Vocal Formants

     The topic brought up in this week's vocal pedagogy class in singer's/vocal formants. Vocals formants are created in the vocal tract. The air inside the vocal tract resonates and depending on the tracts opening shape and size, we produce formants. We can change vocal formants by changing the shape and size of our vocal tracts. Pictured below is how common vowels should be placed within the vocal tract. 

Let's use these words to body map vowel shape. Say each word and notice the differences. Some parts of the vocal tract you might notice are: tongue placement, location of soft palate, pharyngal space, laryngal placement, and lip shape. Now sing these words on a pitch, does that change anything in your body mapping or how you feel the different shapes in your vocal tract. 

    This topic still have lots of questions for me about how to apply this learning to my voice students. I understand that vocal formants are about resonant space and depending on how we configure the space, we are able to find different formants but it's application is still fuzzy. A few questions I have about formants are: how old in a voice student do we bring up the topic of formants? How can we distinguish the difference between resonance and formants?  How is vowel shape modification related to formants in the passagio? 

    

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