Preliminary study on lyrics intelligibility at different pitches in Chinese vocal music

Abstract

Background: There is still no clear experimental data on the relationship between the intelligibility of Chinese vocal lyrics and different pitch.

Aims/Objective: This study aims at investigating the intelligibility of Chinese sung words at different pitch.

Material and methods: A word list is created and sung by eight singers at five different pitches (C5, F4, bB4, bE5, and bA5). The intelligibility of the words is tested by listeners with and without music background.

Results: The average intelligibility score in the music-listeners is 84.9% (SD = 9.5%). The score at five pitches (from low to high) is 93%, 91.7%, 89.7%, 83.1%, and 67.1%, respectively. The average score is 77.4% (SD = 10.7%) in the non-music listeners. The average score is 87%, 86%, 79.8%, 76.8%, and 57.5% at five pitches, respectively. The ratio of unidentified sung words is 19.3% (SD, 4.3%) in female singers and 11.9% (SD = 1.5%) in male singers.

Conclusions: The intelligibility of Chinese sung words declines gradually with increase in pitch, and the extent of decreases gradually elevating. Generally, the identified ratio of words sung by male singers is higher than that of female singers. The listeners who had no musical background have a lower intelligibility score than those with experience.

Chinese abstract

背景：关于中国声乐歌词的可懂度与不同音高之间的关系, 目前还没有明确的实验数据。

目的：本研究旨在探讨不同音高的汉语唱词的可懂度。

材料和方法：由八个歌手编写并以五种不同的音高（C5, F4, bB4, bE5和bA5）演唱了一系列单词。有音乐背景和没有音乐背景的听众进行单词可懂度的测试。

结果：音乐听众的平均可懂度得分为84.9％（SD = 9.5％）。五个音高（从低到高）的得分分别为93％、91.7％、89.7％、83.1％和67.1％。非音乐听众的平均得分为77.4％（SD = 10.7％）。五个音高的平均得分分别为87％、86％、79.8％、76.8％和57.5％。在女歌手中, 未识别唱词的比例为19.3％（SD=4.3％）, 而在男歌手中为11.9％（SD = 1.5％）。

结论：随着音高的增加, 汉语唱词的可懂度逐渐下降, 而且降幅逐渐提高。一般来说, 男歌手演唱的单词的可懂比例高于女歌手。没有音乐背景的听众的可懂度得分低于有音乐经验的听众。

Keywords:

• Chinese vocal music
• intelligibility
• Mandarin perception
• sung words
• lyrics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.