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The Human Instrument
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When judged by its size, our vocal system fails to impress as a musical instrument. How then can singers produce all those remarkable sounds?
By: Ingo R. Titze
[link to tranquanghaisworld.blogspot.com]
Although the human vocal system is small, it manages to create sounds as varied and beautiful as those produced by a variety of musical instruments.
All instruments have a sound source, a resonator that reinforces the basic sound and a radiator that transmits the sound to listeners.
A human’s sound source is the vibrating vocal folds of the larynx; the resonator is the sound-boosting airway above the larynx; and the radiator is the opening at the mouth.
The human voice can create such an impressive array of sounds because it relies on nonlinear effects, in which small inputs yield surprisingly large outputs.
Here again recent studies indicate that nonlinear effects come to the rescue. This time it is a nonlinear interaction among the system’s elements. Rather than reinforcing each harmonic with a specific tube resonance (as occurs, for example, in organ pipes of different sizes, each of which resonates certain harmonics), our short vocal tract reinforces a cluster of harmonics simultaneously by using an energy-feedback process. The vocal tract can store acoustic energy in one part of the vibration cycle and feed it back to the source at another, more advantageous time. In effect, the vocal tract gives a “kick” to each cycle of oscillation of the vocal folds so as to increase the amplitude of vibratory motions. In analogy to pushing someone on a playground swing, this cyclic kick resembles a carefully timed push to boost the amplitude (travel distance) of the swing’s oscillations.
:singing:
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