Subject: formants: please help!
From: "jjh"
To: Vocalist <vocalist>
Send reply to: VOCALIST <vocalist>

Dear Vocalist:

Ow, Ow, Ow! Ouuuuuuuuuch! The pain! The pain!

That is the sound of my head splitting in two from the excrutiating pain of
trying to understand formants! I have no clarity on this issue!

Please help me heal my pain! Can someone please explain to me, using small
words (non-jargon, please) what a formant actually is? I have consulted 5-7
pedagogy texts (including Doscher, Bunch, Sundberg, Appelman, Miller, and
Thurman, and a Joan Wall video or two), and the scientific jargon just gets
me every time.

Here is what I think I understand:

1. The vocal tract has a particular resonant frequency, and different parts
or sub-areas of the vocal tract also have their own particular resonant
frequencies. Smaller sub-areas have higher resonant frequencies.

2. Vocal sound has partials, or overtones.

3. As vocal sound travels through the vocal tract sub-areas, these
sub-areas will amplify different partials. Each of those amplified groups
of partials is termed a formant frequency region, aka formant . These
formants are also referred to as "energy bands" or "spikes" in the sound.
There seem to be at least 4-5 of these energy bands, depending in which
source you consult.

4. Three or four sources have sited the laryngeal tube as the vocal tract
sub-area in which the "ring" of the voice is generated; this would seem to
be the sort of banding together of formants 3-5 that Dr. Schweinfurth
mentioned in a post today.

5. When the singer has the singer's formant, as Dr. Schweinfurth
mentioned, he/she doesn't have to worry about being heard over an orchestra,
because the resonant frequencies of orchestral instruments are much lower
than the singer's formant.

Is any of that even close to the truth? Can I buy a metaphor? Help!

Here is what I don't understand:

1. Which formants should be strengthened? How are they strengthened?
(What physical action takes place?)
2. How are the first two formants formed? These formants seem to have
something to do with vowel quality, but I just don't understand how. What
does strengthening the first two formants do? The Thurman book is
particularly confusing to me on this issue; I took the VoiceCare Network
course where Axel Theimer explained this very clearly and concisely. I
remember understanding it at the time, but it has, of course, flown right
out of my head.
3. Is strengthening the singer's formant the same thing as singing
brighter and brighter vowels?

With that last question, I'm trying to reconcile some advice I've gotten
from lots of teachers, conductors, and coaches about bright vowels "cutting"
the orchestral texture.

I don't even know if I'm asking the right questions! Egads! As you can
tell, this is a source of some frustration for me. I'd love to take an
acoustics class sometime....ow, ow, ow! Here comes the headache again!

Please help!

Jana
--
Jana Holzmeier
Dept. of Music
Nebraska Wesleyan University
5000 Saint Paul Ave.
Lincoln, NE 68504
jjh-at-nebrwesleyan.edu
402-465-2284