Friday, January 18, 2013

Technology and teaching singing | Vol. 3

Hello singers!

This post is about spectrogram and spectrum analysis. You can use whichever software. There are some differencies in how they visualise the sound. SpectrumView is an iOS app that works with both iPhone and iPad. There are others for iOS but I haven't found a one I would like to use better yet.

SpectrumView

I find myself using SpectrumView surprisingly often, especially on iPad. This is basically a combined Spectrogram and spectrum analyzer app. It shows the partials and how powerful they are. So, what can we see from the spectrum? It would be lovely to see which vocal mode or sound quality we are using but it's not possible, at least not yet. However, looking at the first partials we can usually see if we are using neutral mode because then the first partial is usually the loudest one. In metallic modes the second partial is usually the loudest.

Kids often love to use all kinds of new software. With one very talented young singer we used this software to keep the air out of the voice. First we checked how it looks when there is air and concluded that the lines should be clearer. He had the program on his own iPod so he kept on practicing with it and seemed to love it. We also worked a bit with vibrato. You can see it quite clearly in the spectrum because the pitch is modulating in laryngeal vibrato. There are better programs for that but SpectrumView is very fast to start and so easy to use.

Another quite specific use I've been working with is creaking. When there is creaking in the voice you can see quite clearly that there are two tones with their own overtones (our ears might not be able to spot it so clearly because of how our brain works in analysing the sound). So, this can help separating creaking from distortion. In distortion there shouldn't be two clear tones but a "messier" overtones because of the noise the ventricular folds create. Of course, you can use creaking together with distortion if you want to.

I also use SpectrumView to demonstrate how the acoustics of the vocal tract influence the sound. You don't really need to understand all about the science and the research and still get a very clear visual representation of why the sound changes when we alter the shape of the vocal tract.


Let me know if you have more ways of using spectrograms and spectrum analysers!

Ville

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