Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: musical tones in speech From: Eckard Blumschein <Eckard.Blumschein(at)E-TECHNIK.UNI-MAGDEBURG.DE> Date: Wed, 16 May 2001 10:21:11 +0200Dear Alain, Bruno, Christian, Harry, Martin, Pierre, Tom, and others, Perhaps, the paper by Martin has merely convinced the two anonymous referees. Admittedly, I am also still very sceptical about the idea that perception of absolute pitch provides the best explanation for the findings by Martin. However, I do not just intend to put them into question as to declare Alain the winner. It does not rarely happen that someone is wrong while he makes an discovery. When I was mirroring and completing the discussion together into my M79, I understood that the hand-marked end- and turning points are perhaps actually related to some sort of influence on the glottis. Otherwise they were random. Does this mean Martin is correct? Referring to suggested coupling between pitch regulation and memory he imagines that the motor control of speech could tend to "avoid" or "prefer" certain stored frequencies due to emotional experience. Isn't this an unjustified pure speculation? Why not rely on common theory by Titze? As mentioned in the paper, there is interference of trachea resonance with the vocal fold. It is perhaps too easy to belittle it. Well, it is just a guess of mine that Fig. 2 reflects the eigenmodes of cavity resonances. We have to grasp how the turning points might be strongly influenced by modes of trachea resonances. Perhaps, frequency of glottal vibrations does not evenly and possibly not even always steadily rise with increasing force of "the motor control". Notches in this roughly ramp shaped function might cause the mentioned involuntary register changes in singing. More benign distortion are imagined to increase or decrease the slope of that ramp. It is clear that turning points are more likely to coincide with frequencies which are assigned to broad nearly horizontal pieces of the distorted ramp function than with narrower steep ones. Given, this scenario is realistic, then it would be of interest to determine how such dependencies between force and f0 are subject to age, gender, emotion, etc., not just in order to better understand why and when voices are breaking. I am sure, there are experts who are able to finally judge this reasoning of mine. May I ask for that? Eckard