Posted by Tabor T and A, er..D on May 17, 2003 at 01:52:31:
In Reply to: Re: "T" and "D" syllables posted by Sean Chisham on May 16, 2003 at 20:12:06:
In voice pedagogy, we call these sounds: T and D "voiced and unvoiced partners" because they phisiologically use the same mechanism, with or without the vibration of vocal chords. T and D of course, P and B, k and g, s and Z, f and v (voiced and unvoiced plosives) are examples of voiced and unvoiced partners. If there is any difference in tongue placement or force, pressure or so on, it isn't out of necessity but out of American speech habits. This becomes expecially apparrant when listening to the short, Italian D of a skilled singer like Luciano Pavoratti. This is, of course, when the D is in the middle of a word and not at the beginning. ("credo", "alfredo", as opposed to "vegetabile" or "pieta". The T and the D are identical in tongue placement.
just for those who wish to know, consonants on which one can hum (M, N, L etc..are called semivowels) and consonants are labeled by the parts of the mouth which are used in forming the sounds. Vowels are labeled as more "front" or "back" and charted in a cone, according to the placement of the tongue, which relates directly to overtone production. (second, or variable formant). If you find this information wonderfully intreguing, try reading the latest (and I think the best read of the bunch) vocal pedagogy book: The Functional Unity of the Singing Voice by Barbara Doscher. It is a quick, and interesting read for those who are interested in what singers do in order to understand their voices.
It was my training in voice pedagogy which helped me to understand what I was hearing with tubas, and the confusion over bright/dark terminology in my tuba section at the time. Often, tubas with larger bell flares (to me) sounded brighter than did tubas with smaller bell flares. The sound, however, carried in a way which I describe as a "broad" sound. It made sense, when I learned about formant theory. The widest opening a singer can have is singing the "ah" vowel, and the smallest is the "oo" vowel. Ah sounds bright and oo sounds dark. A large bell flare is more like an AH than an oo, so I determined that the unique sound of a large tuba with a large bell flare was the wide flare amplifying the higher overtones in relation to the fundamental, while a smaller bell flare amplified the fundamental and seemed to minimize the amplification of higher overtones. Later, when reading Rick's website and learning of his experiments, I was amazed that anyone else could have taken so much interest in this topic.
Interestingly enough, when I play, the most common vowel sounds of which I think are the schwa sound ( ? in the international phonetic alphabet) In American english language, it is the most relaxed sound, when considering the muscular effort of the tongue. ( It is our American neutral. When someone is thinking out loud, you often hear uhhhh...)OR, when I want to play edgy I think the a in "bad" (æ in the international phonetic alphabet), but still keep my tongue relaxed. What might I do differently?