ES048 Quantifying Rep Tessituras w/ Dr. Matthew Schloneger

Dr. MATT SCHOLONEGER ES048

The purpose of Matt's study was to examine the use of dosimetry-derived tessituragrams and Voice Range Profiles (VRPs) in selecting appropriate voice repertoire for singing students.

Matt’s project for the Van Lawrence fellowship, funded by a grant from NATS and the Voice Foundation, was a study in Voice Dosemetry - that is, measuring and studying individual’s voice range profiles - the actual pitch range and loudness range of a persons voice. Specifically, he focused on the voice load of songs - how much time on each pitch, how many vibratory cycles on each pitch - in different keys. 

 

The singers were recorded singing the same song in 3 different keys. He got their own perception of difficulty, had an expert panel listen, and using the score, kind of like the map of the song, which he calls a score based tessituragram. With each singer he made a voice range profile with the dosemeter. (A dosemeter looks like earbuds on a hard collar, that sits around your neck and rests in the front. It measures skin vibration in the neck.)

 

He also looked at overall voice use through the day. He found that people think about how much they sing, but not how much they talk, or how loud the environment is. 

 

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To revisit the episode with voice scientist, Ingo Titze, you can look for episode 16 in your podcast player or visit the podcast page here. http://everysing.libsyn.com/016-every-sing-dr-ingo-titze-voice-scientist

 

Matt’s first episode on Every Sing was episode #2 http://everysing.libsyn.com/002-every-sing-dr-matthew-schloneger-on-voice-dosimetry

 

You can find Matt @ Friends University in Wichita, KS   [email protected]

 

Others involved in Matt's project:

Eric J. Hunter, PhD, Dept of Communicative Sciences and Disorders, Michigan State University 

Lynn Maxfield, PhD, National Center for Voice and Speech

 

Previous Studies

 Thurmer, Stefan, “The Tessiturogram,” Journal of Voice 2, no. 4 (1988): 327–329.

 Titze, Ingo, “Quantifying Tessitura in a Song." Journal of Singing, 65:1 (September 2008), 59–61.

 Hanrahan, Kevin, "Use of the Voice Range Profile in Assigning Repertoire: An Evaluation." NATS National Conference, Salt Lake City, UT, July 2010 (Best Poster Award)

Nico Paolo Paolillo and Frano Fussi, “The Vocal Score Prole/Vocal Range Prole Rate and APM in Artistic Voice Evaluation: Application Tested on Opera and Musical Singers; An Evaluation of Voice Suitability and Vocal Fatigue,” in Claudia Manfredi, ed., Proceedings of the Seventh International Workshop on Models and Analysis of Vocal Emissions for Biomedical Applications (Firenze, Italy, August 25–27, 2011), 85–92.

Nix, John, "Measuring Mozart: A Pilot Study Testing the Accuracy of Objective Methods for Matching a Song to a Singer.” Journal of Singing, 70:5 (June 2014), 561-572

Thanks Go To The Van L. Lawrence Fellowship – The Voice Foundation and the National Association of Teachers of Singing

Matt’s work was partially supported by the National Institutes of Health Grant R01 DC012315 from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders.