Effect of the glottal source and the vocal tract on the partials amplitude of vibrato in male voices

Abstract

In this paper the production of vocal vibrato is investigated. The most relevant features of the acoustical vibrato signal, frequency and amplitude variations of the partials, will be related to the voice production features, glottal source (GS) and vocal tract response (VTR). Unlike previous related works, in this approach, the effect on the amplitude variations of the partials of each one of the above-mentioned voice production features will be identified in recordings of natural singing voice. Moreover, we will take special care of the reliability of the measurements, and, to this aim, a noninteractive vibrato production model will be also proposed in order to describe the vibrato production process and, more importantly, validate the measurements carried out in natural vibrato. Based on this study, it will be shown that during a few vibrato cycles, the glottal pulse characteristics, as well as the VTR, do not significantly change, and only the fundamental frequency of the GS varies. As a result, the pitch variations can be attributed to the GS, and these variations, along with the vocal tract filtering effect, will result in frequency and amplitude variations of the acoustic signal partials.