The human voice an important element in the field of acoustics. The most important aspect of the voice is speech. Along with speech is singing. This module has three lessons.
Throughout human history, the principal mode of communication has been the spoken word. The systems in the human body that send and receive oral messages are sophisticated in design and complex in function. Our understanding of both hearing and speech has progressed dramatically in recent years, largely because of new techniques for making acoustical as well as physiological measurements. In this chapter we will discuss the vocal organs and how they work together to make speech.
Vocal Organs
Pharynx
Larynx
Epiglottis
Thyroid
Arytnoids
Vocal folds
Vocal Tract
Acoustic phonetics
Articulation of speech
Phonemes
Plosive
Fricatives
Alveolar
Palatal
Velar
Resonances in vocal tract
Formants
Models of vocal tract
Studies of the vocal tract
Prosodic features of speech
For years, engineers and scientists have worked to build machines that will recognize speech. This technology is getting better. There is a company in Utah called Fonix, developing sophisticated speech recognition software that does not require you to "train" the computer with your voice before it will work. However this speech recognition technology only works with a limited vocabulary, and is still far behind what the human speech recognition system can do.
Humans can follow speech at rates up to 400 words a minutes with 30 individual sounds (called phonemes) per second. Even everyday conversational speech "requires the recognition of 10 - 15 phonemes per second.
In this chapter you will learn about the tools that can be used to analyze speech.
Analysis of speech
Oscilloscope
Spectrum analyzer
Spectrograph
3-D plot
Speech recognition
Recognition of vowels
Recognition of consonants
Filtered speech & noisy environments
Coarticulation
Voiceprints
Synthesis of speech
Formant synthesis (vocoder)
LPC
Sampling
It is often said that music is the universal language. If that is so then the oldest instrument of all, the human voice, is probably used the most to communicate, both by spoken word, and by song.
In this chapter you will learn about the signing voice, and how it differs from that of the speaking voice. You will also learn about registers and formant tuning.
Formants and pitch
Difference between spoken and sung vowels
Singer's formant
Formant tuning by sopranos
Breathing and air flow
Tidal volume
Inspiratory reserve volume
Residual volume
Vital capacity
Registers, voices, and muscles
Falsetto
Other factors influencing spectra of sung notes
Choir singing