TUTORIAL for the HANDBOOK FOR ACOUSTIC ECOLOGY


SPEECH ACOUSTICS

  Voice and Paralanguage


The human ability to vocalize sound, as well as the soundmaking abilities of other species, is amazingly complex and endlessly fascinating. Speech, song, and non-verbal behaviour is central to all aspects of individual and cultural development, and therefore plays an extremely important role in acoustic communication.

In many cases, when we turn to the study of acoustics and psychoacoustics, we can find strong evidence that vocal soundmaking establishes many of the norms for understanding sound in general, particularly the way in which spectral and temporal patterns are produced and processed by the auditory system.

We can only summarize here the most basic information in this extensive field, as subdivided into these categories.

A) The acoustics of speech production: vowels and consonants

B) Linguistic descriptions of vowels and consonants

C) Reading a sonogram

D) Voice and soundmaking on a personal and interpersonal level; paralanguage

E) Soundmaking in cultural contexts

F) Cross-cultural forms of vocal soundmaking

Q) Review Quiz


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A. The acoustics of speech production. The simplest acoustic model of the voice, as shown below, is where an airstream originating in the lungs, supported by the diaphragm, is the power source that has the option of being periodically modulated by the vocal folds (also known as the vocal cords – note the spelling), which is then filtered through the vocal tract acting as a variable resonator. This model is often called the source-filter model and can be simulated with a periodic impulse train, whose spectrum is the set of harmonics with decreasing amplitude, that passes through the vocal tract which is modelled by a filter to create a set of resonant frequencies called formants.

The vocal folds open and close in response to the pressure buildup, and their front end is attached to the thyroid cartilage (or Adam’s apple), as shown above, and therefore the movement is similar to what is shown in the next diagram. The change in air pressure with each opening and closing is called a glottal pulse, the glottis being the opening between the folds, and when there is a periodic train of such pulses, the sound is said to be voiced, meaning that it will have a pitch depending on the periodic frequency. If you feel the area of your throat around the Adam’s apple, you can feel these vibrations when you make a voiced sound such as a vowel.


Vocal folds closing and opening (source: Denes & Pinson)

The vocal tract includes the larynx, the pharynx above it, the mouth and optionally the very large nasal cavity, all of which act as a variable resonator. The main determinant of the frequency response of this resonator is the tongue position, and this is how different vowels are created. In the following sound example, we first hear a single glottal pulse, followed by that single pulse put through three different filters, and with such a minimal model, it may be surprising that you can already hear different vowels. This is because the spectral envelope with its characteristic peaks is already activating a spatial pattern of excitation along the basilar membrane, as discussed in the second Vibration module. Then we hear a periodic set of those pulses (rather harsh but still a harmonic spectrum), followed by putting them through the three filters again to produce the vowels "ahh", "eeh", and "ooo".

Glottal pulse, then heard through 3 filters; glottal pulse train, then through the same filters
(Source: Cook 5)

Click to enlarge

An alternative demonstration is a simple transition from a closed mouth hum (which emphasizes the harmonics produced by the vocal folds) to an open mouth, sustained vowel ”aah” in this video version of the example. Note how the waveform shown in the oscilloscope becomes more complex after the transition, the spectrum gets richer with the formant regions, and the sound gets louder.

A key characteristic of this system is that the vibration of the vocal folds, producing a pitched sound in normal speech, is largely independent of the vocal tract resonances. In other words, higher or lower pitches will sound like the same vowel when the tongue stays fixed and therefore the resonances are also fixed. When you sound the vowel “aah” at different pitches, for instance, you will notice that your vocal tract (and tongue) stays in one configuration. However, with the singing voice, it is difficult to produce certain vowels on a high pitch.

Since formant frequencies are fixed for a given vowel, they cannot be transposed in pitch and remain recognizable, beyond about a plus or minus 10% shift in pitch (which is less than a whole tone in music). On the other hand, the speaking pitch range can easily vary over an octave or more. The following example transposes speech by a 3:1 ratio, at which point the sound of the voice is often referred to as the “chipmunk effect” (because of a popular music phenomenon in the late 1950s known as Alvin and the Chipmunks which used this effect with humorous intent).

However, an acceptable degree of realism is restored by using a phase vocoder technique to scale the frequency and time domains independently. After the original version in this example, it is transposed up by a factor of three. Then, in the third part of the example, the pitch is also raised by the 3:1 ratio, but the original formant shape is kept intact, and comprehension is improved.

Original speech example, then transposed by 3:1 without and with formant correction
Source: Pierce 48 & 53

Spectrogram of second and third parts; click to enlarge

Formant frequencies. What determines the frequencies of the formants? First of all, keep in mind that a formant is a narrow, resonant band of frequencies, so when we refer to the formant frequency, we are pointing to the centre frequency of that band.

In order to understand how formants are placed, we can recall the basic modes of vibration in a tube closed at one end, and open at the other, as documented in the first Vibration module. If we imagine the vocal tract as such a tube (which would make us look very odd!), then the resonant frequencies would be the set of odd harmonics, because the fundamental mode of vibration corresponds to 1/4 wavelength, and the other modes to its odd multiples, as shown in the diagram below.

There are theoretically an infinite number of those resonant modes, but we will show just the first four, as the strength of the higher ones falls off quickly. However, the actual shape of the vocal tract is irregular, hence the broadening of the resonant energy into the formant shape, but to start from first principles, let’s return to the tube closed at one end (the vocal folds) and open at the other (the mouth).


If the average male vocal tract is about 7” (17.5 cm) long, and the fundamental mode is 1/4 wavelength, then a full wavelength is about 28” (70 cm) which corresponds to approximately 500 Hz. The odd harmonics, then are 1500, 2500 and 3500 as noted in the diagram. The female vocal tract, being shorter, is likely to have formant frequencies 10-20% higher than that.

The diagram also notes the positions of minimum pressure, the nodes (marked N), and the maximum pressure positions, the antinodes (marked A). The mouth is a nodal position for the first formant, and the diagrams for the other formants show the approximate position of the nodes inside the vocal tract. The rule is that as the area of the vocal tract increases at a nodal position, the formant frequency rises as well. Vice versa, if it decreases, then the formant frequency falls. An inverse relation applies for the antinodes at a position where the area changes.

The following table lists the first three formant (i.e. centre) frequencies F1, F2 and F3, (the most essential ones to identify a vowel) for the adult male and female, as well as for children. A simple example of the area of the vocal tract changing is with the open mouth vowel “aah” where the first male formant has risen to 570 Hz, and the closed mouth “eeh” where it has fallen to 270 Hz.


Table of formant frequencies for men, women and children

Note that for these typical measurements, the vowel has been placed in a “consonantal environment”, namely a soft attack “h” and a hard consonant ending “d” in order to standardize the formant positions. In a continuous speech stream, the tongue may need to move to a new position right after the vowel (for instance, to a closed mouth “n”) which will cause the vowel formants to shift. Therefore, this table represents a static situation.

Perry Cook has programmed a vocal simulator based on the source-filter model, and in this next example he has modelled several tongue positions and their respective formants. However, only the first three are recognizably correct and plausible, and the last two are “unreasonable” because they can’t be physically produced by any tongue position. You’ll probably find them quite funny, as you try to imagine someone contorting their mouth into such a weird shape!

Five vocal tract simulations, the last two "unreasonable"
Source: Cook 39


The Singing Formant. The Swedish speech acoustician Johan Sundberg studied the singing voice with a great deal of research into the scientific principles involved, during the 1970s and until his retirement in 2001, culminating in his book The Science of the Singing Voice. Here we will only outline one major finding, with the recommendation of reading his work further and viewing some of the lectures that are available online.

In particular Sundberg is associated with identifying the singing formant. This refers to a vocal technique that is developed mainly in opera singers to project their voice over an orchestra. The difference in that type of voice is the presence of an added (or perhaps “amplified”) resonance region in the 2-3 kHz range. Given our sensitivity to those frequencies, this added spectral component allows the unamplified vocal sound to be heard above a full orchestra. Here is an example comparing this type of trained voice to a more conventional one, using vocal synthesis.

Singer with and without the singing formant; synthesized voice
Source: Cook 42

Click to enlarge

The historic reason for this development in the Western operatic tradition is an interesting confluence of acoustic and cultural influences. In the second half of the 19th century, opera houses with performances for a larger paying audience had become the norm, and at the same time, many of the orchestral instruments had been re-designed to be louder in order for their sound to fill the hall. Also, in many cases, the actual number of instruments in the orchestra had increased, sometimes to over 100.

Opera singers prior to that period generally had lighter and more agile voices, culminating in the “bel canto” repertoire of the first half of the 19th century. However, it was very difficult to make this style of singing louder without losing pitch accuracy and the comprehension of the text. The “solution” was the type of vocal enhancement described by the singing formant, and the result was a new type of singer that is now associated with “grand opera”.

The irony in the 20th century is that amplification could have been used with the earlier types of voices, but the prejudice against using that solution remains today (as being too much associated with musical theatre). However, historically informed performances of works prior to the 19th century have become more widely available, and singers who specialize in that repertoire do not necessarily have to resort to the singing formant approach.

Diphthongs. The above examples are called the pure vowels because they have a fixed tongue position and fixed set of formant frequencies. However, the tongue and mouth can move during a vowel and create sliding formants. These are called diphthongs, which is hard to say and even hard to spell. We will list the possible ones in English in the next section, but for now let’s look at an extreme example, namely going from an “aah” to an “eee”.

This diphthong seems extreme because we go from an open mouth to a nearly closed one, but more dramatic is the raising of the tongue towards the top of the mouth which reduces the area at the antinode (A) between the two nodal positions shown above. This results in a huge rise of the second formant from 840 Hz to 2290 Hz (see the table under the male “haw’d” and “heed” and check the position of the antinode for the second formant in the diagram above it). Also, try doing this yourself.

You can watch the transition in the video example, and notice the huge gap in the middle of the spectrum with the “eee”. The partial closing of the mouth also makes the sound weaker, but in general we think of “eee” as a bright vowel because of the two high formants (2nd and 3rd). Finally you can compare the two waveforms of the vowels in a steady state, as below. Because of the shape of the glottal pulse, vowel waveforms are not symmetrical above and below the zero axis, as in a sine wave or other free vibration. If a simulation lacked that character, it would not sound realistic.

Video example of an extended diphthong


Waveform of the vowel "aah"


Waveform of the vowel "eee"

Diphthong spectrum
aah to eee

Consonants. Thus far we have been exploring the source-filter model for vocal production, and it can also be used for the production of consonants. However, what it will produce is a spectral analysis of the noise bands associated with the consonants in terms of the airstream moving through the vocal apparatus. What it omits is their temporal envelope which is arguably more important for their identification.

Consonants, like speech in general, can be voiced – that is, with the vibration of the vocal folds and hence a pitch – or unvoiced, without those vibrations and pitch (also called voiceless). Whispering is an example of unvoiced speech, and yet we can still understand it. We even think we can hear pitch rises and falls simply from the cues provided by the vocal tract resonances.

In Hildegard Westerkamp’s 1975 work Whisper Study, she whispers a sentence from Kirpal Singh quite close to the mike. Despite the absence of any voicing of the vowels, the text remains clear and the consonants are prominent. Compare the spectrum for the whispered text with her speaking it normally. Besides the consonants, the upper formants of the vowels still retain their character.



(top) Spectrum of whispered text
(bottom) Spectrum of spoken text (click to enlarge)
Westerkamp whispered text
Consonants can be voiced or unvoiced, as we will document in the next section, because they depend on the place and manner of their articulation, as classified by linguists. Here we will simply present the source-filter model using noise as a source (the first sound) and four filter settings that produce differing bandwidths and distributions of the noise, simulating the unvoiced consonants "fff", "sss", "shh" and "xxx".

Noise band put through 4 filter settings to simulate consonants
Source: Cook 30


Click to enlarge



Index

B. Linguistic descriptions of vowels and consonants. The basic units of a spoken language are the phonemes which are specific to an individual language, and generally classified as vowels and consonants. English, for instance, has about 44 phonemes. Linguists categorize vowels according to the tongue position, and sometimes display a graph of the first formant mapped against the second. This implies that only two formants are needed to identify a vowel, which is fine for linguistic purposes, but in terms of a re-synthesis of the voice, the third formant (at least) should be included for realism, as listed in the above table.

The small oval diagram at the left below shows the position of the tongue within the mouth (which is placed at the far left) in its extremes of sliding towards the back of the mouth along the hard palate at the top, then to the soft palate at the back, as shown in the upper curve of the diagram. The lower curve follows the tongue sliding back along the bottom of the mouth. You can try doing this consciously, but it feels tricky to do smoothly as it’s not a normal type of tongue movement in the mouth.

Instead of the oval mapping of the mouth, linguists prefer to show the vowels in the vowel quadrilateral as shown at the right. The extreme positions that are numbered are called the cardinal vowels (which were also shown in the oval diagram). These represent theoretical tongue positions that are not necessarily used in any language, but a linguist can be trained to produce them.




Vowel quadrilateral (left) and linguistic representation of vowels and diphthongs (right)
Source: Denes & Pinson

The solid circles mark the tongue position for the pure vowels we have been referencing in the first section, since they involve a fixed tongue position in the mouth. Again, you will see the “ee” vowel towards the front of the mouth on the upper left side and the “aah” vowel towards the back and bottom of the mouth on the lower side of the diagram. The bright vowels are usually at the front of the mouth, and the dark ones towards the back.

Notice that the “hesitation” vowels (“er” and “uh”) have the tongue placed near the centre of the mouth – ready to move once you decide what you want to say! The formants for those vowels will likely be the closest to the odd harmonic spacing we saw in the modes of vibration model above.

Linguists use phonetic spellings of the vowels, and to help us understand them, usually provide a common word to help us out (e.g. the I for the short vowel “i” as in “hit”), as shown in the table at the right.

Likewise we can see the five diphthongs that are used in English in the table. If you practice each one slowly you can feel how your mouth and tongue move to create them. For instance, “ou” and “au” as in “tone” and “shout”, involve a rounding of the mouth. However the long “a”, labelled as “ei” as in “take”, and the long “i”, labelled as “ai” as in “might”, are usually performed so quickly that you might not think of them as diphthongs, but try them slowly. Similarly with the "oi" as in "toil".

Try saying the word I (referring to yourself) very slowly and you can feel yourself doing something similar to the diphthong shown in the previous video (“aah” going to “eee”). In practice, you might do this when you are hesitating on the word I, when you don’t know which verb you are going to use next, but in colloquial speech this gets done very fast, and in fact the mouth just moves towards the “eee” part of the sound without spending any time there. So the brain's recognition pattern mechanism just reacts to this suggested movement of the mouth without you actually needing to hold the “eee” portion.

Different accents in spoken English around the world will likely involve slightly different tongue positions from those indicated on the vowel quadrilateral, and of course native speakers have practiced the appropriate musculature movement since childhood. Similarly, some dialects introduce diphthongs into what would normally be pure vowels, as in the famous “Southern drawl”.

Learning a new language as a adult is notoriously difficult, because of the learned musculature habits that get in the way, among other issues. However, here’s an example for how this can be re-learned. The French vowel as in rue (a street, not the English word to regret) is articulated at the front of the mouth, whereas in English its equivalent is at the back. So if you don’t want to sound like a dumb foreigner in France, try this exercise. Use your learned mouth position for the vowel “eee” and then round your lips, and this will get you in the right ballpark – or perhaps the right street!

The consonants are classified by linguists by their place and manner of articulation, as shown in this table. The “place” in question is the position of the tongue, going backwards from the lips “labial”, to the teeth “dental” (and an intermediate position in between), then the gums “alveolar”, the top of the mouth “palate”, the soft palate at the back “velar”, and at the very back of the mouth “glottal”. As mentioned earlier, consonants can be voiced or unvoiced (as marked by “voi” and “unv” respectively in this table).


Consonants organized according to their place and manner of articulation

The manner of articulation is key to the temporal pattern of the consonant, and hence its recognition. The plosives are created by blocking the air flow momentarily at the mouth, and then releasing it, a kind of “explosion”. This is well known to recordists for the pros and cons involved. The down side is that if the explosion of air goes straight into the microphone it will create a low frequency “pop” which can be very distracting (but can be filtered out, as shown here). A windscreen can help, but you can also place the mic about 30° to 40° degrees off centre. Try placing your hand in front of your mouth and vocalizing a “pah” sound; then move your hand to the side until you no longer feel the air being expelled.

The useful side of the plosive for a sound editor, is the fact that there is a short pause before the consonant – and hence a perfect place to make an edit if it is needed. The brief attack of the plosive may even momentarily mask a slight change in ambience that might otherwise be noticed.

Note that the plosives come in pairs of unvoiced (p, t, k) and voiced (b, d, g). This voicing is brief, but if you feel your throat around the Adam’s apple, you can sense the short vibration involved along with the airstream, even near the back of the mouth (the velar g).

The pattern recognition mechanism for a plosive can be triggered merely by inserting silence into a set of phonemes. Keep this in mind if someone carelessly suggests that information is “in” a sound or a signal. Just as you are more likely to notice a continuous sound only after it’s stopped (since you have been habituated to it previously), it is patterns of sound and silence that provide information to the listener. In this simple example, on the left, silence is inserted into the word “say”, first at 10 ms, then increasing to 20, 40, 60, 80, 100, 120 and 140 ms. What new “word” do you hear?

Increasing silence introduced into the word "say" Source: Cook 44
Increasing silence introduced into the phrase "gray ship" Source: Cook 47

To add a bit of further complexity to the example, many people hear the common word “stay” which includes the alveolar plosive “t”. However, for animal fanciers, the less common word “spay” (i.e. to neuter a female animal) may also be heard.

In the right-hand example, there is a rather famous example of perceptual re-organization where silences are edited into the phrase “gray ship” where many variants of the words can be detected.

Like many similar consonants, a key difference that enables us to distinguish them is the shape of the lips and mouth during their articulation. Most people do not realize the extent to which they rely on lipreading while listening to someone speak, although if they are experiencing hearing impairment, they will start depending on that skill to a much greater extent.

The plosive “b” involves closing the lips, whereas “d” involves tongue movement around the gums, followed by the same act of opening the mouth to expel the air. The “g” plosive involves the tongue at the back of the mouth against the soft palate. In a famous experiment called the McGurk effect, you are asked to listen to some repeated plosives without seeing the speaker, and then compare what you’ve heard to seeing the speaker at the same time. Does the sound you hear change? Try it with this video, which has no visuals at first, followed by a close-up of the speaker.

Most everyone hears a “ba ba” in the audio only track, and “da da” in the audio-visual version. This is because the speaker’s lips and mouth are articulating a “d” plosive while the synchronized soundtrack is a “b” plosive. It is a good demonstration of how the visual and auditory faculties interact – you’ll hear it once you see it.

The fricatives, as the name suggests (as in friction), involve constricting the air flow with the tongue position as indicated in the table. Unlike the plosives, knowing which version of the fricative to use, voiced or unvoiced, is a tricky issue for foreigners learning English, as you cannot tell from the spelling of the word in all cases. Possibly the worst is the “th” fricative in English, first because it requires you to put your tongue between your teeth – something that would likely be regarded as rude in other cultures!

Notice the phonetic symbol θ for the unvoiced “th” to distinguish it from the voiced version “th”. An unvoiced example is “thin”, with the voiced version as in “this”. Try saying “this thin” normally and then with the phonemes reversed! Not easy, but how is one supposed to learn which is used? Maybe you’ll understand why it sometimes comes out as “dis” in a foreign accent.

The alveolar and palatal fricatives (ss, sh, ch and their voiced versions, z and zh) are known as sibilants, which are characterized by their strong energy in the high frequency range, namely 5 - 10 kHz. Their presence is collectively known as sibilance. When their strength is augmented by close miking, as in radio, they can be subjected to attenuation, called de-essing.

Here is a video demonstration of the four pairs of unvoiced and voiced fricatives where you can easily see the added periodicity of the voiced version in the oscilloscope and the dramatic spectral addition of the lower harmonics in the spectrogram. These are good examples of pitch plus noise in a sound. You can probably do the same switching on and off of the voicing much more rapidly than in the example - try it!

The glottal fricative “h” is only unvoiced and produces a soft, airy attack for the next vowel (and can be silent in some words, such as “hour”), and as such is used as a neutral consonant before a vowel in the formant frequency table above. In some languages, it is given more of a guttural articulation, as in the Dutch “g”.

The semi-vowels (y and w) are regarded as consonants because they are always linked to the following vowel with a soft attack. They are both voiced, with the “y” formed by putting the tongue towards the front, similar to “ee”, and the “w” is created by rounding the lips similar to an “oo”.

The two “liquid” consonants, l  ("el") and r, are voiced and usually described as having air flow around the tongue (hence the fluid name), positioned near the gums for the “l” and farther back for the “r” which is also called a rhotic. In some languages and dialects it is “rolled” which means amplitude modulated.

The nasal consonants are also voiced, but because the air is blocked from coming out of the mouth, they are resonated in the very large nasal cavity (the largest in the skull) connected to the vocal tract behind the soft palate. Their strength can be subtle or strongly pronounced (try emphasizing them, the m, n and ng and feel the vibration in your head). Since there is no mechanism in the voice for inharmonic modes of vibration (the vocal folds always produce harmonics), we often resort to the nasal consonant “ng” when we want to imitate a metallic sound such as a bell ringing.

To conclude, the consonants act similarly to the attack transients in a musical instrument or other percussive sound. They arrive first at the auditory system, are spectrally complex in terms of noise bands, and we are very sensitive to their temporal shape. If they are missing, masked or otherwise muted through hearing loss, speech comprehension will quickly decrease.

Admittedly we can sometimes “fill in the blanks”, such as when the high frequency sibilants are not transmitted over a phone line, because of the redundancy in speech and the familiarity of most words. However, many words differ only in the consonants being used, or become indistinct because of slurring words together. However, speech recognition also reminds us that both spectral and temporal information are being simultaneously collected in the auditory system, and taken together can efficiently produce a great deal of information.


Index

C. Reading a sonogram. We will now return to the representation of speech in the sonogram (or spectrograph), as introduced in the second Vibration module. Since the 1940s, this visualization of speech has shown the intricate acoustic structure of speech in a 3-dimensional representation (frequency and time on the y and x axes, respectively, with darkness of the lines showing amplitude). Today there are many more colourful versions of the same type of representation. The linear frequency scale in this case is useful to examine the important role of high frequencies.

Speech sonogram (source: Denes & Pinson)

In this example, we are now in a position to discuss some features of (slow, in this example) connected speech that are missing from the categorizations used above. We will follow the various phonemes being represented according to the text at the top:
- the first word “I” is a diphthong, and here we can see the characteristic rise in the second formant towards the “ee”, without it being sustained at the end

- the consonant “c” (the plosive “k”) is clearly unvoiced (no low frequencies) and resides in the 2-5 kHz range, which distinguishes itself from an “ss” but not necessarily a “t”

- the vowel “ah” that follows is a pure vowel, but notice that its formants glide slowly towards the closing nasal “n” which required a closed mouth, hence the reason for the formant shift; however, this does not make it into a diphthong; the vowel recognition depends only on the initial formant frequency placement

- the sibilant “ss” is clearly very high frequency and unvoiced, also longer, so the only ambiguity would be “ss” or “sh” but in this case the frequency band is higher, so it’s an “ss”

- again, another pure vowel “ee” gliding towards a semi-vowel “y” because the tongue is moving towards the front; the weak semi-vowel “y” then is just the soft start of the final vowel which probably in the original ended with the lips closed, hence the final drop in formants.
As you can see, speech recognition by a machine has always been a kind of elusive “holy grail”, because there are so many patterns to recognize. It is also very difficult to do without reference to syntactical knowledge, and sensitivity to the variations in individual voices which usually requires the user to “train” any algorithm, not to mention how large a vocabulary is needed. Recently of course, several successful apps have become available on our smartphones, which represents a great deal of progress in artificial intelligence.

Filtered speech. Although this example does not involve a sonogram, we will show a larger scale spectrogram of a male voice that is filtered into seven frequency bands, each about two octaves wide, with centre frequencies that move up one octave each time. The voice is that of a West Coast indigenous elder, Herb George, using a mix of English and Indigenous place names in the area where he lives. For each of the seven bands, try to identify which parts of the vocal spectrum you are hearing, and which band(s) make the speech the most intelligible. The centre frequency of each band is:

(1) 125 Hz   (2) 250 Hz   (3) 500 Hz   (4) 1 kHz   (5) 2 kHz   (6) 4 kHz   (7) 8 kHz

Male voice filtered into seven bands an octave apart
Source: Herb George
WSP Van 113 & 114

Click to enlarge

Here is what you are most likely to hear in each band according to its centre frequency:
(1) 125 Hz. You hear the fundamental pitch of the voice which identifies it as male, and what is clearest are his pitch inflections (as discussed in the next section) and their rhythm

(2) 250 Hz. This band is louder and is mainly the lower formants of the voice but no consonants. Pitch inflections are clear, but the words are not intelligible, though you hear when one is emphasized, and the timbre is muffled

(3) 500 Hz. The voice is brighter in this range and vowels can be recognized, but there are no consonants

(4) 1 kHz. The speech becomes almost understandable even if you’re hearing non-English words, as you are getting some vowel and consonant information

(5) 2 kHz. This band is quite quiet and sounds distant, but this is usually the one where you can understand the speech the best if you listen carefully; phrases like “name of a place there”, “and across Belcarra in the inlet” and his humorous remark about “they say there were lazy people there” seem quite clear

(6) 4 kHz. In this band you only hear consonants and very little vowel information

(7) 8 kHz. There are only sibilants in this band and the sound is the weakest
From this demonstration you can see why the telephone bandwidth has to include the 2-3 kHz band. Note that band 5 in the example, from 1-4 kHz, is where the ear is most sensitive according to the Equal Loudness Contours that were determined at the same time as telephone technology was being developed. This band includes both upper formants in the vowels and some consonantal information.

To complement the discussion of consonants in English, you can appreciate the complexity of these place names from the same speaker. Note that the first three names have the standard telephone bandwidth (300 Hz - 3 kHz) and then open up to full bandwidth which makes the sound louder and brings it closer.

Consonants in a West Coast Indigenous language
Source: Herb George
WSP Van 113 & 114

Click to enlarge


Index

D. Voice and soundmaking on a personal and interpersonal level. Now that we have a grounding of the acoustics and linguistics of speech, we can switch levels to consider its larger communicational aspects. A good place to start is how one’s own soundmaking mediates the relationship to oneself, to one’s self-image and gender, and then to the acoustic environment, leading to interactions with others and larger social groups.

Since sound is a physical phenomenon, our own soundmaking reflects the whole person, physically and psychologically. It also reflects the interiority of the body since all aspects of bodily and mental functioning influence our ability to make sound. Friends and acquaintances will easily detect through your voice when there are changes in your state of health, mood or personality.

Feedback of our own sounds back to the ears, as well as feedback from our surrounding environment via reflections and resonances (as documented in Sound-Environment Interaction) all play a role in a basic orientation of the self within a given space. In that module we presented this example of a voice recorded in different acoustic spaces, indoors and outdoors, and it’s worth repeating here now that we have a more detailed understanding of vocal spectra and resonances. Listen to how much the timbre of the voice changes in each location (in fact, some listeners were surprised to learn it was the same voice).

Voice recorded in different spaces
from program 1, Soundscapes of Canada


Aural feedback can also be disrupted in a variety of ways:
- a loss of acoustic feedback at the extremes of acoustic space, anechoic conditions (with minimum reflected sound) and a diffuse sound field (with minimum absorption such that sounds have no direction), or ones with high noise levels such that you cannot hear your own sounds

- hearing loss can make it difficult to judge the loudness and clarity of one’s own speech, as can the condition of autophony described here

- a temporary disruption can be experienced with earplugs or headphones; however, the effect is the opposite in each case: your own sounds seem louder when heard via bone conduction (termed occlusion) and therefore you tend to speak more quietly, whereas with headphones that block the air conduction route, you tend to speak more loudly

- if a significant time delay (about 1/4 second) is introduced into your speech reaching the ears, for instance, via headphones, you are likely to stop speaking altogether

  - similarly, when people hear a recording of their own voice, they usually don’t think it “sounds like them”, because they are used to a mixture of bone conduction and air conduction in the feedback loop; bone conduction transmits more low frequencies, and therefore their absence in a recording makes it seem that your voice is higher than you think it is (would that affect men more than women?)
The Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934) researched the social and cognitive development of children, and one of his key ideas was that egocentric speech in children (speaking out loud to only themselves) around the ages of 3 to 4, was a precursor to inner speech and a form of self-regulation of behaviour. When this kind of speech is internalized after a few years, it assists listening, thinking and cognitive development.

Interpersonal interaction and paralanguage. Non-verbal communication, that is, without using words, includes bodily and facial movement, called kinesics, interpersonal distance, called proxemics, and other sensory forms of behaviour including paralanguage which is basically how words are spoken.

Paralanguage can be regarded as the analog (i.e. continuous) aspects of verbal communication, compared with the discrete, digital form of words. In fact, it is what links words and phrases together to give them an overall shape and rhythm. As such, and because of the types of parameters it includes, it is often regarded as the “musical” aspects of communication since similar terms apply to both. In that sense, it describes the form of the communication, the “how”, rather than the “what” is being said.

In terms of hemispheric specialization as discussed in the Sound-Sound Interaction module, paralanguage is more likely to be processed in the right hemisphere, compared to the language centres of the left hemisphere (which is predominant in right-handed subjects, but can be either right or left in left-handed subjects). This means it is processed more as shapes and contours, rather than discrete logical units. It also means that it is less vulnerable to noise or distortion, since it is an overall gestalt-like pattern, which is not as easily degraded, for instance, by missing a word or two.

Also, unlike the digital form of words, analog communication cannot be self-referential, paradoxical, or self-negating. A sentence like this one can self-referentially describe itself as a statement, or even say that it is untrue. On the other hand, paralanguage and other non-verbal cues can neutralize or even negate the linguistic content. For instance, a phrase with negative or critical implications can be delivered with the right paralanguage that indicates the speaker is just teasing or joking. In fact, the real intent is to reaffirm the speaker’s trust in the person the remark is aimed at. That is, the speaker needs to know that it won’t be taken the ”wrong way”, a recognition that the literal meaning is so far from the actual truth that it can be joked about.

However, as we will see below, when the paralinguistic form seems to match the content of the communication, it will be likely be received as genuine and sincere, but when there is a mismatch, the listener will detect irony, sarcasm or even misleading intentions and outright manipulation.

But first, let’s look at the parameters of paralanguage. Their values can range from normal, to exaggerated (for emphasis or some effect), to stylized and ritualistic, as illustrated later.
- pitch: the pattern of pitch changes is called the vocal inflection, and can be described as having an average, range and specific contours; in tonal languages, pitch levels define the meaning of a word, whereas in Indo-European languages inflection clarifies the intent of the communication

- loudness: also has an average, range and specific in contours that include patterns of stress on key words

- timbre: the quality and texture of a voice that gives it a character that is easy to recognize but difficult to describe except in general terms (e.g. rough, smooth, raspy, nasal, etc); vocal timbre is sometimes altered for a special effect or purpose

- rhythm: again, we can use the musical terms of tempo (perhaps measured as words per minute, with an average and range), as well as patterns of stress that give it a “metre” (the number of beats per phrase)

- articulation: the quality of being clear and distinct, ranging to slurred and indistinct, or smoothly connected versus jerky and disjointed

- non-verbal elements: hesitations, emotional elements, laughter, and other gestures that psychologist Peter Ostwald calls “infantile gestures” because they can be observed in babies that are pre-verbal

- silence: perhaps the most important of all, described by Tom Bruneau as “a concept and process of mind … an imposed figure on a mentally imposed ground”
In terms of Bruneau’s approach to silence, if we limit ourselves for the moment to just psycho-linguistic silences, the first of his three levels (the other two being interactive silences and socio-cultural silences), we can introduce four aspects of silence in speech that link it to cognitive processing. According to Bruneau (Journal of Communication, 23, 1973, pp. 17-46):
- silence is imposed by encoders (i.e. speakers) to create discontinuity and reduce uncertainty

- silence is imposed by decoders (i.e. listeners) to create “mind time” for understanding

- it can occur in “fast time” through horizontal sequencing with high frequency of occurrence, short durations and low emotional intensity

- it can also occur in “slow time” which reflects semantic and metaphorical processes, which Bruneau describes as “organizational, categorical, and spatial movement through levels of memory”; high sensory moments with high emotional intensity are experienced in slow time and/or silence
It will be useful to keep all of these parameters in mind as you listen to two interview excerpts, both of which have approximately the same overall slow tempo, but the role of silence (and paralanguage in general) is vastly different. The two examples have been chosen to illustrate our hypothesis about paralinguistic form matching content, and seeming appropriate to it.

Does it clarify and put the message into context? What does it reflect and reveal about the speaker and his/her relationship to the listener? Is it a form of metacommunication (i.e. communication about a communication)?

There are two interviews: (1) a grandmother speaks to her grandson about the sounds she grew up with on a farm; (2) a retired policeman offers his views on native land rights

Interview with a grandmother recalling sounds from her past

Interview with a retired policeman about native land rights

Click to enlarge

In the first interview excerpt, the grandmother speaks slowly but steadily with a relaxed tempo, leaving silent sections where she seems to be recalling memories (and her grandson was wise not to interrupt those). However, her pace (which has not be distorted by any editing) maintains a steady beat and tempo where the most important words land on the beat (try “conducting” the recording to see how this works). Each sound memory is given a vivid aural description with paralinguistic imitations of the sounds being described, such as sleigh bells “ringing out”, the train whistle on a “frosty night” which would “ring across the prairie”, the “purring of a cat” and the “cackle of hens” which she accompanies with laughter inviting her listener to join in the amusement.

This interview went on for a very long time, as one memory led to another, including some unexpected machine sounds that she found memorable. Her pitch inflections are quite free for each memory, generally starting higher and descending to a more intimate level. Overall, she draws the listener into the memory of each experience, and gives a clear indication of how she felt about each sound. Her use of silence is a good example of Bruneau’s concept of “slow time” which invites reflection and metaphor.

Another example of “slow time” speech is Barry Truax’s performance of John Cage’s “Lecture on Nothing” from his book Silence where the text is spread out on the page to indicate approximate tempo and rhythmic contours (note, the text starts at 3:40).

In the second interview excerpt, the male speaker’s use of paralanguage is the complete opposite. As can be seen in the overall spectrum pattern, his phrases are stiff and mechanical with no flow. The pauses come in syntactically inappropriate places, e.g. after a single word, not complete phrases, as he attempts to maintain control of the subject matter and allow no intervention or dissent. The sing-song pitch inflections are repetitive in predictable patterns that can be arbitrarily applied to any subject, and the stress points are on arbitrary words, such as “exception”, “two locations”, “misadventure” and “treaty exists”.

The overall impression is that he is trying to sound objective and logical (as a professional policeman would be trained to do), but at key moments there are slips in objectivity that betray what we come to suspect are his true feelings. Euphemisms such as “enjoying the treaties”, mispronouncing “publicity”, correcting his mistake about “illegally taking it away”, ad hominem (and racist) characterizations such as “rattled their bones in some type of a war dance”, clichés such as “at this time” and “in their wisdom”, all suggest he is repeating an official line that is intended to hide his own feelings.

As a further example of interpersonal dialogue, you may be interested in this detailed analysis of four short interchanges between family members that reveal a series of dynamic shifts in paralanguage that reflect underlying issues they are experiencing.
18. Personal Listening Experiment. Try listening to the paralanguage of several different examples of speech, both on a personal and interpersonal level, and those found in the media. Refocus your listening away from the actual content of the spoken message onto the contours of the phrases and their rhythmic variations. If you want to be more analytical, you can use the list of parameters above as a checklist. If you are coming at this from the electroacoustic side, you may want to record some examples and loop them similar to the conversation analysis in the previous link. Ask yourself what is being communicated that is not directly in the text? What is being revealed and what remains hidden? How aware are you of your own use of paralanguage in typical situations?

Index

E. Soundmaking in cultural contexts. Voices of power and persuasion.

There are countless examples of vocal styles used publicly that could be used in this context, but we are going to listen to some historical recordings that may be less familiar to you, as well as other instances of stylized soundmaking.

We begin with a formal political speech given by the Canadian Prime Minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King, in 1925 to a Liberal convention in Montreal. He uses the typical kind of projected voice required to be heard acoustically in a large gathering (it’s unclear whether any amplification would have been used at that time, although it was picked up for radio). It is a classic example of oratory characterized by a raised voice (higher pitch and loudness), a slow steady beat, and a series of inflection patterns that start higher and descend to a cadence. The regular rhythm works to hold the attention of the audience (in this case a favourable one), and provides a framework within which a key word or phrase can be emphasized.

King’s main point is that he needs to have a majority government in the next election, and so his logical argument, that extends over two minutes (no sound bites here), develops in clear stages. It reaches a high point about 90 seconds in, with the word “majority” on a higher pitch. This sequence includes the traditional oral technique of the “list”, a repeated set of similar phrases that goes through its items one by one so the listener experiences the time frame, rather than grouping them together as a logical set – in this case detailing five consecutive governments in the UK that eventually resulted in a majority government. He then goes to the US context where a third party had been rejected in favour of a strong majority. Also notice how he “speaks into the applause” to maintain continuity and the energy level.

W.L.M. King's broadcast speech, 1925
Source: National Library

Click to enlarge

Media analysts often point to Franklin Roosevelt’s “fireside chats” as being one of the first examples of political speech adapted to radio, that is, in a relaxed manner similar to speaking with a small group of friends, not a large audience. In fact, there were only 30 such broadcasts by the US President between 1933 and 1944, but they had a great impact on the country during times of crisis.

A Canadian equivalent is less well known, namely the Rev. William “Bible Bill” Aberhart, premier of Alberta from 1935-43, and founder of the Social Credit Party, who combined religion with politics, and began broadcasting from the Calgary Prophetic Bible Institute as early as 1927. He had a regular program throughout the 1930s that reached a wide rural area of the province, where he mixed religion with a radical critique of the banking system and the federal government.

In this example, broadcast on Aug. 29, 1937, you can hear his low-key style in front of an audience in Edmonton that is clearly designed to resemble a “fireside chat” with a supportive congregation. In this excerpt he reads from two letters sent by members of his radio audience (“rapidly” he says, but actually at a slow steady pace). Note the short phrases with similar inflection patterns and cadences, particularly in the text noted on the spectrogram.

Rev. William Aberhart broadcast 1937
Source: National Library

Click to enlarge

Radio not only produced many different styles of vocal behaviour, but also created structures to foreground them, such as the “ad break”. We presented a detailed analysis of one such break in the Dynamics module where an announcer brought the listener out of the music and made a smooth transition into the commercial ad, and then back into the program content. In this sequence from the 1930s, a somewhat similar structure was used in a radio drama program to frame the ad and blur its boundaries.

The framework that is set up is that we’re in the intermission between two acts of the drama, and that we’ve gone backstage and can eavesdrop on the two female actors during the break. The male announcer sets the scene, coming out of the concluding music, and miraculously we can hear the actors chatting about the previous scene. It should be recalled that female voices were not acceptable as announcers during this period, so an ad sequence with two female voices was very unusual, though in this case normalized by their being the same actors as in the play.

Radio voices had to be distinct and expressive since the actors couldn’t be seen, and so the two females actors have the stereotypical voices of Sally, the “lady of the house” (high pitched, smooth timbre, sounding very educated) and her “maid” Hilda (a broadly defined working class accent with exaggerated inflections, low pitch and raspy timbre). They discuss the previous scene in the garden, eliciting the idea that the maid has a boyfriend, Henry, whom she wants to impress, but the obstacle she says is her face.

The lady asks her what soap she is using (the section shown in the spectrogram), and the maid naively describes its advertised promises, to which the lady takes on a didactic stance, offering a medically endorsed (by a male physician of course) alternative, the Ivory Soap brand. Then there is more innuendo about Henry, and the announcer smoothly returns us to the drama cued by “the bell for the second act”.

Radio drama ad break, Ivory Soap, 1930s

Click to enlarge

One of the most highly stylized vocal professions is that of the auctioneer. They are usually male, and have achieved a high degree of virtuosity in rapid vocal effects designed to entice the listener into making a bid on something being sold. Unlike the previous examples, actual intoning is used by the auctioneer, that is, placing the words on a sung pitch which has several advantages. First of all, the auctioneer can prolong his “patter” much longer than if he were purely speaking, since less breath is being expelled. Secondly, this pitch attracts and holds the listener’s attention and provides a recognizable tonal centre from which departures can be made, in this case at the end of each extended breath, the first going up, the next going down. And thirdly, the sheer pace of the patter increases the energy level and may induce the audience’s awe for his virtuosity.

Moreover, this particular auctioneer has mastered the art of alternating between a rapid rhythmic patter to hold everyone’s attention, and the “breaks” (which themselves attract attention) where he cajoles his target customer with banter. Here his inflections go much farther up and down than the patter does, and allows for a free give-and-take plus humorous interjections. This fellow is highly successful in building up the bids with each iteration of this pattern (one of which is shown in the spectrogram), until he finally gets a high price for what he is selling (in this case a pumpkin). As a footnote, the previous unsuccessful auctioneer got a 25 cent bid, and this guy got $2.50!

Auctioneer
Source: WSP Van 123 take 13

Click to enlarge

So far we have only given examples of the solo voice, but there are many instances where multiple voices join together, not just in unison (which is also impressive) but in competition. Sports events are well known examples of this, but in the next example we get a more intimate situation, a local softball game where the team members and fans are particularly vocal about encouraging their own team members, and intimidating their opponents.

Paralanguage clearly dominates semantic content – the form of the communication is more important, and its goal is to hype one player (the pitcher or the batter) and to diss the other. Short punchy repeated phrases are used, such as “Come on now, like you can … hum in there” to the pitcher Benny, or “you watch ‘em now fella” to the batter, Al.

The second example does not have opposing teams, but has every player vying with everyone else. This is a historic recording from the trading floor of the Vancouver Stock Exchange, at a time when bids and offers had to be shouted out by each trader (now superseded of course by computers). The example is remarkable for how different each person had to sound to be noticed above all the others and the general din. All of the paralinguistic cues are on display, pitch inflections, timbre and loudness, in a perfect symbol of market capitalism. We might even compare this behaviour to the Acoustic Niche Hypothesis where each species has its own frequency band.

Softball game
Source: WSP Van 107 take 3
Trading floor, Vancouver Stock Exchange, 1973
Source: WSP Van 30 take 2

A unique form of collective soundmaking that few people have experienced is called glossolalia, commonly called “speaking in tongues” as practiced by certain evangelical congregations. The idea is not necessarily having the ability to speak in a different language (which is the usual interpretation of the Biblical account of the disciples at Pentecost being given the power to go forth to other lands and preach). Most studies find that the vocalization in glossolalia is made up of phonemes and syllables in the speaker’s own language, and so it represents a kind of free vocal improvisation.

In this example, recorded in a church in Vancouver, the individual voices can be clearly heard overlapping in a random fashion. We won’t speculate on the religious aspects of the practice, but simply note that public soundmaking opportunities are generally regulated in an orderly fashion, and other than unison behaviour at specific moments, there are few opportunities to have complete vocal freedom in a public context that is clearly devoid of any sense of negative emotion (which leaves out major sports events). The ability with glossolalia to maintain such vocalizations for a long period indicates that it is not stressing the body, but rather providing a safe outlet for self-expression within a community group.

Group participation in glossolalia at a Vancouver church

F. Cross-cultural forms of vocal soundmaking. In many cultures, functional and musical vocalization practices – which are usually deeply intertwined – are highly complex and reveal a seemingly infinite variety of vocal possibilities. Some of these practices are endangered in the contemporary world, others have been revived to some extent by enthusiastic followers, and still others have managed to transfer themselves through evolution into contemporary multi-cultural practice.

The functional aspect of the various types of soundmaking usually reflect and utilize the typical acoustic spaces they are found in, and have clearly evolved in relation to them to the point where they can be called languages. For instance, the whistling languages found in many parts of the world, the best known being in the Canary Islands, are designed to communicate across mountainous valleys since high frequencies will carry well in the absence of absorbing obstacles, similar to the Swedish examples of kulning presented below.

African drumming languages, often referred to as talking drums, can also communicate over long distances through the jungle and be relayed even farther. They can imitate the tonal patterns of spoken language through the resonances of the log drums. Of the countless other examples we could draw on, here are just four traditions from other cultures that we can briefly introduce you to, in the hope that they will inspire you to investigate them and others more fully.

Inuit. The traditional competitive tradition of Inuit throat singing, known as katajjaq, in the Canadian high arctic, was usually practiced by two women facing each other at a very close distance, sometimes close enough to use their partner’s mouth as a resonator. They took turns uttering complex rhythmic sounds on both the inhale and exhale of the breath, filling in the gaps in the other’s sound. These sounds were sometimes intended to imitate those of nature, or even machines in more recent times. It was performed by both adult women and young girls who could adapt the practice to exchange gossip about their boyfriends, for instance. The development of such diaphragmatic breathing was probably beneficial for a cold climate. The cycle ended when one ran out of breath, and laughter erupted as in this recording.

Inuit throat singing

Click to enlarge

Sweden. In the north of Sweden, the women who were tending small herds of cows and sheep in the mountainous regions, developed an amazing singing style called kulning that was partly functional – to call their animals and to communicate with others across a valley, for instance – and highly musical with extremely high pitches and precise intervals produced with what is called head voice. In some examples, the inflections of speech directed at the animals flowed smoothly into these sung pitch patterns as in the first example. In others, the melodic lines are entirely sung with intricate ornamentation as in the second example, perhaps reflecting the isolation being experienced.

These are just two examples of those recorded by the Swedish musician Bengt Hambraeus in the late 1940s and early 50s, transmitted by a telephone line back to Stockholm. In some recordings you can hear an echo from across the valley. With no barrier to absorb the sound, these high pitches actually carried farther than low-pitch sounds. The tradition gradually disappeared from actual herding practice, but has recently been revived by younger singers studying the tradition.

Swedish mountain shepherdess calls to her animals

Swedish mountain shepherdess singing
Source: Bengt Hambraeus

Click to enlarge

Pygmy. The various Pygmy cultures in sub-Saharan Africa, such as the Aka and Baka peoples, have become well-known for their contrapuntal music and relaxed vocal style. The first recording with two young girls shows that even the children can master the interweaving of two complex vocal lines, sung on the breath, each with very precise musical intervals. The second example is a group of men and boys who have returned from the hunt, and shows an interlocking rhythmic style where each person contributes their own line according to their ability. Some commentators such as Colin Turnbull and Alan Lomax have suggested a correlation between this musical style and their traditional, communal lifestyle. The French ethnomusicologist, Simha Arom, has published many sound recordings such as these.

Two pygmy girls singing in counterpoint

Pygmy men and boys singing after the hunt
Source: Simha Arom

Click to enlarge

Tuvan. The nomadic Tuvan people of Central Asia developed a form of throat singing that can produce overtones and multiphonics, that is, overtones so strong they can be heard as multiple pitches. The high pitches that you hear in this brief example are produced by a manipulation of the tongue at the front of the mouth at the same time as the throat is being constricted at the back. As with the Inuit, circular breathing allows the sound to be sustained for long periods of time.

Tuvan throat singing

Last sequence of the recording; click to enlarge


Index


Q. Try this review quiz to test your comprehension of the above material, and perhaps to clarify some distinctions you may have missed.

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