MELISMA SINGING AND PREFERRED STAGE ACOUSTICS FOR SINGERS

Abstract

Vocal performance characteristics, such as tempo, colour, and expressiveness of singers are part of the unique artistic impression of individual performers and individual performances. Subjective pair-comparison studies of singers in a previous study demonstrated that singers prefer added reflections with delays in the range of 10–20 ms. However, the range of values between singers, for the effective duration of the autocorrelation of the singer's voice, was limited, and insufficient to demonstrate a relationship between individual vocal characteristics and the preferred delay time of reflections. In this study, to investigate the singer's preferred acoustics with a change in singing style, subjects were asked to perform non-plosive, non-fricative text for the lyrics, using exclusively “la” syllables ( melisma singing). A resulting shift in preferred time delay was observed. The extent of the shift in preferred reflection time delays is shown to be directly related to the minima of the effective duration of the running autocorrelation function calculated from each singer's voice. Singers were also subjected to training, to assist in identifying sound fields. After training, the average preferred delay time of the reflection did not change, but the statistical variability of the singer's subjective rating of the sound fields was strongly reduced.