14th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS-14) San Francisco, CA, USA August 1-7, 1999

Acoustic Characteristics of Vibrato Onset in Singing

Donald Bell (1), Michael Dobrovolsky (2)

(1) Music Department, (2) Linguistics Department, University of Calgary, Canada

A study of the first five cycles of vibrato production ("vibrato onset") in five male singers suggests that there is considerable variety in such variables as vibrato range, vibrato cycle, onset excursion and timing of appearance of initial F₀ and energy peaks among both trained and untrained voices. Vibrato onsets serve as a diagnostic for overall setting of individual singing mechanisms just prior to voice production and also suggest that this overall setting is an important factor in establishing a good vibrato.

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  Bell, Donald / Dobrovolsky, Michael (1999): "Acoustic characteristics of vibrato onset in singing", In ICPhS-14, 981-984.