowel included 5 laryngeal heights (from the lowest possible to a mostly elevated position), 4 modes of phonation (clean, blowy, breathy, and pressed), and several changes to resonance (nasal, bright, and muted) as well as vocal register differences comparing vocal fry and modal registers. Raised and lowered larynx positions alter formants in a regular manner that overlaps with phonation patterns and other articulatory alterations of resonance.