Laryngeal Vibratory Behavior in Traditional Noh Singing

The phonation of Noh, a traditional Japanese style of singing, was investigated using electroglottographic and acoustical analyses. The dynamics of the laryngeal vibratory behaviors were analyzed for the singing voice of the Noh play compared with natural speech based on the Electroglottography (EGG) parameters, EGG waveform, spectrum, and spectrogram. The result shows that Noh singing is characterized by low open quotient and high speed quotient. Three types of phonations are used in the singing with pressed, Vocal-Ventricular Mode (VVM), and growl voices. It was hypothesized that the period doubling observed in the EGG signal was reflective of VVM, which was caused by the phase difference in the vocal and ventricular fold oscillations, while the damped peak amplitude in every other cycle in the EGG signal was the result of the oscillations of the aryepiglottic folds at a frequency of half of the fundamental frequency. Subharmonics generated by the supraglottal oscillations add unique timbre to the sounds. The results suggest that the combination of phonation types is the key factor in generating their peculiar voice qualities.