Johan Sundberg
Dept. of Speech Commun. and Music Acoust., KTH, Stockholm, Sweden
Western opera singers often report that they feel vibrations in the face and neck when they sing. As one perceives one's own voice quite differently from one's listeners, it has been hypothesized that such phonatory vibrations offer a more reliable feedback signal for the control of phonation than the airborne sound. Phonatory vibrations have been examined in previous research. The results suggest that in singing at fundamental frequencies lower than about 350 Hz (pitch F4) chest wall vibrations can be used as a feedback signal, as they seem to reflect glottal adduction, an aspect of great relevance to singers. Vibrations in the face and skull, on the other hand, seem to vary considerably between different vowels and thus seem to depend on formant frequencies rather than on voice source characteristics. Therefore such vibrations can be assumed to be more difficult to use as a feedback for controlling phonation.