THE HUMAN VOICE

LECTURE 2

ELC 523E

WHAT IS HUMAN VOICE

• sound made by a human being using the vocal folds for talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, etc
• Frequency range:

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COMPONENTS OF THE HUMAN VOICE

• The human voice is a complex sound signal made up of many individual sinusoidal pressure waves.

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• The individual waves vary slightly below 100Hz to 10KHz.
• Engineering applications are more concerned with the frequency and spectrum of the human voice.

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VOCAL RANGE

• In linguistics and phonetics, attention is also placed on breadth of pitches that a human voice can phonate which is usually referred to as Vocal range.
• The following are the general vocal ranges associated with each voice type using scientific pitch notation:

Soprano, Mezzo-sopranoSoprano, Mezzo-soprano, Contralto,

Tenor Tenor, Baritone Tenor, Baritone, Bass:

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SOPRANO

• The highest female voice being able to sing roughly between C4 (middle C) and C6 (high C), and possibly higher.

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MEZZO-SOPRANO

• A female voice in between the soprano and contralto that is able to sing roughly between A3 (A below middle C) and A5 (two octaves above A3).
• Some mezzos may be able to sing slightly lower or higher.

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CONTRALTO

• The lowest female voice being able to sing roughly between F3 (F below middle C) and E5, and possibly lower.
• Some very rare contraltos share a similar range to the tenor.

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TENOR

• The highest male voice being able to sing roughly between B2 (2nd B below middle C) and A4 (A above Middle C), and possibly higher.

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BARITONE

• A male voice in between the tenor and bass that is able to sing between G2 (two Gs below middle C) and F4 (F above middle C).
• Some baritones may be able to sing slightly lower or higher.

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BASS

• The lowest male voice being able to sing roughly between E2 (Two Es below middle C) and E4 (The E above middle C), and possibly lower.

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Mechanisms for Voice Production

• Mechanism for generating the human voice can be subdivided into three parts:
• the lungs,
• the vocal folds within the larynx, and
• the articulators.

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LUNGS

• The lung (the pump) must produce adequate airflow and air pressure to vibrate vocal folds (this air pressure is the fuel of the voice).

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VOCAL FOLDS (CORDS)

• The vocal folds (vocal cords) are a vibrating valve that chops up the airflow from the lungs into audible pulses that form the laryngeal sound source.
• The muscles of the larynx adjust the length and tension of the vocal folds to ‘fine tune’ pitch and tone.

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The articulators

• The articulators (the parts of the vocal tract above the larynx consisting of tongue, palate, cheek, lips, etc.) articulate and filter the sound emanating from the larynx
• To some degree, articulators interact with the laryngeal airflow to strengthen it or weaken it as a sound source.

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VOICE IN TELEPHONY

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Signal Frequency range: 0.3 - 3,400Hz

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