Johan Sundberg

KTH Royal Institute of Technology | KTH · Department of Speech, Music and Hearing (TMH)

Purpose: In overtone singing a singer produces two pitches simultaneously, a low-pitched, continuous drone plus a melody played on the higher, flutelike and strongly enhanced overtones of the drone. The purpose of this study was to analyse underlying acoustical, phonatory and articulatory phenomena. Methods: The voice source was analyzed by inverse...

Glottal adduction is a crucial aspect in voice education and vocal performance: it has major effects on phonatory airflow and, consequently, on voice timbre. As the voice is a non-visible musical instrument, controlling it could be facilitated by providing real-time visual feedback of phonatory airflow. Here, we test the usefulness of a flow ball (...

Background Earlier studies have shown that nasalization affects the radiated spectrum by modifying the vocal tract transfer function in a complex manner. Methods Here we study this phenomenon by measuring sine-sweep response of 3-D models of the vowels /u, a, ᴂ, i/, derived from volumetric MR imaging, coupled by means of tubes of different lengths...

Introduction: Rendering Melodies with Overtones A single singer but two voices? Experience that situation by visiting world-voice-day.org/EDU/Movies and check the second movie with the title “ Sehnsucht nach dem Frühlinge (Mozart) — Anna-Maria Hefele (AMH). There, coauthor AMH sings a song by Mozart, first with her singing voice and then with two...

Objective To examine flow phonation characteristics with regard to vocal fold vibration and voice source properties in vocally healthy adults using multimodality voice measurements across various phonation types (breathy, neutral, flow, and pressed) and loudness conditions (typical, loud, and soft). Participants and Methods Vocal fold vibration, a...

Phonation type, a phonatory dimension ranging from hypofunctional/breathy to hyperfunctional/pressed, is important both from a clinical and acoustical point of view; hyperfunctional voice can lead to voice disorders and hypofunctional voice reduces text intelligibility. Five male singers sang diminuendo sequences of the syllable /pae/ and three of...

Twang-like vocal qualities have been related to a megaphone-like shape of the vocal tract (epilaryngeal tube and pharyngeal narrowing, and a wider mouth opening), low-frequency spectral changes, and tighter and/or increased vocal fold adduction. Previous studies have focused mainly on loud and high-pitched singing, comfortable low-pitched spoken vo...

Abstract: Twang-like vocal qualities have been related to a megaphone-like shape of the vocal tract (epilaryngeal tube and pharyngeal narrowing, and a wider mouth opening), low-frequency spectral changes, and tighter/increased vocal fold adduction. Previous studies have focused mainly on loud and high-pitched singing, comfortable low-pitched spoken...

Background: Acoustic aspects of emotional expressivity in speech have been analyzed extensively during recent decades. Emotional coloring is an important if not the most important property of sung performance, and therefore strictly controlled. Hence, emotional expressivity in singing may promote a deeper insight into vocal signaling of emotions....

The question whether or not a velopharyngeal opening is advantageous in singing has been discussed for a very long time among teachers of singing. The present investigation analyzes the acoustic consequences of a large, a narrow, and a nonexistent velopharyngeal opening (VPO). A divided flow mask (nasal and oral) connected to flow transducers recor...

Although the human ability to recognize emotions in vocal speech utterances with reasonable accuracy has been well documented in numerous studies, little research has been reported on emotion recognition from emotional expression in the singing voice. This paper is the first to examine this issue by asking internationally known professional opera s...

There has been little research on the acoustic correlates of emotional expression in the singing voice. In this study, two pertinent questions are addressed: How does a singer's emotional interpretation of a musical piece affect acoustic parameters in the sung vocalizations? Are these patterns specific enough to allow statistical discrimination of...

This article combines results from three earlier investigations of the glottal voice source during phonation at varying degrees of vocal loudness (1) in five classically trained baritone singers (Sundberg et al., 1999), (2) in 15 female and 14 male untrained voices (Sundberg et al., 2005), and (3) in voices rated as hyperfunctional by an expert pan...

"Complete Vocal Technique," or CVT, is an internationally widespread method for teaching voice. It classifies voicing into four types, referred to as "vocal modes," one of which is called "Overdrive." The physiological correlates of these types are unclear. This study presents an attempt to analyze its voice source and formant frequency characteris...

Background: Nasal and paranasal cavities are supposed to contribute substantially to the vocal tract resonator properties. However, their acoustical effects as well as the effects of sinus surgery on the voice remain unclear. In this work we investigate resonance phenomena of paranasal sinuses prior to and after various rhinosurgical procedures in...

Background: Nasal and paranasal cavities are supposed to contribute substantially to the vocal tract resonator properties. However, their acoustical effects as well as the effects of sinus surgery on the voice remain unclear. In this work we investigate resonance phenomena of paranasal sinuses prior to and after various rhinosurgical procedures in...

Objectives: Kunqu is a special type of opera within the Chinese tradition with 600 years of history. In it, stage speech is used for the spoken dialogue. It is performed in Ming Dynasty's mandarin language and is a much more dominant part of the play than singing. Stage speech deviates considerably from normal conversational speech with respect to...

The phonatory and resonatory characteristics of nonclassical styles of singing have been rarely analyzed in voice research. Six professional singers volunteered to sing excerpts from two songs pertaining to the musical theater and to the soul styles of singing. Voice source parameters and formant frequencies were analyzed by inverse filtering tones...

Introduction: The question of formant tuning in male professional voices has been a matter of discussion for many years. Material and Methods: In this study four very successful Western classically trained tenors of different repertoire were analysed. They sang a scale on the vowel conditions/a,e,i,o,u/from the pitch C4 (250 Hz) to A4 (440 Hz) in t...

Objectives: Collision threshold pressure (CTP), that is, the lowest subglottal pressure facilitating vocal fold contact during phonation, is likely to reflect relevant vocal fold properties. The amplitude of an electroglottographic (EGG) signal or the amplitude of its first derivative (dEGG) has been used as criterion of such contact. Manual measu...

In the context of singing voice synthesis, expression control manipulates a set of voice features related to a particular emotion, style, or singer. Also known as performance modeling, it has been approached from different perspectives and for different purposes, and different projects have shown a wide extent of applicability. The aim of this arti...

Objectives: The theory of nonlinear source-filter interaction predicts that the glottal voice source should be affected by the frequency relationship between formants and partials. An attempt to experimentally verify this theory is presented. Study design: Glottal voice source and electrolaryngograph (ELG) signal differences between vowels were...

The vocal tract shape is crucial to voice production. Its lower part seems particularly relevant for voice timbre. This study analyzes the detailed morphology of parts of the epilaryngeal tube and the hypopharynx for the sustained German vowels /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, and /u/ by thirteen male singer subjects who were at the beginning of their academic...

We investigate the automatic recognition of emotions in the singing voice and study the worth and role of a variety of relevant acoustic parameters. The data set contains phrases and vocalises sung by eight renowned professional opera singers in ten different emotions and a neutral state. The states are mapped to ternary arousal and valence labels....

Resonance tube phonation in water (RTPW) is commonly used in voice therapy, particularly in Finland and Sweden. The method is believed to induce a lowering of the vertical laryngeal position (VLP) in phonation as well as variations of the oral pressure, possibly inducing a massage effect. This pilot study presents an attempt to measure VLP and oral...

Phonatory pressedness is a clinically relevant aspect of voice, which generally is analyzed by auditory perception. The present investigation aimed at identifying voice source and formant characteristics related to experts' ratings of phonatory pressedness. Experimental study of the relations between visual analog scale ratings of phonatory pressed...

Previous research suggests that independent variation of vocal loudness and glottal configuration (type and degree of vocal fold adduction) does not occur in untrained speech production. This study investigated whether these factors can be varied independently in trained singing and how subglottal pressure is related to average glottal airflow, voi...

Subglottal pressure (Ps) is strongly correlated with sound pressure level (SPL) and is easy to measure by means of commonly available equipment. The SPL/Ps ratio is strongly dependent on the efficiency of the phonatory apparatus and should be of great relevance to clinical practice. However, published normative data are still missing. The subjects...

Belt is a style of singing commonly used in nonclassical genres. Its respiratory, phonatory, and resonatory characteristics are unclear. Basic research. Six female singers, professionally performing in the belt styles since many years, sang an excerpt of a song in belt and nonbelt/neutral style, two times with the lyrics and two times replacing the...

Objectives The learning and teaching of different singing styles, such as operatic and Chinese folk singing, was often found to be very challenging in professional music education because of the complexity of varied musical properties and vocalizations. By studying the acoustical and musical parameters of the singing voice, this study identified di...

tWe examine the similarities and differences in the expression of emotion in the singing and the speaking voice. Three internationallyrenowned opera singers produced “vocalises” (using a schwa vowel) and short nonsense phrases in different interpretations for 10emotions. Acoustic analyses of emotional expression in the singing samples show signific...

Work on voice sciences over recent decades has led to a proliferation of acoustic parameters that are used quite selectively and are not always extracted in a similar fashion. With many independent teams working in different research areas, shared standards become an essential safeguard to ensure compliance with state-of-the-art methods allowing ap...

The term "closed quotient" is frequently used for data derived both from inverse filtering and from electroglottography. In the former case, it is defined as the ratio between the closed phase and the period, as measured in flow glottograms (FLOGG), whereas in the latter case, it is defined as the time interval between the falling and rising parts...

The significance of nasal resonance and anti-resonance to voice production is a classical issue in vocal pedagogy and voice research. The complex structure of the nasal tract produces a complex frequency response. This complexity must be heavily influenced by the morphology of the paranasal cavities, but their contributions are far from being entir...

Background: The contribution of the nasal and paranasal cavities to the vocal tract resonator properties is unclear. Here we investigate these resonance phenomena of the sinonasal tract in isolation in a cadaver and compare the results with those gained in a simplified brass tube model. Methods: The resonance characteristics were measured as the...

Background: The contribution of the nasal and paranasal cavities to vocal tract resonator properties is unclear as are voice effects of sinus surgery. Here we investigate resonance phenomena of paranasal sinuses with and without selective occlusion of the middle meatus and maxillary ostium in a cadaver. Methodology: Nasal and paranasal cavities...

Objective: This investigation analyzes flow glottogram and electroglottogram (EGG) parameters as well as the relationship between formant frequencies and partials in two male Kunqu Opera roles, Colorful face (CF) and Old man (OM). Participants and methods: Four male professional Kunqu Opera singers volunteered as participants, 2 singers for each...

This chapter describes various aspects of the human voice as a means of communication in speech and singing. From the point of view of function, vocal sounds can be regarded as the end result of a three stage process: (1) the compression of air in the respiratory system, which produces an exhalatory airstream, (2) the vibrating vocal foldsʼ transfo...

Long-term-average spectrum (LTAS) characteristics were analyzed for ten Kunqu Opera singers, two in each of five roles. Each singer performed singing, stage speech, and conversational speech. Differences between the roles and between their performances of these three conditions are examined. After compensating for Leq difference LTAS characteristic...

We examine the similarities and differences in the expression of emotion in the singing and the speaking voice. Three internationally renowned opera singers produced “vocalises” (using a schwa vowel) and short nonsense phrases in different interpretations for 10 emotions. Acoustic analyses of emotional expression in the singing samples show signifi...

Equivalent sound level (Leq), sound pressure level (SPL), and fundamental frequency (F0) are analyzed in each of five Kunqu Opera roles, Young girl and Young woman, Young man, Old man, and Colorful face. Their pitch ranges are similar to those of some western opera singers (alto, alto, tenor, baritone, and baritone, respectively). Differences among...

Resonance tube phonation in water (RTPW) or in air is a voice therapy method successfully used for treatment of several voice pathologies. Its effect on the voice has not been thoroughly studied. This investigation analyzes the effects of RTPW on collision and phonation threshold pressures (CTP and PTP), the lowest subglottal pressure needed for vo...

The phonation threshold pressure (PTP) is defined as the lowest subglottal pressure needed for obtaining and sustaining vocal fold oscillation. It has been found to increase during vocal fatigue. In the present study, PTP is measured together with the threshold pressure needed for vocal fold collision; henceforth, the collision threshold pressure (...

Acoustic and aerodynamic properties of the voice source and vocal tract have been extensively analyzed during the last half century. Corresponding investigations of the subglottal system are rare but can be assumed to be relevant to voice production. In the present exploratory study, subglottal pressure was recorded in a male adult subject by means...

Previous studies have shown that singers tend to sharpen phrase-peak tones as compared with equally tempered tuning (ETT). Here we test the hypothesis that this can serve the purpose of musical expressivity. Data were drawn from earlier recordings, where a professional baritone sang excerpts as void of musical expression as he could (Neutral) and a...

The term "formant tuning" is generally used for the case that one of the lowest formant frequencies coincides with the frequency of a source spectrum partial. Some authors claim that such coincidence is favorable and belongs to the goals of classical opera voice training, whereas other authors have found evidence for advising against it. This inves...

Human voice production at very high fundamental frequencies is not yet understood in detail. It was hypothesized that these frequencies are produced by turbulences, vocal tract/vocal fold interactions, or vocal fold oscillations without closure. Hitherto it has been impossible to visually analyze the vocal mechanism due to technical limitations. La...

The learning and teaching of different singing styles, such as operatic and Chinese folk singing, was often found to be very challenging in professional music education because of the complexity of varied musical properties and vocalizations. By studying the acoustical and musical parameters of the singing voice, this study identified distinctive t...

The floridly ornamented vocal technique in the courtly heritage of the Persian singing style called Avaz was studied along with excerpts from the flamboyant variety of the vivid Kurdish tradition. Audio and EGG signals were recorded from professional male tenor singers singing stylistically typical song excerpts from each tradition. Voice source pa...

Acoustic characteristics of classical operasinging differ considerably between the Western and the Chinese cultures. Singers in the classical Peking opera tradition are specializing on one out of a limited number of standard roles. Audio and electroglottograph signals were recorded of four performers of the Old Man roel and four performers of the C...

O trabalho apresentado é resultado de um estudo piloto com vista à caracterização acústica, fisiológica e funcional da voz cantada no Estilo Folclórico do Minho. Foi realizada uma gravação multicanal a uma cantadeira de 65 anos, sem educação vocal formal e com mais de 30 anos de experiência em canto folclórico Minhoto. Extraíram-se medidas ac...

The closed quotient, i.e., the ratio between the closed phase and the period, is commonly studied in voice research. However, the term may refer to measures derived from different methods, such as inverse filtering, electroglottography or high-speed digital imaging (HSDI). This investigation compares closed quotient data measured by these three met...

Difficulties with intonation and vibrato control during the menstrual cycle have been reported by singers; however, this phenomenon has not yet been systematically investigated. A double-blind randomized placebo-controlled trial assessing effects of the menstrual cycle and use of a combined oral contraceptive pill (OCP) on pitch control in singing...

Voice periodicity during transitions from modal to falsetto register still remains an unclarified question. We examined the acoustic and electroglottographic signals of 20 healthy untrained male voices' transitions from modal to falsetto register on the vowels /a, e, i, o, u, and æ/. In addition to discontinuities in fundamental frequency (F0), an...

When computers convert music scores to sounding music, performances void of musical expression typically emerge, mostly perceived as musical disasters. This is a striking illustration of the importance of the contributions of musicians. Excellent tools for exploring these contributions are synthesized performances and/or processing of real performa...

Certain spectrum characteristics have been identified as important for register equalization around the male passaggio, an effect ascribed to formant tuning although descriptions of formant tuning diverge. Eight professional singers sang scales including their passaggio range on different vowels, applying two formant tuning strategies as found in (...

Zusammenfassung Das Leistungsprofil professioneller Stimmen wird in der Regel durch eine intensive Ausbildung erreicht, welche zum Ziel hat, die funktionelle Kapazität der stimmlichen Möglichkeiten auszuschöpfen. Dieser optimierten Funktionalität sind durch die individuellen anatomischen Größenverhältnisse Grenzen gesetzt, deren ungenügende Beachtu...

Professional voice performance is strongly affected by the functional adjustments of the structures involved in voice production. Generally, these functional skills are required by means of intensive training. On the other hand, the individual morphology of the larynx and vocal tract limits this functional variability. Thus, to neglect morphologica...

According to recent model investigations, vocal tract resonance is relevant to vocal registers. However, no experimental corroboration of this claim has been published so far. In the present investigation, ten professional tenors' vocal tract configurations were analyzed using MRI volumetry. All subjects produced a sustained tone on the pitch F4 (3...

Acoustic characteristics of classical opera singing differ considerably between the Western and the Chinese cultures. Singers in the classical Peking opera tradition specialize on one out of a limited number of standard roles. Audio and electroglottograph signals were recorded for four performers of the Old Man role and three performers of the Colo...

The term ''formant tuning'' is generally used for the case that one of the lowest formant frequencies coincides with the frequency of a source spectrum partial. Some authors claim that such coincidence is favorable and belongs to the goals of classical opera voice training, whereas other authors have found evidence for advising against it. This inv...

Long?term?average spectrum (LTAS) is a quick and simple analysis method, which is frequently used in voiceanalysis. It typically reaches a stable curve after about 30 or 40 s of speech or singing and reflects both voice source and formant frequency characteristics of a voice. However, it is quite sensitive to changes of vocal loudness. In two previ...