PH 105

Dr. Cecilia VogelLecture 14

OUTLINE consonants vowels vocal folds as sound source formants speech spectrograms singing

Vocal Sound Production Sources of sound:

vocal folds lips tongue teeth palate glottis

Sound radiated though mouth and/or nose

Types of Consonants Plosive

air flow is stopped then example p is plosive with k is plosive with

Fricative air flow is restricted and turbulent,

“windy” h is ________ fricative Spanish has a bilabial (lips) fricative

Both are noise-like in waveform and spectrum

Types of Consonants Nasals

the sound radiator is the nose example m, n

Semivowels and liquids are similar to vowels Semivowels are quick vowel sounds

__, __ Liquids have restricted air flow, but

not turbulent (not windy) __, __

Types of Consonants Voiced vs. unvoiced In a voiced consonant,

the vocal folds are vibrating can have a

In an unvoiced consonant the vocal folds are

Compare for example

feel vocal fold vibration

Vowels The sound of vowels (and to some

extent consonants) is due to three factors:

the source of the sound the resonating cavities the radiating opening

mainly the mouth for vowels

See table 15.1 for vowel notation for example, /i/ is long e sound

Vowel Sound Source Vocal fold vibration is the source of

sound for vowels produces a fundamental and many

harmonics control the determines the

alone, the sound is buzzy like a sawtooth wave

contains all harmonics (fig 7.11c)

Resonating Cavities Cavities in the vocal tract

act as filters of the vocal fold buzz,

increasing the loudness of some frequencies which resonate

filtering out freq’s which don’t. fig 15.9

Vocal Tract The vocal tract is complex:

Nasal cavity can be connected or separated by use of not used much for English vowels (French).

Vocal tract can be thought of as a tube about 17 cm long ____ at the vocal fold end, ____ at the lips Resonances of such a tube fn = (nv)/(4L), n must be

not odd harmonics of vocal folds!

Recall Impedance A reflection can occur any time there is

a change in impedance, so there can be resonance in each part of a complex tube. fn = (nv)/(4L), for L1, L2, and L3

Mouth cavity can be made a different

L1

L2

L3

Say Ah For /a/, the mouth is wide

Fig 15.11 shows double tube that may resonate. Of all the freq’s produced by vocal folds, those near 730 Hz, 1090 Hz and 2440 Hz

These resonances are called the formants of the vowel /a/

Other vowels In the vowel sound /e/, the mouth is narrow,

a double tube like that two slides ago works here. producing formants like table 15.3

In /u/, there are constrictions at the back of the mouth and at the lips, a double __________________ model works here.

producing formants like table 15.3

Recall Spectrograms Spectrograms

x-axis is time y-axis is frequency amplitude is shown by heaviness of

graphing

Speech Spectrograms Observe in fig 16.3

fundamental freq of vowel very short period on graph

formants of vowels freq’s that are /i/ expected to have 270, 2290, 3010

_____ spectra of plosive (c) and fricative (s) distinguished by

changes with time /i/ formants rise, then fall into /u/ formants

Singing Singing differs from speaking.

Pay more attention to ______ tone (more like sine wave)

Match formant to __________, so it is very strong. Formants not at fundamental are minimized. Makes vowels

Singer’s formant at about 3kHz adds brilliance to lower voices adds loudness, as it

SummaryConsonants

plosives and fricatives noise-likeplosive has stopped air semivowels and liquids are vowel-like

Vowels (and vowel-like consonants)have pitch — fundamental freqdistinct formants — harmonics that resonateresonances produced by parts of vocal tract

Can read all that off spectrogramSinging: purer, less articulated, singer’s formant