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CONCEPTS OF RESONANCE i3S
quencies lends depth or resonance and a high formant provides brilliance. " [Ortmann 437, p. 99] All these properties compositely form the quality of a vocal tone.
Peabody Conservatory experiments over a period of nearly five years have analyzed the recordings of more than a thousand vocal tones taken from forty male and female singers* voices with the following results: Good singers* voices possess four unmistakable attributes: an even vibrato, a minimum intensity of tone, prominent low overtones or formant at about 500 cycles and prominent high overtones at about 2900 cycles. [Bartholomew 40] Stanley claims that the maximum energy in a good tone is concentrated in only two or three frequency bands while in a faulty tone the energy distribution is more extensive. [578] The voice is said to be properly placed when the above mentioned objective characteristics have been arrived at through systematic training. [Bartholomew 37]
Four more acoustical facts are to be noted: Lindsley reports experimental evidence that voice quality can be changed by increasing the amount of vibration in one or more of the vocal resonators. [347] He does not state whether this is an automatic result of training the singer's voice or whether a skilled vocalist should be able to focus his voice consciously in any particular region of the vocal resonators at will. Lewis and lichte report an experiment in which various overtones or partials in the voice of a trained vocalist were successively brought out by means of changes in the size and shape of the vocal cavities and mouth orifice. [341] Gurry holds that it is wrong to believe that a sound wave can be reflected by the epiglottis, tongue or other surfaces to various other parts of the vocal tract since the wave length of any sound within the average range of a voice is much too long to be affected by these relatively small surfaces within the vocal tract. [124, p. 49] Another interesting observation that Gurry makes is that the vocal sound phonated by a singer constitutes only about 20 per cent of the total energy applied to the vocal cords during phonation. Apparently the remaining energy is dissipated in "parasitic vibrations" which emanate from the initial tone and are absorbed throughout the vocal tract. [Ibid., p. 50] Thus it would appear that the vocal resonators as a whole absorb nearly four-fifths of the energy of phonation.
Pedagogical aspects. The action of the resonance factor in voice production has caused considerable controversy among teachers of singing. [Drew 147, p. 125] The term resonance is often loosely used to describe the unknown properties which a singing tone acquires after it has been properly cultivated by means of a regular system of instruction. In this |
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