Vocal tract dimensional characteristics of professional singers with different types of singing voices

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate the relationship between different types of singing voice in each gender, and the vocal tract dimensions, the length and volume, and the formant frequencies of vowels. Twenty-five sopranos, 11 mezzo-sopranos, 17 tenors, and 12 baritones were included in the study. The participants’ vocal tract dimensions were measured by acoustic reflection technique (ART). They were also asked to speak vowels and sing the song, Happy Birthday”. The first three formant frequencies of four recorded vowels were obtained by Praat software and used to correlate with the vocal tract findings. The results showed that baritones had larger oral volume and total vocal tract volume than tenors significantly. Besides, sopranos had generally higher formant frequencies than mezzo-sopranos. The findings of current study provided insights on the objective method in singing voice classification.