Formant frequencies in Estonian folk singing

Journal/Book: J Acoust Soc Am. 1992; 91: 3532-9.

Abstract: Formant frequencies in an old Estonian folk song performed by two female voices were estimated for two back vowels /a/ and /u/, and for two front vowels /e/ and /i/. Comparison of these estimates with formant frequencies in spoken Estonian vowels indicates a trend of the vowels to be clustered into two sets of front and back ones in the F1/F2 plane. Similar clustering has previously been shown to occur in opera and choir singing, especially with increasing fundamental frequency. The clustering in the present song, however, may also be due to a tendency for a mid vowel to be realized as a higher-beginning diphthong, which is characteristic of the North-Estonian coastal dialect area where the singers come from. No evidence of a "singer's formant" was found.

Keyword(s): Estonia ; Psychoacoustics Microcomputers ; Music ; Phonetics ; Pitch Perception; Sound Spectrography instrumentation; Speech Perception Human

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