A Study of the Vowel Formants of Well-Known Male Operatic Singers

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Abstract
The formant regions of vowels sustained by well-known male operatic singers were compared with each other and with those of untrained voices. Since vowel samples from commercial phonograph records were too short for electrical harmonic analysis, these samples were re-recorded on circular grooves. Analysis consisted of measuring the energy content of the individual harmonic partial tones. The result of this method seemed to be more informative in many ways than those obtained by using the sound spectrograph which shows only the general formant regions. Three important formants were found in the male voice, although the third of these was more prominent in trained voices. A fourth of minor importance occurred in trained voices only. The frequency positions of the three important formants are found to be in dose agreement for the various voices analyzed.

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