the aging voice in choral and solo settingsncvs.org/ncvsagingacda.pdf · the aging voice in choral...
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THE AGING VOICE IN CHORAL AND SOLO
SETTINGS
Ingo R. TitzeDirector, National Center for Voice and Speech,
University of Utah
Distinguished ProfessorCommunication Sciences and Disorders and the School of
MusicUniversity of Iowa
OUTLINE• Anatomical changes• Voice classification and tessitura• Registers and singing mezza voce• Warm-up and voice conservation• What’s an ideal choir size?
ANATOMICAL CHANGES
Aging Effects
VIDEO CLIPS
Age (years)
VOICE CLASSIFICATION
Male-Female Difference in Larynx Size
Males and females:
• Are not an octave apart in their fundamental frequencies (125:190 Hz ratio in speech)
• Are not equally distributed across their voice classifications
The problem of tessitura in voice
classification
Domingo
Bjoerling
REGISTERS AND SINGING MEZZA
VOCE
What is a register?
• A plateau of vocal timbre (voice quality) as pitch, loudness, or vowel is changed
What is a register shift (break)?
• A sudden (quantal) change in timbre as pitch, loudness, or vowel is changed gradually
What labels are sufficient to describe register phenomena?
• Fry (pulse timbre)• Male Modal (rich timbre)• Female Modal (mixed timbre)• Falsetto (poor timbre)• Whistle (near pure tone)
• In addition: A percent mix between male modal and falsetto
Unregistered voice
Male falsetto
Male modal
Female modal
Mix
Fry
Whistle
Falsetto
Mixed
Modal
Extreme registration in speech often prevents mixed registration in
singing
WARM-UP ANDVOICE
CONSERVATION
Warm-up:• Is primarily an individual activity, prior to
choir rehearsal
• Is highly dependent on your fatigue and recovery cycle and is most effective in short intervals
• Platoon warm-up is only moderately useful
Studies on voice fatigue in school teachers
In a teacher’s day, there are:
• About 1600 occurrences of voicing per hour at work
• More than 10,000 occurrences of voicing per day, about the same as the repetitive finger movements in a busy stenographers day of typing
In a teacher’s day:
• The accumulated phonation time is about 2-3 hours
• The greatest accumulation of voicing comes from 0.3-1.0 s durations of voicing (vowels and voiced consonants)
• At 150 Hz average F0, this amounts to 1.3 million cycles of vocal fold vibration
VIDEO CLIPS
Warm-up and preservation with semi-
occluded vocal tract exercises
The Basic Concepts in SOVT Exercises
• Stretch the vocal folds• Un-press the vocal folds• Use the vocal tract to help the
vocal folds vibrate
Vocal tractpressure
Zero oral pressure
Lung pressure
Oral pressure
Lung pressure
My motto for healthy vocal folds
Stretch and unpress the vocal folds several
times daily!
WHAT IS AN IDEAL CHOIR
SIZE?
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The End