Voice Quality

October 14, 2014

Practicalities• Course Project report #2 is due!

• Also: I have new guidelines to hand out.

• The mid-term is on Tuesday after the break!

• So I have a review sheet for you.

• For the mid-term, we will just meet here.

• On Thursday, we will work through a lab exercise on Korean stops.

• But bring any questions you might have about the mid-term first.

• Also bring: your laptops and any headphones you may possess.

1. Modal Voice Settings• At the low end of a speaker’s F0 range:

1. Adductive tension force is moderate

2. Medial compression force is moderate

3. Vocal folds are short and thick.

• = longitudinal tension is low

4. Moderate airflow

• F0 is increased by:

1. Increasing the longitudinal tension

activity of the cricothyroid muscle

2. Increasing airflow

A Little More Hardcore• Increasing Medial Compression of the vocal folds can create tense voice.

• Remember the Mpi contrasts:

• Also check out the Steve Sklar video

• Increasing Medial Compression even further can induce ventricular voice

• …in which the ventricular folds vibrate along with the (true) vocal folds.

• (go back to the video + endoscopy evidence)

• Finally, amping up the intensity of all the laryngeal forces results in harsh voice.

• Compare with: “death metal voice”

A Different Kind of Voicing• The basic voice quality in khoomei is called xorekteer.

• Notice any differences in the EGG waveforms?

• This voice quality requires greater medial compression of the vocal folds.

• ...and also greater airflow

• Check out the tense voice video.

Taken to an Extreme• Extreme medial compression can lead to the closure of the ventricular folds, as well as that of the true vocal folds.

• = ventricular voice

• The false and true vocal folds effectively combine as one.

• …and open and close together (usually)

• Kargyraa voice

• Head over to the video evidence.

Ventricular Voice EGG

• Notice any differences?

• Difference between closing and opening slope is huge!

• Also: amplitude is larger.

2. Creaky Voice• A voice quality that is somewhat similar to ventricular

voice is creaky voice.

• Also known as “glottal fry”

• Laryngeal settings for creaky voice:

1. Ventricular folds often compressed down on true vocal folds.

2. High medial compression

3. Very little longitudinal tension

4. Low airflow

• Air bubbles up sporadically through the folds, near the thyroid arch.

Creaky EGG

• Note: vocal folds are very short during creaky voicing.

• Look at the creaky video.

Creaky Quirks• Note: creaky voice often emerges at the low end of a speaker’s range.

• In a language like English, at the ends of utterances

• In a tone language, for very low tones.

• Note: creaky voice also often has a “double pulse” effect.

Modal to Creaky

[ ]

Jitter• Creaky voice often exhibits a lot of jitter and shimmer.

• Jitter =

• Variation in timing of glottal pulses

• Defined as a percentage:

• period deviation/period duration.

Shimmer• Shimmer =

• Variation in amplitude of glottal pulses

• Note: synthetic speech has to include jitter and shimmer

• …otherwise the voice won’t sound natural.

• Check the measures out in Praat.

Harsh Voice• A “raucous voice quality” (Holmes, 1932)

• Acoustically: fundamental frequency is aperiodic

• = lots of jitter (variability in time)

• Articulatorily: harsh voice does not add anything new to the voice quality parameters;

• it just increases the intensity of those already in operation.

• Harsh voice “excessive approximation of the vocal folds”

• = high medial compression and high adductive tension

Harsh, continued• “Harshness results from overtensions in the throat and neck; it is often if not usually accompanied by hypertensions of the whole body.” (Gray and Wise, 1959)

• Harsh F0 is usually > 100 Hz

• Creaky F0 is usually < 100 Hz

3. Breathy Voice• In breathy voice, the vocal folds remain open…

• and “wave” in the airflow coming up from the lungs.

• Laryngeal settings for breathy voice:

1. Low medial compression

2. Minimal adductive tension

3. Variable longitudinal tension (for F0 control)

4. Higher airflow

• Check out the breathy video.

Breathy Voice EGG

• Also note: opening and closure phases in breathy voice are more symmetrical than in modal voice.

Some Real-Life Examples

breathy

modal

Contrasts• Gujarati contrasts breathy voiced vowels with modal voiced vowels:

• Hausa contrasts modal [j] with creaky [j]:

• Hausa is spoken in West Africa (primarily in Nigeria)

• Creaky consonants are also said to be laryngealized.

All Three• Jalapa Mazatec has a three-way contrast between modal, breathy and creaky voiced vowels:

• Jalapa Mazatec is spoken in southern Mexico, around Oaxaca and Veracruz.

Voiced Aspirated• Some languages distinguish between (breathy) voiced aspirated and voiceless aspirated stops and affricates.

• Check out Hindi:

One Random Thing• Breathy voiced segments can “depress” the tone on a following segment.

• Examples from Tsonga:• Tsonga is spoken in South Africa and Mozambique.

• Voiced stops also “depress” tones more than voiceless stops.

• depressor consonants

• Nobody really knows why.

Open Quotient• From EGG measures, we can calculate the “open quotient” for any particular voicing cycle =

time glottis is open

period of voicing cycle

• EGG measures show that there are reliable differences in open quotient values between the three primary voicing types.

• Breathy voicing has a high open quotient

• Creaky voicing has a low open quotient

• Modal voicing is in between

Open Quotient Traces

one period

open phase

• The open quotient in modal voicing is generally around 0.5

Tense Voice

• Tense voice (from throat singing demo) has a lower open quotient.

• Result of medial compression.

• Actual value: about 0.3

one period open phase

OQ Traces, continued

• OQ for creaky voice is also supposed to be low…

• but it’s actually quite sporadic.

• Breathy voice OQ is quite high

• (0.65 or greater)

4. Whispery Voice• When we whisper:

• The cartilaginous glottis remains open, but the ligamental glottis is closed.

• Air flow through opening with a “hiss”

• The laryngeal settings:

1. Little or no adductive tension

2. Moderate to high medial compression

3. Moderate airflow

4. Longitudinal tension is irrelevant…

• Check out another video

Nodules• One of the more common voice disorders is the development of nodules on either or both of the vocal folds.

• nodule = callous-like bump

• What effect might this have on voice quality?

Last but not least• What’s going on here?

• At some point, my voice changes from modal to falsetto.

5. Falsetto• The laryngeal specifications for falsetto:

1. High longitudinal tension

2. High adductive tension

3. High medial compression

• Contraction of thyroarytenoids

4. Lower airflow than in modal voicing

• The results:

• Very high F0.

• Very thin area of contact between vocal folds.

• Air often escapes through the vocal folds.

Falsetto EGG

• The falsetto voice waveform is considerably more sinusoidal than modal voice.

Voice Quality SummaryAT LT MC Flow

Modal moderate varies moderate med.

Tense high varies high high

Creaky high low high low

Whisper low N/A high med.

Breathy low varies low high

Falsetto high high high low