Professional male singers’ formant tuning strategies for the vowel /a/

Abstract

Certain spectrum characteristics have been identified as important for register equalization around the male passaggio, an effect ascribed to formant tuning although descriptions of formant tuning diverge. Eight professional singers sang scales including their passaggio range on different vowels, applying two formant tuning strategies as found in () classical and () non-classical singing. Formant frequencies were measured using inverse filtering. Results revealed differences between the two strategies. For the classical formant tuning, systematic changes of formant frequencies with pitch were observed. For the highest note sung on /a/, was below the second partial and in the vicinity of the third. Similar spectrum characteristics were achieved by different and values between singers.

Keywords::

• Formant tuning
• harmonics
• male singers
• spectrum

Acknowledgements

The kind co-operation of the singers is gratefully acknowledged. A preliminary version of this investigation was presented at the Physiology and Acoustics of Singing conference at KTH, Stockholm, in August 2010. The authors are indebted to the Schering Health Care Ltd and Bayer Portugal for providing the means to acquire the equipment, and to the Gomes Teixeira Foundation for support.

Declaration of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest.