MOTM

Do these formants stay constant regardless of pitch, or are they
relative to pitch? -Nate

Paul Schreiber wrote:

> FYI:
>
> (Vowel Sound/First Formant/Second/Third) Freq in Hz.
>
> ee/270/2290/3010
> i/390/1990/2550
> e/530/1840/2480
> ae/660/1720/2410
> ah/730/1090/2440
> aw/570/840/2410
> u/440/1020/2240
> oo/300/870/2240
>
> >From ancient Bell Labs stuff.
>
> Paul S.

In a message dated 8/1/2000 5:10:43 PM, etan@... writes:

>Do these formants stay constant regardless of pitch, or are they
>relative to pitch? -Nate


Since I didn't see an answer to this, I'll just ramble on -- especially with 
the list so quiet. Yes Nate, these would change relative to pitch. I find 
formants get way too much press amongst EM users since they are so closely 
related to the kinds of stuff that we know (frequencies, spectrograms, 
resonance). These are a very small part of phonetics since they really only 
relate to vowels, but they're cool because you can study them empirically.

Some (hopefully) interesting excerpts about formants from Peter Laderfoged's 
book "A Course in Phonetics" 2nd edition 1982:

"In the first part of this chapter I described how differences in pitch and 
loudness can be recorded. Now we must consider the differences in quality. A 
set of vowel sounds provides a suitable starting point, since vowels can all 
be said on the same pitch and with the same loudness.

"The quality of a sound such as a vowel depends upon its overtone structure. 
Putting it another way, we can say that a vowel sound contains a number of 
different pitches simultaneously. There is the pitch at which it is actually 
spoken, and there are the various overtone pitches that give it its 
distinctive quality. We distinguish one vowel from another by the differences 
in the overtones that are audible.

"Normally, one cannot hear the separate overtones of a vowel as 
distinguishable pitches. The only sensation of pitch is the note on which the 
vowel said, which depends on the rate of vibration (the frequency) of the 
vocal cords. But there are circumstances in which the characteristic overtone 
structure of each vowel can be heard. Try saying the vowels" [sorry, I don't 
know how to get this keyboard to produce the International Phonetic Alphabet] 
"as in the words 'heed, hid, head, had, hod, hawed, hood, who'd.' Now whisper 
these vowels. In a whispered sound the vocal cords are not vibrating, and 
there is no regular pitch of the voice. Nevertheless, when you whisper these 
vowels you can hear that they form a series of sounds on a continuously 
descending pitch. What you are hearing is one of the overtones that 
characterize the vowels. This particular overtone is highest for [i] and 
lowest for [u], with the other words in the series being in between. Now try 
whistling a very high note, and then the lowest note that you can. You will 
find that for the high note you have your tongue in the position for [i] -- 
but of course with the lips rounded, as in the vowel in the French word 'tu' 
-- and for the low note your lips and tongue are in the [u] position. Again, 
intermediate notes would have the tongue positions of the other vowels in the 
series."

And of course [i] is the IPA spelling for the vowel sound in "heed" while [u] 
is the vowel sound in "who'd."

Now back to MTOM speak!
JB

>Paul Schreiber wrote:
>
>> FYI:
>>
>> (Vowel Sound/First Formant/Second/Third) Freq in Hz.
>>
>> ee/270/2290/3010
>> i/390/1990/2550
>> e/530/1840/2480
>> ae/660/1720/2410
>> ah/730/1090/2440
>> aw/570/840/2410
>> u/440/1020/2240
>> oo/300/870/2240
>>
>> >From ancient Bell Labs stuff.
>