ABSTRACT
UNLABELLED: Biofeedback therapy is a learning process that is based on "operant conditioning" techniques. AIM: To estimate the significance of biofeedback to an accurate and faster control of singing voice emission. RESULTS: Significantly, it was discovered that professional singers active in performing of both classical and music theatre repertoire with regard to the visual-kinesthetic effect of melodic contour in musical notation as it affect vocal timbre. The results of the study also indicate that the development of new technology for youth singer vocal training, may be useful to these singers.
Subject(s)
Biofeedback, Psychology , Music , Students , Voice Training , Voice/physiology , Adult , Auditory Perception , Humans , Pitch Discrimination , Sound Spectrography/methods , Speech Acoustics , Video Recording , Voice QualityABSTRACT
The study was to estimate the significance of auditory and kinesthetic feedback to an accurate control of fundamental frequency (F0) in 18 students beginning a professional singing education. The students sing an ascending and descending triad pattern covering their entire pitch range with and without making noise in legato and staccato and in a slow and fast tempo. F0 was measured by a computer program. The interval sizes between adjacent tones were determined and their departures from equally tempered tuning were calculated, the deviation from this tuning were used as a measure of the accuracy of intonation. Intonation accuracy was reduced by masking noise, by staccato as opposed to legato singing, and by fast as opposed to slow performance. The contribution of the auditory feedback to pitch control was not significantly improved after education, whereas the kinesthetic feedback circuit was improved in slow legato and slow staccato tasks. The results support the assumption that the kinesthetic feedback contributes substantially to intonation accuracy.
