Seeing voices

ever wondered what a voice looks like? Here's one of my favorite singers, Jerome Hines. To hear the selection this spectrogram is taken from give us a click.

In this picture you see 3 dark blue bands. These are the "pitches" or partials that make up the sound of this voice. This dark bass voice is a composite of "pitces" in two main concentrated areas. The bottom one is the pitch you actually hear, called the fundamental. The one on top is called the "singers formant," or ring in the voice. The singers formant is important because few instruments produce sound in this area, so it helps a singer be heard over an orchestra, and adds beauty to the voice. The blue band in the middle determines what vowel sound the listener hears.

Later I'll show a tenor voice so you can see the difference between a high voice and a low one.