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CHAPTER VIII

VOCAL QUALITY

I. GENERAL DISCUSSION

A. The Physics and Psychology of Vocal Quality
B. The Physiology and Psychology of Vocal Quality
II. THE DIFFERENT VOCAL QUALITIES

A. The Aspirate
B. The Guttural

C. The Pectoral
D. The Nasal
E. The Oral

F. The Falsetto

G. The Normal

H. The Orotund

I. GENERAL DISCUSSION

A. The Physics and Psychology of Vocal Quality. There are always two principal aspects of the phenomenon of sound,(1) its physical properties, and (2) its psychological values and effects. From the viewpoint of the physicist, sound is essentially a matter of pressure changes in the conducting medium, usually the air. The vibrating body crowds the air together at one phase (that is, its movement in one direction) of its vibration and then as the vibrating body recedes in the other phase of its action the air is allowed to expand. For example, when one end of a strip of spring steel is clamped into a vise, the free end pulled in one direction and then released, the movements of the spring constitute vibrations, which in turn produce alternate condensations and rarefactions in the surrounding air. These pressure changes are conveyed through the air by the impact of the particles immediately surrounding the vibrator upon those in turn surrounding

them, and thus propagate themselves through the atmosphere in all directions. Essentially the same thing happens when a violin string is pulled to one side and then suddenly released or when the head of a drum is struck with a drumstick. Sound, from the physicist's standpoint, is then essentially pressure changes.

For the psychologist, hearing is a living being's awareness of these pressure changes. The ear is an organ with a special and peculiar sensitivity to this type of stimulation. As the air particles which have been set into vibration by the sounding body collide with the eardrum, this delicate diaphragm oscillates backward and forward at the rate with which the pressure changes are occurring in the atmosphere, and thus, having picked up the physical sound, transmits it, by means of an exceedingly intricate physiological process, to the auditory area of the cortex. The impulses pass from the auditory to the motor centers and thence to the effectors. From the psychologist's point of view, sound is the essential part of what the organism does in response to these pressure changes. A great deal of confusion comes into discussions of sound from the fact that it is so difficult to separate the physics of sound from the psychology of sound. There are many physical vibrations or pressure changes which occur too rapidly to cause responses in the human organism. These, obviously, cannot be a matter of concern to the psychologist. The physicist, of course, can demonstrate with instruments the actual presence of these vibrations. Our capacity for reacting to vibrations as sound stops somewhere in the neighborhood of 30,000 to 40,000 vibrations per second. We are not capable of responding in any definite way to vibrations above the speed of about 40,000 per second until we come to those with a rate of 400 trillion per second, which is at the lower end of the visible spectrum, (red). (It should be borne in mind that the eye and the ear are both receptors which are acted upon by vibrations). At the upper end of the visible spectrum the vibrations which produce violet occur at the rate of about 800 trillion per second.

Beyond these two limits we can see nothing. Obviously then, our receptors are "tuned" to certain wave-lengths only. The scientist has evidence, however, which leads him to conclude that from zero per second up to 150 quintillion per second (the rate of radium vibrations) there is no break in the physical

series.

Sound has four physical characteristics, viz., quality, intensity, pitch, and duration. Writers in the field of voice are accustomed to call these four elements: "quality," "force," “pitch," and "time." We shall conform to this terminology.

We are ready now to take up the first of these elements, viz., vocal quality. For the physicist, the quality of a sound is a matter of complexity in the vibrations or pressure changes. When these pressure changes occur in a very irregular way the sound is called "noise." Noise represents zero in quality. When the changes occur in a regular way the sound is called "tone." Now most vibrators give off not merely a single series of vibrations but a number of series at the same time. For example, if a violin string is plucked at its center it vibrates as a whole and also in segments, which are related in a fixed, mathematical ratio, to the whole. The shorter the length of the string the more rapidly it vibrates. Consequently each of the segments of the string gives off more rapid vibrations than does the string vibrating as a whole. These more rapid vibrations originate partial tones or overtones, which fuse with the fundamental tone produced by the vibration of the string as a whole.

Now the mathematical relations between the fundamental and the overtones, and among the overtones themselves, are central factors in determining tone quality. If the overtones are exact harmonics (even multiples) of the fundamental tone, the quality will have pleasing psychological values. The larger the number of these overtones, the richer and fuller will be the tone. Psychologically, tone quality is a matter of complexity of response on the part of the hearer to the stimulations which come from a sounding body. When the physical

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