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