(Acoustical Society of America, 2006) Arroabarren Alemán, Ixone; Carlosena García, Alfonso; Ingeniería Eléctrica y Electrónica; Ingeniaritza Elektrikoa eta Elektronikoa
In this paper the production of vocal vibrato is investigated. The most relevant features of the
acoustical vibrato signal, frequency and amplitude variations of the partials, will be related to the
voice production features, glottal source GS and vocal tract response VTR . Unlike previous
related works, in this approach, the effect on the amplitude variations of the partials of each one of
the above-mentioned voice production features will be identified in recordings of natural singing
voice. Moreover, we will take special care of the reliability of the measurements, and, to this aim,
a noninteractive vibrato production model will be also proposed in order to describe the vibrato
production process and, more importantly, validate the measurements carried out in natural vibrato.
Based on this study, it will be shown that during a few vibrato cycles, the glottal pulse
characteristics, as well as the VTR, do not significantly change, and only the fundamental frequency
of the GS varies. As a result, the pitch variations can be attributed to the GS, and these variations,
along with the vocal tract filtering effect, will result in frequency and amplitude variations of the
acoustic signal partials.
