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CHAPTER V |
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CONCEPTS OF RESONANCE |
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D
efinition. According to Webster, resonance is the intensification and enrichment of a musical tone by means of supplementary vibration. It is also the result of synchronous vibrations that blend with the initial pulsations issuing from a generator of sound. The action of the resonator, which is distinguished from that of the generator, is usually to amplify certain frequencies produced by the generator while damping out or absorbing other frequencies. Therefore the effect of resonance is to increase the initial tone or to change its quality or both. [Curry 124, p. 42]
Theories of Resonance general descriptions
The human vocal organ is a wind instrument analogous to the open tube type of wind instrument in the orchestra. This analogy now seems widely accepted. Such an instrument consists of a mouthpiece where the sound is generated and a cylindrical pipe or cavity where the sound is resonated. The quality of tone produced by such an instrument is always dependent upon two main factors: the manner in which the generator vibrates and the shape of the air cavity which constitutes the resonator. [Red-field 462, p. 267] The resonance properties of cylindrical tubes and similar cavities can be accurately determined experimentally. But the vocal cavities are so irregular in shape, varying as they do from individual to individual that the only way of arriving at any estimate of their resonance properties is by comparing them with analogous shapes and tubes of fixed pattern and design. Therefore, the most common vocal descriptions are borrowed, by analogy, from musical instruments. The human vocal instrument is described as consisting of a set of vocal cords or mouthpiece and an outlying structure of bony and muscular cavities which constitute a resonator. In the vocal mechanism the resonators are the mouth, throat, nose and sinus |
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