formant

Information about formant

Spectrogram of American English vowels [i, u, ɑ] showing the formants f₁ and f₂

A formant is a peak in an acoustic frequency spectrum which results from the resonant frequencies of any acoustic system. It is most commonly invoked in phonetics or acoustics involving the resonant frequencies of vocal tracts or musical instruments. However, it is equally valid to talk about the formant frequencies of the air in a room, as exploited, for example, by Alvin Lucier in his piece I am sitting in a room.

Formants and phonetics

Formants are the distinguishing or meaningful frequency components of human speech and of singing. By definition, the information that humans require to distinguish between vowels can be represented purely quantitatively by the frequency content of the vowel sounds. Formants are the characteristic partials that identify vowels to the listener. Most of these formants are produced by tube and chamber resonance, but a few whistle tones derive from periodic collapse of Venturi effect low-pressure zones. The formant with the lowest frequency is called f₁, the second f₂, and the third f₃. Most often the two first formants, f₁ and f₂, are enough to disambiguate the vowel. These two formants are primarily determined by the position of the tongue. f₁ has a higher frequency when the tongue is lowered, and f₂ has a higher frequency when the tongue is forward. Generally, formants move about in a range of approximately 1000 Hz for a male adult, with 1000 Hz per formant. Vowels will almost always have four or more distinguishable formants; sometimes there are more than six.

Nasals usually have an additional formant around 2500 Hz. The liquid [l] usually has an extra formant at 1500 Hz, while the English "r" sound (IPA [ɹ]) is distinguished by virtue of a very low third formant (well below 2000 Hz).

Plosives (and, to some degree, fricatives) modify the placement of formants in the surrounding vowels. Bilabial sounds (such as 'b' and 'p' as in "ball" or "sap") cause a lowering of the formants; velar sounds ('k' and 'g' in English) almost always show f₂ and f₃ coming together in a 'velar pinch' before the velar and separating from the same 'pinch' as the velar is released; alveolar sounds (English 't' and 'd') cause less systematic changes in neighboring vowel formants, depending partially on exactly which vowel is present. The time-course of these changes in vowel formant frequencies are referred to as 'formant transitions'.

If the fundamental frequency of the underlying vibration is higher than the formant frequency of the system, then the character of the sound imparted by the formant frequencies will be mostly lost. This is most apparent in the example of soprano opera singers, who sing high enough that their vowels become very hard to distinguish.

Control of formants is an essential component of the vocal technique known as overtone singing, in which the performer sings a low fundamental tone, and creates sharp resonances to select upper harmonics, giving the impression of several tones being sung at once.

Spectrograms are used to visualise formants.

**Vowel formant centers**
Vowel	IPA	Formant f₁	Formant f₂
u	u	320 Hz	800 Hz
o	o	500 Hz	1000 Hz
ɑ	aː	700 Hz	1150 Hz
a	a	1000 Hz	1400 Hz
ø	ø	500 Hz	1500 Hz
y	y	320 Hz	1650 Hz
æ	ɛ	700 Hz	1800 Hz
e	e	500 Hz	2300 Hz
i	i	320 Hz	3200 Hz

**Vowel formants**
Vowel	Main formant region
u	200 to 400 Hz
o	400 to 600 Hz
a	800 to 1200 Hz
e	400 to 600 and 2200 to 2600 Hz
i	200 to 400 and 3000 to 3500 Hz

Singers' formant

Studies of the frequency spectrum of trained singers, especially male singers, indicate a clear formant around 3000 Hz (between 2800 and 3400) that is absent in speech or in the spectra of untrained singers. It is this formant which allows singers to be heard and understood over an orchestra. This formant is actively developed through vocal training, for instance through so-called voce di strega exercises.

External links

What are formants?
Formants for fun and profit
Formants and wah-wah pedals
Formant tuning by soprano singers from the University of New South Wales
The acoustics of harmonic or overtone singing from the University of New South Wales

• • [ e] Sound synthesis types
Frequency modulation synthesis \| Phase distortion synthesis \| Scanned synthesis \| Subtractive synthesis \| Additive synthesis
Sample-based synthesis: Wavetable synthesis \| Granular synthesis \| Vector synthesis
Physical modelling synthesis: Digital waveguide synthesis \| Karplus-Strong string synthesis \| Formant synthesis

frequency spectrum of the light. When all the visible frequencies are present in equal amounts, the effect is the "color" white, and the spectrum is a flat line. Therefore, flat-line spectrums in general are often referred to as white
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resonance is the tendency of a system to oscillate at maximum amplitude at a certain frequency. This frequency is known as the system's resonance frequency. When damping is small, the resonance frequency is approximately equal to the natural frequency of the system, which
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Acoustic may refer to:

In science:

Acoustics, a branch of physics that studies sound
Musical acoustics, the branch of acoustics that studies the physics of music
Acoustic meatus, another name for the ear canal

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Phonetics (from the Greek word φωνή, phone meaning 'sound, voice') is the study of the sounds of human speech. It is concerned with the actual properties of speech sounds (phones), and their production, audition and perception, while phonology, which
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Acoustics is the branch of physics concerned with the study of sound (mechanical waves in gases, liquids, and solids). A scientist who works in the field of acoustics is an acoustician. The application of acoustics in technology is called acoustical engineering.
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The vocal tract is that cavity in animals and humans, where sound that is produced at the sound source (larynx in mammals; syrinx in birds) is filtered. In birds it consists of the trachea, the syrinx, the oral cavity, the upper part of the esophagus, and the beak.
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A musical instrument is a device constructed or modified with the purpose of making music. In principle anything that, produces sound, and can somehow be controlled by a person playing it, can serve as a musical instrument.
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Alvin Lucier (born May 14, 1931) is an American composer of experimental music and sound installations that explore acoustic phenomena and auditory perception. Lucier was a member of the influential Sonic Arts Union, which included Robert Ashley, David Behrman, and Gordon Mumma.
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I Am Sitting in a Room (1970) is one of composer Alvin Lucier's best known works, featuring Lucier recording himself narrating a text, and then playing the recording back into the room, re-recording it.
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manner of articulation describes how the tongue, lips, and other speech organs are involved in making a sound make contact. Often the concept is only used for the production of consonants.
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Singing is the act of producing musical sounds with the voice, which is often contrasted with speech. Contrary to common thought, air is not expelled with the diaphragm, but is inhaled using the diaphragm and exhaled or expelled, using the abdominal and lower pelvic muscles, as
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vowel is a sound in spoken language that is characterized by an open configuration of the vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, which are characterized by a constriction or closure at one or more points along the
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Partial may refer to:

bias
overtone
partial function
partial algorithm
Partial derivative

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Venturi effect is an example of Bernoulli's principle, in the case of incompressible fluid flow through a tube or pipe with a constriction in it. The fluid velocity must increase through the constriction to satisfy the equation of continuity, while its pressure must decrease due to
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English}}}
Writing system: Latin (English variant)
Official status
Official language of: 53 countries
Regulated by: no official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-1: en
ISO 639-2: eng
ISO 639-3: eng
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International Phonetic Alphabet

Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

The International
Phonetic Alphabet
History
Nonstandard symbols
Extended IPA
Naming conventions
IPA for English The
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stop, plosive, or occlusive is a consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract. The terms plosive and stop are usually used interchangeably, but they are not perfect synonyms.
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In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) are:

IPA Description Example
Language Orthography IPA Meaning
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Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate (the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum).
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Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli (the sockets) of the superior teeth.
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soprano is a singer with a voice range from approximately middle C (C4) to "high A" (A5) in choral music, or to "soprano C" (C6, two octaves above middle C) or higher in operatic music.
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Opera is a form of musical and dramatic work in which singers convey the drama.^[1] Opera is part of the Western classical music tradition.^[2] An opera performance incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery and costumes and
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Overtone singing, also known as throat singing, overtone chanting, or harmonic singing, is a type of singing in which the singer manipulates the harmonic resonances (or formants) created as air travels from the lungs, past the vocal folds, and out the lips to
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harmonic of a wave is a component frequency of the signal that is an integer multiple of the fundamental frequency. For example, if the frequency is f, the harmonics have frequency 2f, 3f, 4f, etc.
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spectrogram is the result of calculating the frequency spectrum of windowed frames of a compound signal. It is a three-dimensional plot of the energy of the frequency content of a signal as it changes over time.
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orchestra is an instrumental ensemble, usually fairly large with string, brass, woodwind sections, and possibly a percussion section as well. The term orchestra derives from the name for the area in front of an ancient Greek stage reserved for the Greek chorus.
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A vocoder or voder (a portmanteau of voice and encoder) is a speech analyzer and synthesizer. It was originally developed as a speech coder for telecommunications applications in the 1930s, the idea being to code speech for transmission.
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Linear predictive coding (LPC) is a tool used mostly in audio signal processing and speech processing for representing the spectral envelope of a digital signal of speech in compressed form, using the information of a linear predictive model.
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