Interprofessional Approaches to Acoustic Voice Analysis

ABSTRACT

When teaching voice for actors, much of the teacher’s work dwells in the realm of perceptual skills and assessment. Acting voice pedagogy often requires students to imagine physiological processes using the teacher’s descriptive imagery. Students’ progress may benefit from the incorporation of technology to teach and envision aspects of the voice that cannot be seen or are difficult to imagine. Acoustic assessment using computer software offers potential opportunities for making the intangible or imperceptible more precise and perceivable. Acoustic measures provide objective information to correlate with auditory perceptual judgments of vocal quality, discriminate between normal and disordered vocal quality, and are sufficiently stable to assess change in performance across time. For the acting voice teacher interested in exploring acoustic assessment, this paper introduces the parameters of acoustic analysis and envisions its potential uses in the studio or classroom. The teacher who explores acoustic assessment may discover new ways to discuss voice production and new tools to describe and vivify voice work using an unexpected artistic source: data. In concert with clinicians on the actor’s voice care team, the acting voice teacher versed in acoustic voice analysis may offer their students an enhanced approach to acting and speaking voice habilitation.

KEYWORDS:

• Acoustic analysis
• praat
• jitter
• shimmer
• perturbation
• voice training
• voice for actors

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kathryn Cunningham

Kathryn Cunningham is an Assistant Professor of Theatre at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and specializes in voice, speech, and dialects. She is a professional actor with film, television, voiceover, and stage experience, notably Lady Macbeth at Utah Shakespeare Festival. She is a certified teacher of Knight-Thompson Speechwork and will complete a graduate certificate in vocology from the Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences at Lamar University in January 2022. She holds an MFA in acting from Florida State University/Asolo Conservatory for Actor Training and a BA in dramatic art and political science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Srihimaja Nandamudi

Srihimaja Nandamudi, PhD, CCC-SLP, FNAP, is an Assistant Professor in Speech-Language Pathology in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at the College of Health Professions, Grand Valley State University, and specializes in voice, upper airways, and swallowing disorders. She is an ASHA certified speech-language pathologist (CCC-SLP). She completed her PhD in Communication Sciences and Disorders with a specialty area in voice and speech science at Bowling Green State University. Her dissertation focused on acoustics and aerodynamics of vocal vibrato in Western classical singing. She has over 7 years of clinical-pedagogical experience working and collaborating with professional voice users on interprofessional voice intervention.