title: Singer's formant in sopranos: fact or fiction?
abstract: Although it is generally agreed that the singer's formant (F(S)) is a prerequisite for successful stage performance, the results of this research do not support its presence in the soprano voices of trained female singers. Results are based on a recent investigation testing 10 advanced/professional sopranos in two groups singing sustained vowels at three frequencies: high (932 Hz), mid (622 Hz), and low (261 Hz). Spectrographic analysis shows that the nature of harmonic energy varies in relation to pitch. A resonance band somewhat resembling the tenor F(S) was usually evident in vowels sung at low and mid pitch. However, unlike the F(S) of typically less than 1 kHz bandwidth associated with tenors, sopranos singing similar pitches produced corresponding bandwidths which were significantly broader, usually at least 2-kHz wide. Vowels sung by sopranos at high-pitch levels exhibited strong fundamental frequency production with strong reinforcement of adjacent harmonics extending to 5 kHz and beyond. This type of production in essence nullifies the necessity for a typical F(S). Absence of the F(S) in strong soprano voices might also imply the adaptation of a sufficiently different overall vocal tract configuration, so that techniques geared to developing maximal projection should not be the same as those developed to maximize the F(S) in other voices.
authors.affiliation: Linguistics Program, Western Washington University, Bellingham 98225-9057, USA. weiss@cc.wwu.edu
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Weiss
authors.forename: W S
authors.initials: WS
authors.lastname: Brown
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Morris
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D010700:Phonetics; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013637:Tape Recording; D014831:Voice / Q000502:physiology*; D014833:Voice Quality