Physiological and acoustic characteristics of the female music theatre voice in 'belt' and 'legit' qualities

Tracy Bourne (1, 2) , Maëva Garnier (3)

1 FedUni - University of Ballarat [Australie]
2 The University of Sydney
3 UNSW - School of Physics [UNSW Sydney]

A study was conducted on six female Music Theatre singers. Audio and Electroglottographic (EGG) signals were recorded simultaneously with the vocal tract impedance while the singers produced sustained pitches on two different qualities (‘chesty belt', ‘legit'). For each quality, two vowels (/e/, /o:/) were investigated, at four increasing pitches over the F#4-D5 range (~370-600 Hz). Measured values of glottal parameters (Open Quotient, Amplitude of the EGG signal) support the idea that ‘chesty belt' is produced in the first laryngeal mechanism (M1) and ‘legit' in the second one (M2). The frequency of the first vocal tract resonance (R1) was found to be systematically higher in ‘chesty belt', close to the second voice harmonic (2f0). These observations were consistent with greater intensities and energy above 1 kHz in ‘chesty belt' compared to ‘legit'.

Mots clés: Music theatre; Singing; Female voice; Vocal tract resonances; formants; Tuning; Laryngeal mechanisms; Spectrum; Belting; Legit; Contemporary music; Glottal source; Electroglottography

Domaines: Acoustique [physics.class-ph]; Acoustique [physics.class-ph]; Art et histoire de l'art; Physiologie [q-bio.TO]

Tracy Bourne, Maëva Garnier. Physiological and acoustic characteristics of the female music theatre voice in 'belt' and 'legit' qualities. International Symposium on Music Acoustics, Aug 2010, Katoomba, Australia. pp.9-13. ⟨hal-00526129⟩