978-1285198248 Chapter 5

subject Type Homework Help
subject Pages 4
subject Words 1740
subject Authors David G. Drumright, Douglas W. King, J. Anthony Seikel

Unlock document.

This document is partially blurred.
Unlock all pages and 1 million more documents.
Get Access
page-pf1
Phonation Lab 1
Visipitch
To the instructor: The Visipitch is a really useful tool to view the interaction between
fundamental frequency and intensity in real time. The great part about using Visipitch (or similar
tools) is that the student gets to manipulate her or his voice, more meaningfully. This activity is
pretty basic, and I’m sure you’ll find ways to change it to make it better! Please realize that these
instructions are very specific, so they may not be the same for your model of Visipitch. I have
left some elements that are clearly different for the newer Visipitch versions so that they are
accounted for, and I would recommend going through the lab and editing it to match your model.
Use of the Visipitch
Visipitch Demonstration
The Kay Visipitch is a very versatile tool but has limitations also. Let’s look at what it can do.
Definitions:
Optimal f0 (sometimes referred to as optimal pitch): This is the most efficient frequency of
vibration of your vocal folds, given their current physical characteristics.
Habitual f0 (habitual pitch): This is the frequency of vibration of your vocal folds during
everyday usage. There are many different stimulus situations that can be used for habitual f0.
We’ll use a reading passage and a counting task.
Vocal range: This is the range of vocal production, defined as the difference between the highest
frequency of clear vowel production (exclusive of falsetto) minus the lowest frequency of clear
vowel production (exclusive of glottal fry). I’m excluding falsetto and fry here because the
measure we want is of vocal range for modal phonation (modal phonation is the type of
phonation used for typical, or modal, speech production).
Vocal jitter (perturbation): Cycle-by-cycle variations in fundamental frequency.
1. If the computer isn’t on, turn it on and select Kay Control from the menu. You first need
to select the proper filter setting for your voice on the Visipitch box to the left, under the
2. Verify display. Sometimes the filter setting isn’t appropriate, and you need to change it. This
can happen because a person’s voice is too low or high in frequency or because the task
moves it out of range. To verify that you are in a good starting place, do the following:
page-pf2
2
©2016 Cengage Learning. May be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
d. If you see a nice straight line about 1/4 of the way up from the bottom of the screen,
you’re in business. If not, change filter settings and repeat this task until you see that
straight line.
e. Hit return to go back to the main menu
3. Identify habitual f0:
a. First, let’s lengthen the viewing time. Select “time display,” hit enter, and change it to 9
seconds and hit return.
“You wish to know all about my grandfather. Well he is nearly 93 years old and still
thinks as swiftly as ever.
i. When you are satisfied with your production, you’ll want to mark it with cursors at the
beginning and end to exclude information you don’t want in the calculation. Use the
down/up arrows to move to “cursor” (under the display screen). Hit “L” to activate the
left cursor and use the right and left arrow keys to move it over until it is snugged up
4. Habitual f0 for spontaneous speech:
a. This is not quite spontaneous speech, but it will get us where we want to go. In this task
you should begin taking data again, but this time count, evenly, starting with one and
ending when you’ve filled up the screen.
page-pf3
3
b. When you’ve done that, cursor it as before, and then get to the statistics screen.
Mean f0 ________ Hz
Max. f0 ________ Hz
Min. f0 ________ Hz
Range ________ Hz
c. How do the numbers between the two tasks compare?
5. Identify optimal f0:
There are many different ways to identify the natural frequency for a given set of vocal folds.
The notion is that you want to set them into vibration under conditions of low muscular
tension, but with a clear phonation. One way is to relax and say “uh-huh” a couple of times.
Do this and then check your statistics.
Mean f0 ________ Hz
How does the mean for habitual and optimal f0 compare? In an ideal world they are about the
same.
6. Identify range of f0:
Admittedly, above you identified range of phonation during a speaking task. We are also
interested in range of phonation as a maximum function task. Do the following:
a. Minimum: Sustain an /a/ and glide down while holding down the microphone. Watch for
the point on the trace at which you get into glottal fry. If your trace went away or started
breaking up before your voice did, you may need to move the filter setting down to “A”
for this. When you are done you can cursor over with either the left or right cursor, put
the cursor on that last point, and read out the frequency at the cursor (see the lower right
screen). Alternately you can go into the “calculate statistics” screen, but if you went into
fry, you’ll need to cursor the fry out anyway. Do this task again and take the average of
the two.
Minimum f0: ________ Hz
Minimum f0: _________ Hz
Average: _________ Hz
b. Maximum: Now sustain an /a/ and glide up as far as you can. Watch on the trace and
remember when you went into falsetto because you don’t want to include that. You’ll
probably need to raise the filter setting up a notch (from B to C) to make sure you include
all the samples.
Maximum f0: ________ Hz
Maximum f0: _________ Hz
Average: _________ Hz
Now calculate your range: MinimumMaximum = __________ Hz
page-pf4
How many octaves is that? We expect an adult to reveal a two octave range. Remember that
an octave is a doubling of frequency. Try to get a ballpark notion of the number of octaves
that encompasses your range.
d. Approximately how many octaves does your range include? __________
7. Measure vocal jitter. On Visipitch, vocal jitter is termed “perturbation.” Perturbation actually
reflects a modified algorithm or formula for calculation; Koike developed a way to adjust for
longer-term perturbations. Get ready to take a sample. Before you do, remember that for
Go to the statistics screen and look for perturbation. Enter that number below and then do
this again so that you have two measures. Take the average of those.
Trial 1:__________
Trial 2: __________
Average percentage of jitter = __________
How do you compare with our 1–2% criterion for normalcy? What factors could lead to an
abnormally high percentage of jitter? __________________________________________

Trusted by Thousands of
Students

Here are what students say about us.

Copyright ©2022 All rights reserved. | CoursePaper is not sponsored or endorsed by any college or university.