Hello anyone who is still out there! I've decided to break my internet anonymity and make a video blog on Youtube. It'll pretty much serve the function of this blog, but I figured it be an easier way (and a faster way) to address any comments or questions.
Check it out and subscribe if you like it.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOC5yroSINpQ3W1GHwMh8jA
New Voice, New Career
Thursday, August 11, 2016
Sunday, October 4, 2015
No more hiding: Videostroboscopy of my imperfect vocal folds
A few weeks ago, one of the voice-specialty speech-language pathologists (SLP) I currently work with wanted to see my vocal folds. The professor in my voice disorders class, who is also an SLP, had taken videostroboscopies of the students in class so that we got practice seeing them and seeing what a rigid videostroboscope feels like. So, this other SLP pulled up my file from class in spring of 2014.
Prior to this video being taken, I was enjoying thinking of my voice as functional and healthy. Seeing the paresis in action again, however, brought back the emotional memory of the first time I saw it. All the "how can I sing opera without an intact voice?" came flooding back into my head. Thus, I put the video away in a file on my computer and never looked at it past that spring semester in 2014. Until that SLP wanted to see it.
A few caveats: I wasn't tolerating the rigid scope very well (the one that goes in the mouth). I have a pretty hyper gag-reflex and I was certain I would gag the whole time, so the video is choppy and the SLP taking it never quite got a full shot of my vocal folds. I just want to say that the SLP who took this video is an amazing voice therapist and very skilled with the stroboscope. The fact that she never got a good look was entirely due to my hyper-reactivity. I just never managed to calm myself down! (The one at the ENT's office back in 2009 went through my nose.) The second caveat is that I wasn't singing regularly much at all at this point in time and I had a round of reflux that week so my vocal folds are a little swollen, but you can see the paresis still there.
When the other SLP wanted to see the video a few weeks ago, I realized that I had been avoiding it because I'm much happier thinking about my voice as healthy and functional for me. I've been practicing again and taking voice lessons again and my voice felt great! Why would I want to see it still being an issue? Then I realized that avoiding the video is silly. If I want to stick to my own philosophy of a balanced voice being the whole goal of technique, then I should learn to accept my whole voice--flaws and all. It still is functional for me right now. I am still able to express myself musically through my singing, so I should not be afraid of looking at my full voice for what it is at this moment.
With all that said, here's a little guide to interpreting this video. The front of the throat is at the bottom of the video and the back of the throat is at the top. You can see the epiglottis in full view at the bottom and you can see the root of the tongue where it meets the epiglottis there in most of the video as well. The opening to the esophagus is at the top of the video and is closed whenever you are not swallowing. (The muscle that closes the esophagus functions such that it's tonically closed during it's resting-state.) The right side of the screen is the left side of my larynx and vice versa. The vocal folds are the white strips of tissue you'll see in the middle of the screen--the posterior portion of the vocal folds are first visible around 00:20. There is a bit of redness there as well thanks to the reflux I was dealing with around that time. (I was having an issue getting my PPI prescription renewed with my doctor's office.) The arytenoids are visible near the top of the video. These are the guys you want to keep your eyes on to see the paresis in action. The posterior glottic gap (i.e., the place where my vocal folds don't completely meet during phonation) extends further for me due to the paresis. This is where I "leak air" when I'm singing.
At 0:31: You might need to stop and start the video in short bursts from here, but this is where you can see the left arytenoid doesn't go as far to midline as the right. If you stop and start a few times, you can see the right arytenoid adduct smoothly and quickly. The speed with which the right arytenoid adducts makes it pretty clear the left arytenoid isn't traveling as far. It stops moving before the right arytenoid does.
At 0:48: You can see the left arytenoid "crap out" (very technical term right there). It stayed in an adducted position, or as close as it gets to midline during adduction, so what you can briefly see is my right arytenoid adducting to meet it.
If you think you're seeing any bumps on my vocal folds that look like nodules or polyps, it's actually mucus. This is determined during stroboscopy by the very scientific method of having the patient clear their throat and swallow. If the bump moves off or moves to a different location, it's mucus.
So, those are my vocal folds as they are now (minus the swelling and redness from reflux). Yes, I can still sing with these folds and my voice doesn't fatigue during the day as long as I don't strain when I speak. Essentially, the biggest "enemy" to my being able to sing is tension, since it's still easy to want to "fight" with my voice, particularly on long phrases. But, I think if I stop hiding from my vocal flaws and learn to accept them, I'll start to sing better just by feeling more free to express myself flaws and all!
Edit to add: Also, when I start to glide up the pitch, I start to shift my epilaryngeal area in the manner referred to as "covering" in the pedagogical literature. This is all great and good in the singing world, but it obscures the view of the vocal folds when using rigid stroboscopy. I should have tried for a more "choral sound" during my glide to maintain the laryngeal position. But, gliding is a check for the superior laryngeal nerve (that handles the action of the cricothyroid), and as you can hear, mine is pretty well-intact. Just the recurrent nerve (the one that handles the muscles of adduction and abduction) is a little impaired.
Prior to this video being taken, I was enjoying thinking of my voice as functional and healthy. Seeing the paresis in action again, however, brought back the emotional memory of the first time I saw it. All the "how can I sing opera without an intact voice?" came flooding back into my head. Thus, I put the video away in a file on my computer and never looked at it past that spring semester in 2014. Until that SLP wanted to see it.
A few caveats: I wasn't tolerating the rigid scope very well (the one that goes in the mouth). I have a pretty hyper gag-reflex and I was certain I would gag the whole time, so the video is choppy and the SLP taking it never quite got a full shot of my vocal folds. I just want to say that the SLP who took this video is an amazing voice therapist and very skilled with the stroboscope. The fact that she never got a good look was entirely due to my hyper-reactivity. I just never managed to calm myself down! (The one at the ENT's office back in 2009 went through my nose.) The second caveat is that I wasn't singing regularly much at all at this point in time and I had a round of reflux that week so my vocal folds are a little swollen, but you can see the paresis still there.
When the other SLP wanted to see the video a few weeks ago, I realized that I had been avoiding it because I'm much happier thinking about my voice as healthy and functional for me. I've been practicing again and taking voice lessons again and my voice felt great! Why would I want to see it still being an issue? Then I realized that avoiding the video is silly. If I want to stick to my own philosophy of a balanced voice being the whole goal of technique, then I should learn to accept my whole voice--flaws and all. It still is functional for me right now. I am still able to express myself musically through my singing, so I should not be afraid of looking at my full voice for what it is at this moment.
With all that said, here's a little guide to interpreting this video. The front of the throat is at the bottom of the video and the back of the throat is at the top. You can see the epiglottis in full view at the bottom and you can see the root of the tongue where it meets the epiglottis there in most of the video as well. The opening to the esophagus is at the top of the video and is closed whenever you are not swallowing. (The muscle that closes the esophagus functions such that it's tonically closed during it's resting-state.) The right side of the screen is the left side of my larynx and vice versa. The vocal folds are the white strips of tissue you'll see in the middle of the screen--the posterior portion of the vocal folds are first visible around 00:20. There is a bit of redness there as well thanks to the reflux I was dealing with around that time. (I was having an issue getting my PPI prescription renewed with my doctor's office.) The arytenoids are visible near the top of the video. These are the guys you want to keep your eyes on to see the paresis in action. The posterior glottic gap (i.e., the place where my vocal folds don't completely meet during phonation) extends further for me due to the paresis. This is where I "leak air" when I'm singing.
At 0:31: You might need to stop and start the video in short bursts from here, but this is where you can see the left arytenoid doesn't go as far to midline as the right. If you stop and start a few times, you can see the right arytenoid adduct smoothly and quickly. The speed with which the right arytenoid adducts makes it pretty clear the left arytenoid isn't traveling as far. It stops moving before the right arytenoid does.
At 0:48: You can see the left arytenoid "crap out" (very technical term right there). It stayed in an adducted position, or as close as it gets to midline during adduction, so what you can briefly see is my right arytenoid adducting to meet it.
If you think you're seeing any bumps on my vocal folds that look like nodules or polyps, it's actually mucus. This is determined during stroboscopy by the very scientific method of having the patient clear their throat and swallow. If the bump moves off or moves to a different location, it's mucus.
So, those are my vocal folds as they are now (minus the swelling and redness from reflux). Yes, I can still sing with these folds and my voice doesn't fatigue during the day as long as I don't strain when I speak. Essentially, the biggest "enemy" to my being able to sing is tension, since it's still easy to want to "fight" with my voice, particularly on long phrases. But, I think if I stop hiding from my vocal flaws and learn to accept them, I'll start to sing better just by feeling more free to express myself flaws and all!
Edit to add: Also, when I start to glide up the pitch, I start to shift my epilaryngeal area in the manner referred to as "covering" in the pedagogical literature. This is all great and good in the singing world, but it obscures the view of the vocal folds when using rigid stroboscopy. I should have tried for a more "choral sound" during my glide to maintain the laryngeal position. But, gliding is a check for the superior laryngeal nerve (that handles the action of the cricothyroid), and as you can hear, mine is pretty well-intact. Just the recurrent nerve (the one that handles the muscles of adduction and abduction) is a little impaired.
Saturday, September 12, 2015
The deception of talent and genius
"You have such a talent!"
"Wow! You must be so smart to be in engineering/physics/math!"
How often in our society do we hear and/or say these same phrases? These phrases seem like such harmless compliments, don't they? I mean, what else do you say to someone to point out how special they are? Heck, maybe they're even true. I don't know. But I think these phrases belie a fatal assumption our society feeds us (in the US, at least) and I think this assumption can severely undermine an individual's capabilities.
I occasionally get students that only come to one lesson and never returns. Why? Because they show up to know one thing: Are they talented enough to be a star? Usually, they have aspirations to go on some talent-based TV show to become famous, and they just want to know if they're good enough to do that. My usual tactic with this student is to emphasize how much work it takes to really be a polished professional vs. an amateur in any singing genre. I state that the difference between a profession and an amateur is that the professional will sound consistently good no matter if their tired or their throat is dry, etc. Professionals don't have to make excuses about why their high notes aren't there today because their high notes are always there, unless they have strep throat or laryngitis or something. And in those cases, a professional often knows when to cancel (even though they often go on when they feel they shouldn't, but that is another topic for another day.) Professionals spend years training and practicing their technique so that they are able to do the expect job day in and day out. For the student only seeking fame, I'll end up saying they have a lot of potential to be an exceptional singer and that I would love to help them become outstanding if they're ready to work for it. Of course I'm not surprised they don't come back. They didn't come to me wanting to hear about how much work they need to put into their singing--they came to me for a gold sticker that says they're a star and I don't give out stickers. Period. They'll need to find another teacher if they just want their ego fed.
And that's the inherent issue with this "talent" culture, it undermines the training, focusing on the innate talent of the individual in lieu of the amount of work spent honing technique and artistry. In theatrical fields, the "gift" that audience members are in awe of often came from years of work and financial investment for all the professionals out there. (Granted, there are always a handful of singers who happen to fall into the career without a lot of training needed, but they are, on the whole, an incredible rarity. And those who fall into it and also attain career longevity are even more rare. So no beginner should ever bank on being one of those people.)
This "talent" attitude is also present in intellectual fields, where the world "talent" is often replaced with "genius" or "smart." I can't count how many times people have said to me, "your husband must be so smart!" when I tell them what math-intensive, STEM field he's working in. Granted, I think he's pretty darn smart, but he always tells me how annoying it is when he hears someone say that because he feels he just had to work really hard to attain the necessary knowledge for his field. I was once a math tutor for a local community college. How often did I hear students say I "just get math" because I was smarter than them? It seems like, as a society, we have this gauge for how smart a person is, and it is usually related to the subject matter they are studying. When I was in music, I very rarely heard anyone call me smart. In that world, I was either talented or not. Now that I'm in an applied-science field, I hear a lot of talk about how smart a person is verses how well they're doing in class. It seems like to most people, intelligence is just another form of talent. But I don't agree--it's the work ethic and motivation to improve that makes the real difference.
Thus, we often find ourselves saying things like, "I would love to seek that career, but I would need such-and-such degree, and I could never do that. I'm not smart enough." Or "I know I need to work on my acting, but that's just not my talent. My voice is what I work on; singing is where my talent lies." See where I'm going with this? How toxic is this attitude? How are we okay with just limiting ourselves or giving excuses for ignoring a vital part of our craft just cause we find it hard?
A better way to look at things, in my opinion, is to consider the amount of time and effort needed to become good at the thing you are interested in and/or need for your profession. I could've been a physicist or an electrical engineer. I have the intellectual capability to do those fields, but I don't have a desire to spend 4+ years of study on them. That undergrad voice major in your music school who's just not as "talented" as you might just happen to develop a work ethic that carries them into the highest opera houses or the biggest hits on Broadway.
When people focus on the amount of work, time, and planning that go into reaching a certain level of success in a challenging field, they often find there is very little they can't accomplish. So next time you hear about the "instant" success of that amazing new performer or meet a "genius" mathematician, just take one moment on consider the focus and effort this person put into their field and complement them on that--and maybe congratulate them on finding a true passion in life that makes all that work worth it.
"Wow! You must be so smart to be in engineering/physics/math!"
How often in our society do we hear and/or say these same phrases? These phrases seem like such harmless compliments, don't they? I mean, what else do you say to someone to point out how special they are? Heck, maybe they're even true. I don't know. But I think these phrases belie a fatal assumption our society feeds us (in the US, at least) and I think this assumption can severely undermine an individual's capabilities.
I occasionally get students that only come to one lesson and never returns. Why? Because they show up to know one thing: Are they talented enough to be a star? Usually, they have aspirations to go on some talent-based TV show to become famous, and they just want to know if they're good enough to do that. My usual tactic with this student is to emphasize how much work it takes to really be a polished professional vs. an amateur in any singing genre. I state that the difference between a profession and an amateur is that the professional will sound consistently good no matter if their tired or their throat is dry, etc. Professionals don't have to make excuses about why their high notes aren't there today because their high notes are always there, unless they have strep throat or laryngitis or something. And in those cases, a professional often knows when to cancel (even though they often go on when they feel they shouldn't, but that is another topic for another day.) Professionals spend years training and practicing their technique so that they are able to do the expect job day in and day out. For the student only seeking fame, I'll end up saying they have a lot of potential to be an exceptional singer and that I would love to help them become outstanding if they're ready to work for it. Of course I'm not surprised they don't come back. They didn't come to me wanting to hear about how much work they need to put into their singing--they came to me for a gold sticker that says they're a star and I don't give out stickers. Period. They'll need to find another teacher if they just want their ego fed.
And that's the inherent issue with this "talent" culture, it undermines the training, focusing on the innate talent of the individual in lieu of the amount of work spent honing technique and artistry. In theatrical fields, the "gift" that audience members are in awe of often came from years of work and financial investment for all the professionals out there. (Granted, there are always a handful of singers who happen to fall into the career without a lot of training needed, but they are, on the whole, an incredible rarity. And those who fall into it and also attain career longevity are even more rare. So no beginner should ever bank on being one of those people.)
This "talent" attitude is also present in intellectual fields, where the world "talent" is often replaced with "genius" or "smart." I can't count how many times people have said to me, "your husband must be so smart!" when I tell them what math-intensive, STEM field he's working in. Granted, I think he's pretty darn smart, but he always tells me how annoying it is when he hears someone say that because he feels he just had to work really hard to attain the necessary knowledge for his field. I was once a math tutor for a local community college. How often did I hear students say I "just get math" because I was smarter than them? It seems like, as a society, we have this gauge for how smart a person is, and it is usually related to the subject matter they are studying. When I was in music, I very rarely heard anyone call me smart. In that world, I was either talented or not. Now that I'm in an applied-science field, I hear a lot of talk about how smart a person is verses how well they're doing in class. It seems like to most people, intelligence is just another form of talent. But I don't agree--it's the work ethic and motivation to improve that makes the real difference.
Thus, we often find ourselves saying things like, "I would love to seek that career, but I would need such-and-such degree, and I could never do that. I'm not smart enough." Or "I know I need to work on my acting, but that's just not my talent. My voice is what I work on; singing is where my talent lies." See where I'm going with this? How toxic is this attitude? How are we okay with just limiting ourselves or giving excuses for ignoring a vital part of our craft just cause we find it hard?
A better way to look at things, in my opinion, is to consider the amount of time and effort needed to become good at the thing you are interested in and/or need for your profession. I could've been a physicist or an electrical engineer. I have the intellectual capability to do those fields, but I don't have a desire to spend 4+ years of study on them. That undergrad voice major in your music school who's just not as "talented" as you might just happen to develop a work ethic that carries them into the highest opera houses or the biggest hits on Broadway.
When people focus on the amount of work, time, and planning that go into reaching a certain level of success in a challenging field, they often find there is very little they can't accomplish. So next time you hear about the "instant" success of that amazing new performer or meet a "genius" mathematician, just take one moment on consider the focus and effort this person put into their field and complement them on that--and maybe congratulate them on finding a true passion in life that makes all that work worth it.
Monday, September 7, 2015
Getting back into the game, again (or Look, Ma, I can sing!...I think)
A few years ago, I posted on singing after a break. Well, I took another long, inadvertent break when I went through the master's program for SLP. The good news is, I finally found a good teacher in my current town and I'm hoping to plan a recital for sometime this year. I still haven't seen a vocal coach in about six years, I've only had about three lessons with my new teacher thus far, and I usually only practice about four times a week since I'm still quite busy in the PhD program, but it still feels good to be singing again. I feel a little more like a normal person when I say I do singing as a hobby, but it's also a little weird to go from someone who trained for the professional operatic track and then downgrade to an avocational singer. It's like, I want to have all the abilities I used to have, and I have the knowledge of what makes something professional vs. student vs. avocational, but I don't have the time to focus on music and singing as much as would be needed if I were to go out for professional gigs again.
That said, a dear friend of mine recommended that I record my singing and "share it with the world" as he said, so I've decided to do just that. I've uploaded a couple of my personal practice sessions here where I made it my goal to just to focus on the text and emotional journey and to not obsess over every little thing that went wrong. Basically, I'm working on letting go and just singing/making music. For me, this means always thinking about one or two measures ahead in my mind, which I figured out works for me because as a person because I'm usually thinking a few phrases ahead when I'm telling a story to friends--so it's a good way for me to focus on the expression of the piece. These recordings are not perfect (made only on my iPhone 4s microphone in a small practice room) and I can tell a few spots where I got off here and there (like when I shorted a phrase by a whole beat near the end of the Mozart aria), but overall, I think I managed to make a little music that day rather than just be a singing-technician. Progress!
P.S. Another big plus of being avocational is that a little snap-shot of my singing doesn't have to be professional quality or flawless since I'm not trying to attract any gigs through my web presence, so that gives me a bit of courage to share it with you guys. Feel free to leave constructive criticism or feedback in the messages below, though, as I still appreciate hearing about how I can still improve as a singer.
That said, a dear friend of mine recommended that I record my singing and "share it with the world" as he said, so I've decided to do just that. I've uploaded a couple of my personal practice sessions here where I made it my goal to just to focus on the text and emotional journey and to not obsess over every little thing that went wrong. Basically, I'm working on letting go and just singing/making music. For me, this means always thinking about one or two measures ahead in my mind, which I figured out works for me because as a person because I'm usually thinking a few phrases ahead when I'm telling a story to friends--so it's a good way for me to focus on the expression of the piece. These recordings are not perfect (made only on my iPhone 4s microphone in a small practice room) and I can tell a few spots where I got off here and there (like when I shorted a phrase by a whole beat near the end of the Mozart aria), but overall, I think I managed to make a little music that day rather than just be a singing-technician. Progress!
P.S. Another big plus of being avocational is that a little snap-shot of my singing doesn't have to be professional quality or flawless since I'm not trying to attract any gigs through my web presence, so that gives me a bit of courage to share it with you guys. Feel free to leave constructive criticism or feedback in the messages below, though, as I still appreciate hearing about how I can still improve as a singer.
Saturday, August 22, 2015
The discussion begins!
I've had a great comment over on my other blog, Balanced Voice, that I would love to open up to a discussion in the comments. If anyone has the time or inclination to give their two cents, I think it's an interesting topic that needs more exploration in the pedagogical world.
Check it out: Technique vs. expression
Check it out: Technique vs. expression
Another semester, another workload
I'm getting pretty burnt out of school right now. I'm tired of taking classes, studying for exams, and having homework of any kind (even if it's just reading articles). I suppose this is reasonable for someone in their second year of their PhD program of a new round of degrees after a career change, but I'm just tired. The fall semester is about to begin and I'm dreading the work load that comes with it.
That said, I'm very happy that I decided to continue for the PhD in Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences. I'm really enjoying getting to dig really deep into the research literature, learning how to design scientific studies (there's a lot of planning to do!), and getting to guest-lecture in courses. The mentoring I'm getting from the faculty at my university is really amazing! I'm at one of the top schools for SLP for my PhD. I say that not to brag, but because I want to say learning how to think critically from some of the best researchers in the field is incredibly exciting! It's also cool to see these top researchers day-in and day-out and then to see other people at other schools get all "fan girl" or "fan boy" over these people I get to work with everyday. Maybe this is what it feels like to be a young artist at the Met!
I'm also doing my clinical fellowship on a part-time basis in voice, with some other clients with things like traumatic brain injury and Parkinson disease to round out my hours. In the US, everyone who wants to be an SLP has to do a clinical fellowship after they finish the clinical master's degree. The governing body for SLP, ASHA, dictates a certain number of hours for the CF, so mine should be completed in two years (hopefully) at my current part-time hourly rate. Usually, this clinical fellowship is called the "CFY" for "clinical fellowship year," since it's usually completed after 9 months of full-time clinical work (so that those SLPs who work in the school districts still complete it after their first year of work). But, since mine is part time and will take me a little longer than a year to complete, I'm calling it my "CF"--minus the "year" part.
This semester, I will be completing my PhD minor in neuroscience (which involved taking all the first-year PhD required courses for neuroscience at my university) by taking a biological computer modeling course. For this, I need to brush up on my calculus. This is the course that I'm worried might be a heavy course load. (Last year, I took a cellular and molecular neuroscience course and a systems neuroscience course for my minor. The cellular one was not quite up my alley--good to know, but not the most exciting material for me--but the systems one was fantastic! Exactly what I wanted from my minor! And the cellular course made a good foundation for the systems one, so I'm glad I took both.) I'm also taking a grant writing class where we'll compose a draft for a grant called an F31. This is the research-dissertation (for PhD students) grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the US. It's a very competitive grant, but my department has a very good record of their students being awarded F31s...possibly due to this really good class I'll be taking. I'm excited about this class because I have a cool project to write on and being forced to plan every aspect of your study, including possible limitations to completing your study, from the very beginning is a BIG skill that all good researchers need. And it's daunting at first! But I'll have good guidance from the professor for this course, so that will be great.
And last but not least, I finally found a good voice teacher where I live, so I'm back taking lessons (sporadically at the moment--once a month or so) and practicing regularly on campus. I'm hoping to get up a program for a recital in town just for fun, but I'm not putting any pressure on myself to make that recital happen anytime soon. I'd rather get my coursework mostly done before I schedule something like that. But it really feels good to be singing regularly again!
And I must say I'm loving the "singing as a hobby" compared to professional work right now. There's something satisfying about not worrying about catching a cold or if I had a little reflux the night before. I can just take a break from singing that day. No big deal! --I guess I kinda feel like just a regular person in that way.
Anyway, if I don't blog as regularly during semesters, blame the calculus! jk. But seriously, I'll try to stay on it a little more now.
That said, I'm very happy that I decided to continue for the PhD in Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences. I'm really enjoying getting to dig really deep into the research literature, learning how to design scientific studies (there's a lot of planning to do!), and getting to guest-lecture in courses. The mentoring I'm getting from the faculty at my university is really amazing! I'm at one of the top schools for SLP for my PhD. I say that not to brag, but because I want to say learning how to think critically from some of the best researchers in the field is incredibly exciting! It's also cool to see these top researchers day-in and day-out and then to see other people at other schools get all "fan girl" or "fan boy" over these people I get to work with everyday. Maybe this is what it feels like to be a young artist at the Met!
I'm also doing my clinical fellowship on a part-time basis in voice, with some other clients with things like traumatic brain injury and Parkinson disease to round out my hours. In the US, everyone who wants to be an SLP has to do a clinical fellowship after they finish the clinical master's degree. The governing body for SLP, ASHA, dictates a certain number of hours for the CF, so mine should be completed in two years (hopefully) at my current part-time hourly rate. Usually, this clinical fellowship is called the "CFY" for "clinical fellowship year," since it's usually completed after 9 months of full-time clinical work (so that those SLPs who work in the school districts still complete it after their first year of work). But, since mine is part time and will take me a little longer than a year to complete, I'm calling it my "CF"--minus the "year" part.
This semester, I will be completing my PhD minor in neuroscience (which involved taking all the first-year PhD required courses for neuroscience at my university) by taking a biological computer modeling course. For this, I need to brush up on my calculus. This is the course that I'm worried might be a heavy course load. (Last year, I took a cellular and molecular neuroscience course and a systems neuroscience course for my minor. The cellular one was not quite up my alley--good to know, but not the most exciting material for me--but the systems one was fantastic! Exactly what I wanted from my minor! And the cellular course made a good foundation for the systems one, so I'm glad I took both.) I'm also taking a grant writing class where we'll compose a draft for a grant called an F31. This is the research-dissertation (for PhD students) grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the US. It's a very competitive grant, but my department has a very good record of their students being awarded F31s...possibly due to this really good class I'll be taking. I'm excited about this class because I have a cool project to write on and being forced to plan every aspect of your study, including possible limitations to completing your study, from the very beginning is a BIG skill that all good researchers need. And it's daunting at first! But I'll have good guidance from the professor for this course, so that will be great.
And last but not least, I finally found a good voice teacher where I live, so I'm back taking lessons (sporadically at the moment--once a month or so) and practicing regularly on campus. I'm hoping to get up a program for a recital in town just for fun, but I'm not putting any pressure on myself to make that recital happen anytime soon. I'd rather get my coursework mostly done before I schedule something like that. But it really feels good to be singing regularly again!
And I must say I'm loving the "singing as a hobby" compared to professional work right now. There's something satisfying about not worrying about catching a cold or if I had a little reflux the night before. I can just take a break from singing that day. No big deal! --I guess I kinda feel like just a regular person in that way.
Anyway, if I don't blog as regularly during semesters, blame the calculus! jk. But seriously, I'll try to stay on it a little more now.
Wednesday, June 17, 2015
New blog, new topics
Hello all! Once again, I let this blog lag quite a bit. Sorry for my absence.
I've been wanting to get back into blogging a great deal, but I've been stuck as to which direction to go in. I wanted to share the things I've learned about the most effective ways people learn complex motor tasks, like riding a bike or, well, singing, but I also wanted to open up a place where voice teachers, singers, and voice scientists could comment and discuss the best ways to go about that. So, I recently decided to make a new blog for that purpose. This blog is going to be more narrowly focused than this one, and I'm hoping it will develop into a great place for any pedagogical questions or issues that arise for any of you. I'm also hoping it can be a resource for new teachers to ask experienced teachers for advice if you're dealing with a tricky voice for the first time.
The current plan is to keep this blog going, but to keep the focus of this blog my own personal and academic journey. The new blog will be where I discuss the scientific evidence from physiological and behavioral studies that I think is often missed in pedagogy coursework. As such, I'm starting off this new one as if folks already have some basic, general knowledge of how the voice works physiologically. I hope you'll check out this new blog and feel free to begin the discussion there on any questions or issues you're currently having, either with your own voice/singing training or as a voice teacher, any questions you have about what science can offer vocal pedagogy.
I hope to "see" you there! http://balancedvoice.com
I've been wanting to get back into blogging a great deal, but I've been stuck as to which direction to go in. I wanted to share the things I've learned about the most effective ways people learn complex motor tasks, like riding a bike or, well, singing, but I also wanted to open up a place where voice teachers, singers, and voice scientists could comment and discuss the best ways to go about that. So, I recently decided to make a new blog for that purpose. This blog is going to be more narrowly focused than this one, and I'm hoping it will develop into a great place for any pedagogical questions or issues that arise for any of you. I'm also hoping it can be a resource for new teachers to ask experienced teachers for advice if you're dealing with a tricky voice for the first time.
The current plan is to keep this blog going, but to keep the focus of this blog my own personal and academic journey. The new blog will be where I discuss the scientific evidence from physiological and behavioral studies that I think is often missed in pedagogy coursework. As such, I'm starting off this new one as if folks already have some basic, general knowledge of how the voice works physiologically. I hope you'll check out this new blog and feel free to begin the discussion there on any questions or issues you're currently having, either with your own voice/singing training or as a voice teacher, any questions you have about what science can offer vocal pedagogy.
I hope to "see" you there! http://balancedvoice.com
Saturday, October 18, 2014
You have a vocal injury? How did you do it?
Singing world: We have a serious problem, and it must stop.
This problem is so pervasive that it still exists in the clinical world too: The idea that someone might "cause" their vocal injury, and in doing so, that they (or their private voice teacher) are somehow guilty of some horrendous wrong-doing. (Side-note: This mentally does not exist in any clinician that I would ever recommend to someone. It still exists in some, but not all.) (Okay, side-side-note: I was just a guilty as everyone in this mentality prior to entering speech-language pathology, but I have turned 180 on these beliefs and I think everyone else should too. Here is why.)
Let's start with this example: The Olympic gold-medalist Lindsey Vonn. If you clicked on the link, you'll read about how she wasn't able to complete in the 2014 Winter Olympics due to a knee injury.
How many of you out there thought to yourself: "Well, Lindsey Vonn is a terrible skier. She just doesn't have good technique. She doesn't even train with a good coach. I heard she makes poor decisions in terms of what course to run, what competitions to sign up for, and when to stop. She just doesn't have what it takes to really have a career as a skier."
Personally, I've never heard of anyone looking at a high-level athlete and scoffing at an injury they may sustain. So why do we singers do that to each other? Now replace "Lindsey Vonn" with "Maria Callas," "Natalie Dessay," or "Julie Andrews." Do the above comments seem more justified all of the sudden? If so, WHY? Why are professional singers any different than high-level athletes? Why would sustaining an injury of any kind make a singer (or their voice teacher) automatically deserving of scorn?
Here's the big secret that really shouldn't be a surprise: No one intends to injure their voice! It's an accident that's scary to deal with. There is no reason people dealing with the emotional impact of those consequences should also carry the guilt of causing their injury. It's not a necessarily a sign of poor singing technique and it also isn't necessarily a sign of bad voice teaching. Often, the direct cause of an injury is very hard to determine. (NOTE: Cause is different than time of occurrence. In some injuries, like a vocal hemorrhage, we can determine the time or day that the injury likely occurred. However, the direct cause of the hemorrhage can still involve multiple variables.)
Did you ever:
-Go to an amusement park and lost your voice a little from screaming on the roller coasters?
-Sing a well-paying gig while sick because you had just enough voice to get through the gig?
-Go out to noisy restaurants/bars regularly with your friends/cast mates after singing for hours daily?
-Unknowingly sung (uncomfortably) with acid reflux for several months before getting looked at by your doctor?
I bet most of you have at least done one of the things on that list. In some people, some of these behaviors can contribute to the developing of a voice disorder and in others, no disorder develops. Truth is, even the best vocal scientists can't predict who will develop a voice disorder/injury and who won't. Too many factors are at play.
Blame does nothing but inflict additional damage to someone dealing with a medical condition. Injuries are accidents that happen sometimes to good singers and that need to be dealt with in the best way possible. That is all. Vocal injuries for a singer are exactly like a knee injury for a pro skier. Until we can travel back in time and prevent accidents from happening, guilt and blame does nothing but make it worse. What is needed is a good plan to get the voice to a condition that, ideally, will meet the patient's vocal needs. That is what a medical team (e.g., ENT & SLP) is for.
So perhaps the next time you hear someone say he/she is dealing with an injury, instead of saying "How did you do it?" Say "Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that" and maybe offer condolences and wish them a speedy recovery.
We keep calling ourselves "vocal athletes." It's time we start treating each other as such, especially when an injury occurs.
We keep calling ourselves "vocal athletes." It's time we start treating each other as such, especially when an injury occurs.
Thursday, October 16, 2014
Hitting the ground running…and somehow finishing strong
Well, well. It's been a long time since I've posted, hasn't it? I've been thinking about getting back to blogging so very often over the past two years. I just finished the Master of Science in Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences in May, and I am now in my first semester of my PhD program. My research is focusing on acoustics of voice and speech, and, clinically, I'm getting some fantastic training in order to specialize in voice therapy.
So, when I logged back in and looked at drafts of blogs I left unfinished, I found that wrote a short draft of a post I intended to publish after my first two weeks of grad school. Here it is:
Fast forward two years and I find it's a pretty good description of the program. The pendulum did swing away from the "incompetent" feeling. In a short two years, I ended up becoming a rather competent clinician. But, man, was it an intense and stressful ride to get there!
Of course, now that I'm starting something new again with the PhD program, the pendulum has swung back to "incompetent" again. (Ain't it always the way?) Only this time it's in regards to all the fine details that goes into good research design. I still feel pretty competent as a clinician, though, so that's good.
Anyways, I'm going to do my best to come back to regular blogging. It's been so long that I honestly don't know where to begin. There's some scientific stuff I need to correct in my anatomy and physiology section. I would also like to write up some stuff about teaching singing more efficiently and maintaining a technique. But for now, I might just jump in with things as they are in my life now and fill in as I go. Gotta get my feet wet again with this blogging stuff.
So, when I logged back in and looked at drafts of blogs I left unfinished, I found that wrote a short draft of a post I intended to publish after my first two weeks of grad school. Here it is:
Grad school has started. Folks kept telling me that you'll really hit the ground running in a clinical program, and they really weren't kidding! In the past two weeks I've completed HIPAA training, read 15 articles/textbook chapters, been quizzed on eight of those articles, done my lesson plans for my first two clinical sessions, given those two clinical sessions, read through seven client files, and observed four hours of clinic. My first research project is due in two weeks, and my first exam is the day after labor day.
On the plus side, I know this is all stuff I can handle, and I know that the faculty at my school are approachable, supportive, and brilliant. They totally have our backs. It always feels good to know someone has your back.
So I've been fluctuating between feeling all awesome-sauce and conquistador-like and feeling like a fraud, idiot, and incompetent a**, but I think it's getting better. As long as the pendulum keeps swinging away from the "incompetent a**" feeling and moving more toward the "I've got this" feeling, I'll know I'm heading in the right direction.
Fast forward two years and I find it's a pretty good description of the program. The pendulum did swing away from the "incompetent" feeling. In a short two years, I ended up becoming a rather competent clinician. But, man, was it an intense and stressful ride to get there!
Of course, now that I'm starting something new again with the PhD program, the pendulum has swung back to "incompetent" again. (Ain't it always the way?) Only this time it's in regards to all the fine details that goes into good research design. I still feel pretty competent as a clinician, though, so that's good.
Anyways, I'm going to do my best to come back to regular blogging. It's been so long that I honestly don't know where to begin. There's some scientific stuff I need to correct in my anatomy and physiology section. I would also like to write up some stuff about teaching singing more efficiently and maintaining a technique. But for now, I might just jump in with things as they are in my life now and fill in as I go. Gotta get my feet wet again with this blogging stuff.
Monday, August 13, 2012
Physics of Sound: The Spectrogram (or what the heck am I looking at part 2)
I probably should give a little lesson on how to read a spectrogram, since my next post will feature spectrograms rather heavily. I made all these spectrograms on PRAAT, which is free and downloadable if you wish to play with it. (I know the website looks a little sketch, but I had to get it for my classes using the site I linked to and it's totally safe for your computer.) PRAAT is a lovely piece of software that will record a sound and then give you both a spectrogram and a waveform of that sound. As you look at the images below, the waveform is the image on the top with the thick black band and blue vertical lines, and the spectrogram is the grey-scale mess below that waveform. So, on to the important part of this post!
How to read a spectrogram:
The x-axis (horizontal) is time, the y-axis (vertical) is frequency, and the grey-scale shows amplitude. So a spectrogram can show three dimensions, time, frequency, and amplitude vs. a waveform that shows only two, time and frequency. On fancier programs, the amplitude is sometimes shown in color, like having blue be the softest sounds and red being the loudest, but in PRAAT, the darker the band, the higher the amplitude. In terms of the frequencies, I set the spectrograms to show from 0 Hz to 7000 Hz. PRAAT can display up to 20,000 Hz, but then the formant bands I want to focus on get too squished together. If you click and make the image bigger, you can see a dotted red line with a frequency number off to the left. I set those lines there just to give you some idea of where the upper formant lies in terms of Hz. And remember from the last post that the formant will be somewhere around this frequency, not right at the single frequency itself.
So this is what a typical spectrogram will look like with the upper frequency set at 7000 Hz. (I think PRAAT's default setting is usually 5000 Hz.):
So this is what a typical spectrogram will look like with the upper frequency set at 7000 Hz. (I think PRAAT's default setting is usually 5000 Hz.):
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| Sustained-speech of an /a/ vowel with formants marked. |
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| Sustained, spoken /i/ vowel, no formants marked in. |
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| Sustained, spoken /i/ vowel, first five formants marked in red. |
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| Spoken phrase: "One, two, three, go," no formants marked. |
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| "One, two, three, go," with formants marked in red. |
Now, some super cool people can actually read spectrograms like they're reading words off the page. I'm not quite that awesome yet, but if you tell me what the phrase is, I can pick out where each specific word is using my knowledge of vowel formants and consonant frequencies. It'd be cool to become that person who can just read them, though!
Now the reason I kept setting the spectrogram to 7000 Hz instead of 5000 is two-fold: First, I wanted to make sure the upper formant wasn't cut off since that formant does occasionally go higher than 5000 Hz, and second, I wanted you to see that there actually is a thick band of amplitude above the 5000 Hz mark, which you can see in the spectrogram above. So there are more "formants" above that 5000 Hz mark...we just don't really regard frequencies higher than 5000 when discussing speech or singing very much. (Although, this article does!) Heck, PRAAT doesn't even mark in any formants above the 5000 Hz area...usually the fifth formant area. But, I wanted to make sure you know that it's not like formants and harmonics just disappear above 5000 Hz. Mathematically speaking, harmonics would just keep on going higher and higher, and so would formants. However, the amplitude lessens the higher you go, so vocal harmonics and formants do dampen out eventually...just not at 5000 Hz.
Up next: The singer's formant! I'mma gonna break apart a common misconception in the hopes that it clarifies what is we're actually doing when we carry over that orchestra.
Physics of Sound Series: Formants, formants, and more formants
According to Raphael et al., the source-filter theory of speech production states that the source of vocal sound, i.e. the vocal folds, is filtered through the air spaces in the vocal tract (p. 330).* This is a fairly simplistic model of vocal production, but it is very useful just because of its simplicity. Other models of speech production out there get a lot more detailed, but for a general, conceptual knowledge of the relationship between the vocal folds and vocal tract in terms of acoustic output, I think the the source-filter model can't really be beat.
So what does this have to do with formants? Well, on the last physics post, I left off by stating that the vocal tract can change it's shape and configuration to filter out different harmonics from the same sound source. The shape of the vocal tract will also amplify certain harmonic frequencies, while dampening others. The resulting "peaks" in amplitude at specific frequency ranges are what we call formants. One important thing to note here is that formants are not the same thing as harmonics. You can think of formants as being a certain specific collection of harmonics, so the first formant is not the same as the first harmonic. The idea of a harmonic is that it is one particular sine wave that is related, mathematically, to the fundamental, but the formants are collections of these sine waves. The language you typically see is that the first formant is around a specific frequency. So while you might read about the singer's formant being somewhere around 3000 Hz, the formant isn't actually only at 3000 Hz, it's just a collection of frequencies centered somewhere around 3000 Hz. I think the semantics might get a little fuzzy there for a lot of people, but what seems like a little, unimportant detail actually makes a big difference when discussing harmonics vs. formants. If you use those terms interchangeably, you'll just confuse the folks who know they're different things and then you'll get confused that they're confused and yadda yadda yadda...
Think of it like this: Let's say you have a collection of all the Star Trek episodes from every Star Trek series, even the crappy ones. If you consider the first series, the original Star Trek, as the fundamental, the first "harmonic" would then be Star Trek: The Next Generation, the second would be Deep Space Nine, the third Voyager, etc. However, it's possible that if these "harmonics" get filtered into formants, the first formant could consist of the first five seasons of The Next Generation, with the last two seasons filtered down to really low amplitude. The second formant could be the last four seasons of Deep Space Nine, with the first three seasons of DS9 being filtered down. The third formant could be the last five seasons of Voyager with the first two seasons filtered down, etc. See the difference? So harmonics are the building blocks of formants, but harmonics come from the resonance of the vocal folds themselves and formants come from the resonance of the acoustic filter or vocal tract.
What's great about formants is that they happen to be the way we distinguish vowels during speech. In fact, the relationship between vocal tract shape and the acoustic output (vocal sound once it exits the mouth) is so interrelated, we are able to classify vowels by both the vocal tract shape and the acoustic output, depending on what we're talking about. I.e.: Talking about articulation? You'll be talking about the shape of the vocal tract made by the articulators (tongue, soft palate, etc.).
If you happened to click over to that Wikipedia article on vowels, you probably noticed there's a section on articulation and a separate section on acoustics. The position of the tongue in the mouth happens to make the biggest difference to the overall shape of the vocal tract, and so, a lot of vowels can be categorized by place of tongue articulation during production. For example: An /i/ ("ee") vowel is categorized as a high, front vowel because the tongue is positioned very high near the roof of the mouth, but it is also positioned quite forward in the mouth and is, therefore, a high-front vowel. A high-back vowel, such as /u/, has the tongue positioned as a "hump" near the back of the mouth, so it's high, but in the back. A low vowel, such as /a/, doesn't involve the tongue in a raised position at all, and is closer to a neutral vowel position, of which the schwa sound is considered the most neutral. (I know a lot of singers consider /a/ as the most neutral vowel, but linguists and speech scientists have researched tongue positions, and schwa is indeed the most neutral. I think the reason singers like the focus on /a/ so much more is that we don't tend to sing schwa very often, and if we do, we don't sustain a sound on schwa. So schwa gets kinda a bad-rap in the singing world, but it is an important little vowel in spoken language.)
Because a larger space will resonant at lower frequencies, and a smaller one at higher frequencies, the formants are a result of the size of the pharyngeal space and/or oral space as determined by the tongue position, primarily. A good example of this is if you tap on a glass with some water in it, then tap again after drinking the water, the second tap will be a lower pitch than the first tap because there is more air inside the glass after the water is gone to resonant the sound. Or a better example: A cello is bigger than a violin. So...there you go. Therefore, in a simplified sense, these tongue positions all correspond to the formant frequencies of each vowel. The /i/ vowel is known for having a low first formant (more pharyngeal space created by the high tongue position) and a high second formant (small oral space created by tongue position,) and in fact, this vowel has the widest space between the first and second formant as it's trademark sound. The /u/ vowel has a low first formant (from the high tongue position creating more pharyngeal space), but also has a low second formant (from the tongue position being near the back of the mouth, creating more space in the oral cavity). Once again, this is a very simplified way of looking at this, but it's an easy way to understand the basic idea. Just be aware that the science of acoustics can get pretty darn complicated in this area.
*Raphel, L. J., Borden, G. J., Harris, K. S. (2007). Speech science primer: Physiology, acoustics, perception of speech (5th ed.). Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott Williams & Williams.
So what does this have to do with formants? Well, on the last physics post, I left off by stating that the vocal tract can change it's shape and configuration to filter out different harmonics from the same sound source. The shape of the vocal tract will also amplify certain harmonic frequencies, while dampening others. The resulting "peaks" in amplitude at specific frequency ranges are what we call formants. One important thing to note here is that formants are not the same thing as harmonics. You can think of formants as being a certain specific collection of harmonics, so the first formant is not the same as the first harmonic. The idea of a harmonic is that it is one particular sine wave that is related, mathematically, to the fundamental, but the formants are collections of these sine waves. The language you typically see is that the first formant is around a specific frequency. So while you might read about the singer's formant being somewhere around 3000 Hz, the formant isn't actually only at 3000 Hz, it's just a collection of frequencies centered somewhere around 3000 Hz. I think the semantics might get a little fuzzy there for a lot of people, but what seems like a little, unimportant detail actually makes a big difference when discussing harmonics vs. formants. If you use those terms interchangeably, you'll just confuse the folks who know they're different things and then you'll get confused that they're confused and yadda yadda yadda...
Think of it like this: Let's say you have a collection of all the Star Trek episodes from every Star Trek series, even the crappy ones. If you consider the first series, the original Star Trek, as the fundamental, the first "harmonic" would then be Star Trek: The Next Generation, the second would be Deep Space Nine, the third Voyager, etc. However, it's possible that if these "harmonics" get filtered into formants, the first formant could consist of the first five seasons of The Next Generation, with the last two seasons filtered down to really low amplitude. The second formant could be the last four seasons of Deep Space Nine, with the first three seasons of DS9 being filtered down. The third formant could be the last five seasons of Voyager with the first two seasons filtered down, etc. See the difference? So harmonics are the building blocks of formants, but harmonics come from the resonance of the vocal folds themselves and formants come from the resonance of the acoustic filter or vocal tract.
What's great about formants is that they happen to be the way we distinguish vowels during speech. In fact, the relationship between vocal tract shape and the acoustic output (vocal sound once it exits the mouth) is so interrelated, we are able to classify vowels by both the vocal tract shape and the acoustic output, depending on what we're talking about. I.e.: Talking about articulation? You'll be talking about the shape of the vocal tract made by the articulators (tongue, soft palate, etc.).
If you happened to click over to that Wikipedia article on vowels, you probably noticed there's a section on articulation and a separate section on acoustics. The position of the tongue in the mouth happens to make the biggest difference to the overall shape of the vocal tract, and so, a lot of vowels can be categorized by place of tongue articulation during production. For example: An /i/ ("ee") vowel is categorized as a high, front vowel because the tongue is positioned very high near the roof of the mouth, but it is also positioned quite forward in the mouth and is, therefore, a high-front vowel. A high-back vowel, such as /u/, has the tongue positioned as a "hump" near the back of the mouth, so it's high, but in the back. A low vowel, such as /a/, doesn't involve the tongue in a raised position at all, and is closer to a neutral vowel position, of which the schwa sound is considered the most neutral. (I know a lot of singers consider /a/ as the most neutral vowel, but linguists and speech scientists have researched tongue positions, and schwa is indeed the most neutral. I think the reason singers like the focus on /a/ so much more is that we don't tend to sing schwa very often, and if we do, we don't sustain a sound on schwa. So schwa gets kinda a bad-rap in the singing world, but it is an important little vowel in spoken language.)
Because a larger space will resonant at lower frequencies, and a smaller one at higher frequencies, the formants are a result of the size of the pharyngeal space and/or oral space as determined by the tongue position, primarily. A good example of this is if you tap on a glass with some water in it, then tap again after drinking the water, the second tap will be a lower pitch than the first tap because there is more air inside the glass after the water is gone to resonant the sound. Or a better example: A cello is bigger than a violin. So...there you go. Therefore, in a simplified sense, these tongue positions all correspond to the formant frequencies of each vowel. The /i/ vowel is known for having a low first formant (more pharyngeal space created by the high tongue position) and a high second formant (small oral space created by tongue position,) and in fact, this vowel has the widest space between the first and second formant as it's trademark sound. The /u/ vowel has a low first formant (from the high tongue position creating more pharyngeal space), but also has a low second formant (from the tongue position being near the back of the mouth, creating more space in the oral cavity). Once again, this is a very simplified way of looking at this, but it's an easy way to understand the basic idea. Just be aware that the science of acoustics can get pretty darn complicated in this area.
*Raphel, L. J., Borden, G. J., Harris, K. S. (2007). Speech science primer: Physiology, acoustics, perception of speech (5th ed.). Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott Williams & Williams.
Thursday, July 26, 2012
The power of kindness
I keep a regular yoga practice. I mainly practice at home, since it's free to do there, but I also attend yoga classes regularly at a good studio. I tend to do yoga about two to three times a week. However, this past spring semester, I ended up only practicing once a week, at most. So, I got decently out of shape from what I'm used to and I ended up hurting my left hamstring, somehow. What sucked the most about this was that my left leg has always been more flexible than my right leg, while my right leg tends to be stronger, so I was usually able to do hand-to-foot pose and this one-legged arm balance with my left leg pretty easily, while I still struggled a little with the right. However, this summer, while I've been trying to nurse my left hamstring back to health, my sides have reversed. I'm still not able to do these poses, or others like them, with my left leg, but I've gotten them down with my right.
So just today, while I was practicing at home, I realized that I've been so careful with my left leg this past few months that I've actually let it become weak. I've stopped trying to engage the muscles on that leg as much because of the injury. Of course, this is not helping recovery at all, so today, I started forcing that leg to pull it's weight, and while my hamstring still isn't totally better, I actually got my full trikonasana on the left side back today and my hamstring feels better now than it has in a long time. I'm sure the more I focus on working the muscles on my left leg, the better it will get, and I will be back to my normal yoga practice pretty soon.
This little experience with my hamstring really reminded me of my vocal recuperation, probably because I had a conversation with another singer dealing with their own voice disorder just this week. See, the thing is, I was acting like my hamstring was still injured, even though it's been months since the actual injury. My hamstring is quite likely healed up, it's just healed tighter than it was before. Because of this tightness, I've been avoiding really using it in yoga, making modifications on the left side for any hamstring-intensive pose and just allowing my lunge on that side to kinda go out of form. In essence, I was allowing my muscle to stay weak just because I was still acting like something was wrong with it well after it was healed up. In an earlier post, I said I had a hard time learning to trust my voice after it was healed up, because I felt like my voice had betrayed me by being injured. But I've talked to a few singers out there dealing with injury who have the added issue of still feeling like their voice is injured even after therapy is completed and they're given a full bill of vocal health by their team. So they're still fighting with their voice and letting it do the wrong things because they still think it just doesn't "work right," even though it does. It's a mind game, isn't it?
What these injuries really do to us is force insecurity upon us, so naturally, our reaction is to defeat the insecurity. Attack it full on so that we can get past it as quickly as possible. But when this tactic burns out, as it often does for many people out there, we start to retreat into the insecurity, allowing it to defeat us and beat us down until we give up. This can lead to regret and perhaps even bitterness for so many of us, and maybe we find the fire to fight again and maybe we win, but what if we just changed our perspective of this insecurity? What if, instead of fighting, we decide to accept this weakness that has been thrust upon us and still decide to be kind to ourselves? And what if, by being kind to our whole new self, insecurity and weakness and all, we learn how to patiently and diligently work through our injury, not by forcing ourselves to be as we were before, but by moving toward being someone new and different because of this experience? What if all we need to do is realize that healing doesn't typically mean going back to how things were before, but it can mean becoming better than we were before?
I suppose saying I'll get back to my normal yoga practice is a bit of a lie, because before this injury, my right side was more inflexible than it is now. If my left side is restored to it's former, flexible state, my whole body will actually be more balanced than it was before this. Just like how, even if my voice is only better because of being healed and the glories of vocal technique, I'm a better, more joyful singer because there was a time when singing was taken away from me. So to all those out there recuperating from any injury: May recovery make us all stronger, more balanced, and more joyful; may we be kind to ourselves and patient with our injury as we build our strength back up; and may we all realize that we will never be the same...and that can certainly be a good thing.
So just today, while I was practicing at home, I realized that I've been so careful with my left leg this past few months that I've actually let it become weak. I've stopped trying to engage the muscles on that leg as much because of the injury. Of course, this is not helping recovery at all, so today, I started forcing that leg to pull it's weight, and while my hamstring still isn't totally better, I actually got my full trikonasana on the left side back today and my hamstring feels better now than it has in a long time. I'm sure the more I focus on working the muscles on my left leg, the better it will get, and I will be back to my normal yoga practice pretty soon.
This little experience with my hamstring really reminded me of my vocal recuperation, probably because I had a conversation with another singer dealing with their own voice disorder just this week. See, the thing is, I was acting like my hamstring was still injured, even though it's been months since the actual injury. My hamstring is quite likely healed up, it's just healed tighter than it was before. Because of this tightness, I've been avoiding really using it in yoga, making modifications on the left side for any hamstring-intensive pose and just allowing my lunge on that side to kinda go out of form. In essence, I was allowing my muscle to stay weak just because I was still acting like something was wrong with it well after it was healed up. In an earlier post, I said I had a hard time learning to trust my voice after it was healed up, because I felt like my voice had betrayed me by being injured. But I've talked to a few singers out there dealing with injury who have the added issue of still feeling like their voice is injured even after therapy is completed and they're given a full bill of vocal health by their team. So they're still fighting with their voice and letting it do the wrong things because they still think it just doesn't "work right," even though it does. It's a mind game, isn't it?
What these injuries really do to us is force insecurity upon us, so naturally, our reaction is to defeat the insecurity. Attack it full on so that we can get past it as quickly as possible. But when this tactic burns out, as it often does for many people out there, we start to retreat into the insecurity, allowing it to defeat us and beat us down until we give up. This can lead to regret and perhaps even bitterness for so many of us, and maybe we find the fire to fight again and maybe we win, but what if we just changed our perspective of this insecurity? What if, instead of fighting, we decide to accept this weakness that has been thrust upon us and still decide to be kind to ourselves? And what if, by being kind to our whole new self, insecurity and weakness and all, we learn how to patiently and diligently work through our injury, not by forcing ourselves to be as we were before, but by moving toward being someone new and different because of this experience? What if all we need to do is realize that healing doesn't typically mean going back to how things were before, but it can mean becoming better than we were before?
I suppose saying I'll get back to my normal yoga practice is a bit of a lie, because before this injury, my right side was more inflexible than it is now. If my left side is restored to it's former, flexible state, my whole body will actually be more balanced than it was before this. Just like how, even if my voice is only better because of being healed and the glories of vocal technique, I'm a better, more joyful singer because there was a time when singing was taken away from me. So to all those out there recuperating from any injury: May recovery make us all stronger, more balanced, and more joyful; may we be kind to ourselves and patient with our injury as we build our strength back up; and may we all realize that we will never be the same...and that can certainly be a good thing.
Why yes I DO like school, thank you very much
There's a common statement I tend to hear from certain people when they find out that yes, I am going back to school for yet another graduate degree: "You must like school." This statement is always delivered with a bit of snark and a slight roll of the eye, and it is usually said by people who say they were "never good at the whole school thing." That phrase is almost always followed up with the person explaining how great their (insert job title with major company) is and that they get paid (insert regular hourly wage/typical management salary) and they never needed a degree to do it. The rather clear subtext to this exchange is thus: "You poor, nerdy sap. You must be in school because you're avoiding the real world. You should suck it up and just get a job like everyone else."
What I find the most interesting about these exchanges are the implicit assumptions that are made about people who seek additional degrees at all. The main assumption tends to be that anyone who gets a degree higher than a bachelor's or a second bachelor's is a "career student;" you know, someone who's just avoiding adult responsibility by staying in school as long as possible. I find this assumption interesting in light of two facts: The fact that I have been out of school for several years now and have been an independent adult through all of those years, and the fact that there are a lot of health/medical professions that require a graduate degree for licensure. I know I can't expect the general populace to know what requirements there are for certain professions, but why do some of these folks not drop the snark when I tell them that? Why not just trust that those degrees are required because there is a vast body of knowledge and many hours of training required to do the job effectively? People trust MDs are valid professional graduate degrees, so why not trust that physical therapists, occupational therapists, physicians assistants, audiologists, speech-language pathologists, etc., need advanced knowledge to effectively do their job?
But it's the implicit insult that really gets me: "Nerd." Now, I know that in today's society, the term "nerd" has been usurped to mean anyone who's really, really into pretty much anything and is not really seen as an insult anymore, but in this setting, it's intended as one. Perhaps there are just too many grad students out there who are intellectual snobs. Maybe these folks have encountered so many of those snobs that they get all defensive and mistakenly think someone with multiple degrees is automatically a snob. I can definitely sense a bit of insecurity from the other person in this exchange. Maybe they always wanted more out of life, but gave up on their dreams. Maybe they always struggled in school and felt inferior to a sibling or friend who always found school easy. Maybe they did well in school, but only because of a near-abusive "tiger mom," and so they hated school as much as they were good at it. As much as I believe insecurity is nothing to be ashamed of, I also believe personal insecurity is never a valid excuse for making another person feel like crap. I believe this as much as I believe that salaries and job titles do not define the intrinsic worth of another human being.
My reactions to these situations have never been the best. I usually end up explaining the good employment prospects and the typical starting salaries in the field, but this is in stark contrast to the belief I just stated above, isn't it? So I end up feeling put down, but also a little dirty for defending my life decisions based on their criteria of self-worth. The thing is, that is not my criteria.
So, after having one too many of these situations in the past, I have decided to arm myself with a response I can feel good about (which will be truncated in real life):
Why yes, I do like school. I like to learn. I enjoy broadening my mind and discovering new and exciting things that I never knew about before. I like the idea of helping forward the advancement of society and human knowledge through research. I like the pragmatic side of this new field, where I get to help an individual who is struggling with a disorder that keeps them from effectively communicating. I like school. I like that it is not only an avenue through which I can pursue my dreams and sharpen my mind, but it is also a safe place to learn, try, discover, fail, try again, and, ultimately, succeed. I like learning, and I like that I will continue to learn, grow, and develop throughout my life thanks to the mental training higher education has given me. With all the people in the world who use knowledge and education to keep others down, I like that I am becoming someone who will counter those greedy individuals, and who will use her knowledge and education to help others in need of it. I think education provides me with a value beyond just a salary and job title. It provides me with a sense of purpose and direction and the ability to accomplish my goals. Isn't that ultimately what we are all searching for?
What I find the most interesting about these exchanges are the implicit assumptions that are made about people who seek additional degrees at all. The main assumption tends to be that anyone who gets a degree higher than a bachelor's or a second bachelor's is a "career student;" you know, someone who's just avoiding adult responsibility by staying in school as long as possible. I find this assumption interesting in light of two facts: The fact that I have been out of school for several years now and have been an independent adult through all of those years, and the fact that there are a lot of health/medical professions that require a graduate degree for licensure. I know I can't expect the general populace to know what requirements there are for certain professions, but why do some of these folks not drop the snark when I tell them that? Why not just trust that those degrees are required because there is a vast body of knowledge and many hours of training required to do the job effectively? People trust MDs are valid professional graduate degrees, so why not trust that physical therapists, occupational therapists, physicians assistants, audiologists, speech-language pathologists, etc., need advanced knowledge to effectively do their job?
But it's the implicit insult that really gets me: "Nerd." Now, I know that in today's society, the term "nerd" has been usurped to mean anyone who's really, really into pretty much anything and is not really seen as an insult anymore, but in this setting, it's intended as one. Perhaps there are just too many grad students out there who are intellectual snobs. Maybe these folks have encountered so many of those snobs that they get all defensive and mistakenly think someone with multiple degrees is automatically a snob. I can definitely sense a bit of insecurity from the other person in this exchange. Maybe they always wanted more out of life, but gave up on their dreams. Maybe they always struggled in school and felt inferior to a sibling or friend who always found school easy. Maybe they did well in school, but only because of a near-abusive "tiger mom," and so they hated school as much as they were good at it. As much as I believe insecurity is nothing to be ashamed of, I also believe personal insecurity is never a valid excuse for making another person feel like crap. I believe this as much as I believe that salaries and job titles do not define the intrinsic worth of another human being.
My reactions to these situations have never been the best. I usually end up explaining the good employment prospects and the typical starting salaries in the field, but this is in stark contrast to the belief I just stated above, isn't it? So I end up feeling put down, but also a little dirty for defending my life decisions based on their criteria of self-worth. The thing is, that is not my criteria.
So, after having one too many of these situations in the past, I have decided to arm myself with a response I can feel good about (which will be truncated in real life):
Why yes, I do like school. I like to learn. I enjoy broadening my mind and discovering new and exciting things that I never knew about before. I like the idea of helping forward the advancement of society and human knowledge through research. I like the pragmatic side of this new field, where I get to help an individual who is struggling with a disorder that keeps them from effectively communicating. I like school. I like that it is not only an avenue through which I can pursue my dreams and sharpen my mind, but it is also a safe place to learn, try, discover, fail, try again, and, ultimately, succeed. I like learning, and I like that I will continue to learn, grow, and develop throughout my life thanks to the mental training higher education has given me. With all the people in the world who use knowledge and education to keep others down, I like that I am becoming someone who will counter those greedy individuals, and who will use her knowledge and education to help others in need of it. I think education provides me with a value beyond just a salary and job title. It provides me with a sense of purpose and direction and the ability to accomplish my goals. Isn't that ultimately what we are all searching for?
Friday, July 13, 2012
Physics of Sound Series: Harmonics and fixed strings and open-closed tubes, oh my!
So, we've got the vocal folds acting like a fixed string with multiple resonant frequencies called harmonics, but before we go further, I realized there was some terminology that I should go over. Remember how the actual sound wave produced from vocal fold vibration is far more complicated than that of a single string? That's mainly due to the motion of the lamina propria, but even single strings can produce complex sound waves. This is a wave pattern that is created from the interaction of multiple frequencies known as harmonics. If you have several, or even thousands, of simple sine waves that are harmonically related, you've got a complex periodic sound wave. Periodic means it still has a predictable pattern, as opposed to complex aperiodic waves, like white noise. But the linguistic signal contains both periodic and aperiodic waves. Periodic would be vocal sounds, like vowels; aperiodic would be like unvoiced consonants like /s/, and a combination of periodic and aperiodic happens during a lot of voiced consonants, like /z/. We're just going to focus on complex periodic waves for the purposes of understanding resonance more fully. Complex periodic waves can be broken down into their simple sine wave components by using something called a Fourier transform. We certainly won't go through the math for all of that, but just know that all complex periodic waves are made up of simple sine waves, and even though the vocal folds create a more complicated sound than a string does, we're going to continue with the string comparison cause I think it makes everything so much easier to visualize.
The thing about vibrating strings fixed at both ends is that they have a fundamental resonance of 2 times the length of the string. This just means that one-half of a wave can "fit" on a string at any given pass along the string. It also means that the string will vibrate at both even and odd harmonics of the fundamental. This can be represented mathematically if we use our knowledge of frequency = velocity divided by wavelength. In this basic case, we're going to consider velocity to be the speed of the wave being produced, and in the human voice, that speed is determined by the tension and mass of the vocal folds. So when the folds elongate, tension increases and mass decreases resulting in a high frequency of vibration (cool, huh?). And the wavelength, thanks to the half-wave resonator we're working with here, will be two times the length of the string (or folds). Using this equation and setting our speed at 340 meters per second, the approximate speed of sound at sea level, we can figure out the harmonics of a 1 meter string. The fundamental frequency would be 170 Hz, the first harmonic would be 340 Hz, the second harmonic would be 510 Hz, the third 680 Hz, the fourth at 850 Hz etc. This sound wave (up to the fourth harmonic) would sound like this:
The thing about vibrating strings fixed at both ends is that they have a fundamental resonance of 2 times the length of the string. This just means that one-half of a wave can "fit" on a string at any given pass along the string. It also means that the string will vibrate at both even and odd harmonics of the fundamental. This can be represented mathematically if we use our knowledge of frequency = velocity divided by wavelength. In this basic case, we're going to consider velocity to be the speed of the wave being produced, and in the human voice, that speed is determined by the tension and mass of the vocal folds. So when the folds elongate, tension increases and mass decreases resulting in a high frequency of vibration (cool, huh?). And the wavelength, thanks to the half-wave resonator we're working with here, will be two times the length of the string (or folds). Using this equation and setting our speed at 340 meters per second, the approximate speed of sound at sea level, we can figure out the harmonics of a 1 meter string. The fundamental frequency would be 170 Hz, the first harmonic would be 340 Hz, the second harmonic would be 510 Hz, the third 680 Hz, the fourth at 850 Hz etc. This sound wave (up to the fourth harmonic) would sound like this:
Now that we've compared the vocal folds to strings, what do we have to compare the vocal tract to? An open-closed tube! ...which is not that exciting at all. But what the vocal tract does is pretty darn exciting. Of course, the vocal tract itself can change it's shape for communication and such, but the open-closed tube is a good simplification of what the basic function of the vocal tract is. An open-closed tube is a quarter-wave resonator, as opposed to the half-wave resonator that the string up there is. So what does that mean? A quarter-wave resonator means that only a quarter of the wave can "fit" during one pass through the tube. So this resonator only vibrates at odd harmonics of the fundamental frequency. So, if we look at that 170 Hz frequency produced from that meter-long string up there, The open-closed tube resonating at this fundamental 170 Hz would have a length of 0.5 meters and the first harmonic would be at 510 Hz, the second at 850 Hz, etc. Notice something there? This tube is only resonating at even frequencies of the string up there. So what happens to the sound wave produced by that string as it passes through this tube? Well, it'll sound something like this:
File made with Audacity
Where did those other harmonics go? The tube ate them. No really! Well...it kinda-sorta did. See, the tube acts as a filter for that sound wave. Those missing frequencies, the ones that the tube won't resonate, are going to be filtered out due to destructive interference, while the frequencies the tube vibrates at are going to constructively interfere and exit the tube for us to hear. Yup, that's right. Without resonance, we wouldn't hear our own speech, much less a singer singing over an orchestra. Your voice is always resonating all of the time; it's just that opera singing requires a difference resonance than your speaking voice...obviously. We don't really sound like we're talking when we're singing, do we?
Now, I don't know about you, but I personally find the second audio file a little more pleasing than the first. The first one is objectively "richer," in the sense that it has more harmonics, but the second one subjectively sounds "richer" to me. I'm not really sure why, but I suspect it has something to do with the fact that I am physiology wired to find the sound of the human voice important, as are you, and so perhaps I also find sounds from an open-closed tube more pleasing? (And if you didn't find this to be true, you're really messed up! Just kidding.) And where this "pleasing" association would occur in the brain, I'm not sure. But I know my brain is associating the second file with a richer sound that I happen to find more pleasing, because the first sound has more harmonics in it for sure...I would know; I inputted the frequencies myself! But if you played those two tones for me without my knowing about the harmonic structure, I would assume the second one has more harmonics. The brain sure is one crazy organ, amirite? Of course, I digress, but this is an example of some of the stuff people are trying to figure out in terms of how we listen, pick out, and associate the speech signal into meaning in our lives all day long. It's some cool stuff, for sure. Perhaps I'll learn an answer to that soon and will update you guys.
Now, in a stationary tube, the harmonics are pretty fixed, but lucky for us, our vocal tract can change shape, length and configuration to produce a lot of different sounds. By changing it's shape, the vocal tract filters the same sound source differently, producing all of the different sounds we make in our languages and then some. Conveniently for us, it seems to do this pretty much on auto-pilot most of the time, like when we're speaking, or how the vocal tract lengthens when our voice drops in pitch (the larger cavity will resonant at lower frequencies and shorter at higher). The shape the tract takes determines which frequencies are amplified and which ones are dampened out. And this sets us up quite nicely to talk about formants next time, doesn't it?
Resources:
Raphel, L. J., Borden, G. J., Harris, K. S. (2007). Speech science primer: Physiology, acoustics, perception of speech (5th ed.). Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott Williams & Williams.
Saturday, June 16, 2012
The balance between the rift
There's a funny thing that happens when you learn a lot of valuable information in a short amount of time. You tend to forget that not everyone is having the same experience you are. I think this is even more pronounced in people who tend to be rather ambitious, like me. I know that in society in general, ambitious people are lauded, but there's a distinction between an ambitious person who has reached a level of success and an ambitious person who is just starting out. The successful person is seen as someone to look up to, and the new student to a discipline is seen as, well, a n00b.
We n00b's, by my definition, tend to be a bit crazy, you see. We geek out to anyone who shows even a tiny bit of interest in what we do. We find ourselves talking far too long about some nuance of our discipline without realizing it. In short, we are awkward and alienating. We're like someone who's just fallen in love, and we just can't help ourselves. However, we usually know we are a little different than others. I think I get it from my father. I once said Dad is a guy who doesn't have "hobbies" he has "obsessions," and, while I do have a few hobbies, I will say that voice science has become an obsession. I can only hope that my cohort of master's students won't mind, and perhaps they will even be the same.
I was like this with opera too, and really, I still am if given the chance. But the years have taught me that very few people can tolerate a singer geeking out about opera for too long before they politely excuse themselves. SLP is a little different, if only because if someone knows what it is, they usually either know someone who went to one, or they went to one themselves. Therefore, they seem to appreciate learning a little more about this profession, usually from the respect they feel toward that SLP who gave their parent a swallow evaluation at the hospital, treated their autistic child, or helped their grandparent after their stroke. For opera singers, though, we're just seen as a novelty, and people don't usually treat you with the same level of respect, perhaps because they've either never been to an opera or have never met an opera singer before. (Or worse yet, perhaps they have and that is why they don't respect them. Parish the thought!) This always ruffles my feathers, because I still strongly feel that, while the value in opera is subjective, it still has value nonetheless. And really, what kind of person are you if you don't at least respect someone for their craft even if you don't see the value in it? (But perhaps the issue lies in the general public not knowing about the craft itself and the training it requires...but I digress.)
What's interesting to me is that while I seem to have gained some respect and/or interest from random people I meet, I've lost a bit with (some) singers, particularly the ones who didn't know me before. Maybe it's that whole "abandoning" the musical profession thing, but I can certainly see that I've become an outsider. You know, someone who no longer understands the demands of the profession, or appreciates what the real professional singers go through. The biggest issue I have with this is I find myself wanting to abandon the singing world altogether. Why go into voice research? Why be interested in treating voice professionals when I get out? They're just going to treat me like I don't understand them anyway. I know this is really just an immature reaction from me generalizing a small portion of the singing population, but I find myself heartbroken all the same. Opera was my first love, profession-wise. I'll never really leave it. I may not train as hard as I used to when I was auditioning, mainly because I no longer have the time, but I still sing. I still remember the training from my master's program and beyond. I know I've gotten a bit rusty, but I can still run the race, even if I can't run it in the Olympics. (Course, I never got a great deal of respect from singers when I was in the profession either, but that's another story...one that I don't really need to write.)
All my new knowledge I've gained in voice science, and it's been significantly more than my pedagogy program, helped me a great deal. I was able to train smarter and more efficiently as a singer and I became a more efficient teacher. I noticed I was able to help my students with a vocal problem within weeks instead of months and months instead of years. I was a good teacher before, but I'm a better teacher now. But, I've gain new, more specific terminology that makes it harder to communicate with other voice teachers. I can see a rift forming in my mind just as it is forming in those singers who see me as an outsider.
That rift is the burden of knowledge. I know that sounds pompous, but it really isn't. On the contrary, it is a lonely place. It is the divide that comes when you forget exactly how much your target audience knows and how much they don't know. If you assume they know more than they do, you talk over their heads and seem like a pompous blow-hard who just wants to show them up intellectually. Assume they know less, and you seem condescending. As I integrate new knowledge, it solidifies, and I forget what it is I didn't know two years ago. Everything I've gained is just elementary stuff to the professors and licenced SLPs in my new field, and as such, I approach a lot of this as if it is elementary. However, some of this stuff is way beyond what some singers learn in pedagogy courses, so forgetting that makes the rift larger. And yet for others it is not all that far off; it really just depends on the school. So how does one begin to talk about it without falling into that rift? Maybe I'll never learn to find the balance. To talk in a way that doesn't alienate or deride and to be seen as a colleague to singers instead of a traitor and offender. And maybe I'll never stop being an outsider. I hope I find that balance someday, though, cause I would rather be of help to others (who wish for it) than to drift away in the rift.
We n00b's, by my definition, tend to be a bit crazy, you see. We geek out to anyone who shows even a tiny bit of interest in what we do. We find ourselves talking far too long about some nuance of our discipline without realizing it. In short, we are awkward and alienating. We're like someone who's just fallen in love, and we just can't help ourselves. However, we usually know we are a little different than others. I think I get it from my father. I once said Dad is a guy who doesn't have "hobbies" he has "obsessions," and, while I do have a few hobbies, I will say that voice science has become an obsession. I can only hope that my cohort of master's students won't mind, and perhaps they will even be the same.
I was like this with opera too, and really, I still am if given the chance. But the years have taught me that very few people can tolerate a singer geeking out about opera for too long before they politely excuse themselves. SLP is a little different, if only because if someone knows what it is, they usually either know someone who went to one, or they went to one themselves. Therefore, they seem to appreciate learning a little more about this profession, usually from the respect they feel toward that SLP who gave their parent a swallow evaluation at the hospital, treated their autistic child, or helped their grandparent after their stroke. For opera singers, though, we're just seen as a novelty, and people don't usually treat you with the same level of respect, perhaps because they've either never been to an opera or have never met an opera singer before. (Or worse yet, perhaps they have and that is why they don't respect them. Parish the thought!) This always ruffles my feathers, because I still strongly feel that, while the value in opera is subjective, it still has value nonetheless. And really, what kind of person are you if you don't at least respect someone for their craft even if you don't see the value in it? (But perhaps the issue lies in the general public not knowing about the craft itself and the training it requires...but I digress.)
What's interesting to me is that while I seem to have gained some respect and/or interest from random people I meet, I've lost a bit with (some) singers, particularly the ones who didn't know me before. Maybe it's that whole "abandoning" the musical profession thing, but I can certainly see that I've become an outsider. You know, someone who no longer understands the demands of the profession, or appreciates what the real professional singers go through. The biggest issue I have with this is I find myself wanting to abandon the singing world altogether. Why go into voice research? Why be interested in treating voice professionals when I get out? They're just going to treat me like I don't understand them anyway. I know this is really just an immature reaction from me generalizing a small portion of the singing population, but I find myself heartbroken all the same. Opera was my first love, profession-wise. I'll never really leave it. I may not train as hard as I used to when I was auditioning, mainly because I no longer have the time, but I still sing. I still remember the training from my master's program and beyond. I know I've gotten a bit rusty, but I can still run the race, even if I can't run it in the Olympics. (Course, I never got a great deal of respect from singers when I was in the profession either, but that's another story...one that I don't really need to write.)
All my new knowledge I've gained in voice science, and it's been significantly more than my pedagogy program, helped me a great deal. I was able to train smarter and more efficiently as a singer and I became a more efficient teacher. I noticed I was able to help my students with a vocal problem within weeks instead of months and months instead of years. I was a good teacher before, but I'm a better teacher now. But, I've gain new, more specific terminology that makes it harder to communicate with other voice teachers. I can see a rift forming in my mind just as it is forming in those singers who see me as an outsider.
That rift is the burden of knowledge. I know that sounds pompous, but it really isn't. On the contrary, it is a lonely place. It is the divide that comes when you forget exactly how much your target audience knows and how much they don't know. If you assume they know more than they do, you talk over their heads and seem like a pompous blow-hard who just wants to show them up intellectually. Assume they know less, and you seem condescending. As I integrate new knowledge, it solidifies, and I forget what it is I didn't know two years ago. Everything I've gained is just elementary stuff to the professors and licenced SLPs in my new field, and as such, I approach a lot of this as if it is elementary. However, some of this stuff is way beyond what some singers learn in pedagogy courses, so forgetting that makes the rift larger. And yet for others it is not all that far off; it really just depends on the school. So how does one begin to talk about it without falling into that rift? Maybe I'll never learn to find the balance. To talk in a way that doesn't alienate or deride and to be seen as a colleague to singers instead of a traitor and offender. And maybe I'll never stop being an outsider. I hope I find that balance someday, though, cause I would rather be of help to others (who wish for it) than to drift away in the rift.
Friday, June 15, 2012
One journey ends, another begins
Well, what the heck have I been up to! It's been a really long time since I posted last, huh? Where did I disappear to? Answer: School. Last semester literally sucked up all the time I had. Long story short: I was taking all non-SLP related courses that left me a bit burnt out. Sorry I disappeared like that, though!
Sometimes, I hear from singers thinking about getting into SLP themselves. I usually tell them to prepare for a time-intensive, difficult journey, but I realized that the difficulty is one area of my journey I had kind of been avoiding on here. So, truth time. This post is all about that point from deciding to be an SLP to the point of beginning graduate school in it, which for me, will be this August.
My journey to being a speech pathologist hasn't been a smooth one. I'm actually just going to be starting my master's program this coming year. Which, if you've been counting, means I've been taking undergraduate courses for two years now just to get to the point where I could do the two-year master's program. I honestly did not expect it to take this long.
Rewind to fall of 2010. I decided to become an SLP. I applied to my local university, since they have a three-year program for non-SLP undergraduate majors. I didn't get in, and that kinda sucked. I mean, I had finally gotten that fire-in-the-belly feeling about my life direction, so not getting in felt like just another failure on top of all the music-world failures I had accumulated over the years. Ain't that how it goes, though? You feel like life is getting back "on track" after a set-back and, low and behold, there's another set-back waiting right around the corner. I didn't want to wait any longer! I wanted momentum in my life! I wanted direction...but I got rejection. Good times.
See, I knew I had at least one year of undergraduate courses I would need to complete before I could start a clinical program. That's just how it goes for folks who weren't SLP undergraduates, but the day after the rejection letter came, the school told me their "leveling" program (as it's called) was full already. Luckily, they also informed me there was another leveling program at a state school in *big city* nearby. I applied to the state school's program right away, and I was registered for fall classes by the end of the week. Whew! Momentum was back, and I was on my way! *happy dance*
During that fall semester, I applied to about six graduate schools across the nation. My then-fiance and I tried to line up our schools, since he was going to graduate school in a STEM field. We played the waiting game, and it turned out that I got into one program out of the six. (Turns out, SLP is kinda hot right now just cause there are still jobs in that field, so schools are getting waaaaayy more applicants than it used to, but slots are still quite limited. Therefore, getting into grad school has become quite the challenge to many of us levelers out there.) However, our problem was that the program wasn't in a city where he got admitted. In addition to that, the cost of that particular program was ridiculous! About two-thirds more than most SLP programs, and the city where it was located is one of the most expensive to live in. Meanwhile, my SO got admitted with full funding and a stipend to a top-ten program in his field, which also happened to be in a town with a low cost of living. So, I turned down the one crazy-expensive program and we headed out to where he was going to school.
I took a gamble on new plan: Take some science and math courses, which I would need eventually for my licence anyway, and apply to the two programs in our new state. I reviewed math, with the help of my now-husband, and passed my way into Calculus I, and I also took a psychology course that fall I would need later. This past spring semester, I took Calculus II, Introduction to Mechanics (which what calculus-based Physics I is called here), and another psychology course online. Do SLPs need calculus and calc-based physics? No. But I took them because during my leveling program, I starting thinking I would actually continue to get my PhD after my master's degree, and strong math/physics knowledge would help in one of my research interests immensely. (I'm kinda an over-achiever like that. And besides, I also figured taking some classes beyond what most SLP undergrads take would set me apart, so I figured it was a win-win...as long as I got good grades.)
And luckily, my gamble paid off! I got into both schools! Yay! *Big happy dance* So now, here I sit. Waiting to actually begin my journey of becoming an SLP. Well, I suppose that's not entirely true, since I've spent two years studying to get here, but I sorta feels true. It's been a much longer journey just to begin the privilege of clinical training than I ever thought it would be. If this journey was shown in some movie-montage, it would be probably be a very boring montage; mostly consisting of me sitting and studying at a coffee shop, at home, and at school. (Huh...I guess there's a good reason Hollywood has stayed away from the study-themed montage.) If I had known it would take this long would I have done it? I'm honestly not sure, but now that I've learned what I've learned so far, I'm glad I did it. If I have one talent and passion for any one thing it's learning. (I. am. a. geek.)
I'm sitting here with aspirations of greatness...not too unlike my 18-year-old singer-self back in undergraduate days. The only difference is, my 18-year-old self was doing her best not to be crippled by the fear of failure, but my thirty-something self has no such fear. Not because failure couldn't happen, I know enough of probability to never say never, but because experience as taught me that failure really isn't something to fear. I know, I know, could I be more cliche? Here's the distinction I really want to draw for you, though: Not fearing failure isn't the same as inviting failure. I'd be quite content if failure never showed up ever again and I'm going to plan my ass off and work my ass off to keep it at bay. But by not fearing it, I can look at any challenge square in the face and say, "Bring it. Cause I'm all in." Cliche? Yes. Freeing? Absolutely!
Sometimes, I hear from singers thinking about getting into SLP themselves. I usually tell them to prepare for a time-intensive, difficult journey, but I realized that the difficulty is one area of my journey I had kind of been avoiding on here. So, truth time. This post is all about that point from deciding to be an SLP to the point of beginning graduate school in it, which for me, will be this August.
My journey to being a speech pathologist hasn't been a smooth one. I'm actually just going to be starting my master's program this coming year. Which, if you've been counting, means I've been taking undergraduate courses for two years now just to get to the point where I could do the two-year master's program. I honestly did not expect it to take this long.
Rewind to fall of 2010. I decided to become an SLP. I applied to my local university, since they have a three-year program for non-SLP undergraduate majors. I didn't get in, and that kinda sucked. I mean, I had finally gotten that fire-in-the-belly feeling about my life direction, so not getting in felt like just another failure on top of all the music-world failures I had accumulated over the years. Ain't that how it goes, though? You feel like life is getting back "on track" after a set-back and, low and behold, there's another set-back waiting right around the corner. I didn't want to wait any longer! I wanted momentum in my life! I wanted direction...but I got rejection. Good times.
See, I knew I had at least one year of undergraduate courses I would need to complete before I could start a clinical program. That's just how it goes for folks who weren't SLP undergraduates, but the day after the rejection letter came, the school told me their "leveling" program (as it's called) was full already. Luckily, they also informed me there was another leveling program at a state school in *big city* nearby. I applied to the state school's program right away, and I was registered for fall classes by the end of the week. Whew! Momentum was back, and I was on my way! *happy dance*
During that fall semester, I applied to about six graduate schools across the nation. My then-fiance and I tried to line up our schools, since he was going to graduate school in a STEM field. We played the waiting game, and it turned out that I got into one program out of the six. (Turns out, SLP is kinda hot right now just cause there are still jobs in that field, so schools are getting waaaaayy more applicants than it used to, but slots are still quite limited. Therefore, getting into grad school has become quite the challenge to many of us levelers out there.) However, our problem was that the program wasn't in a city where he got admitted. In addition to that, the cost of that particular program was ridiculous! About two-thirds more than most SLP programs, and the city where it was located is one of the most expensive to live in. Meanwhile, my SO got admitted with full funding and a stipend to a top-ten program in his field, which also happened to be in a town with a low cost of living. So, I turned down the one crazy-expensive program and we headed out to where he was going to school.
I took a gamble on new plan: Take some science and math courses, which I would need eventually for my licence anyway, and apply to the two programs in our new state. I reviewed math, with the help of my now-husband, and passed my way into Calculus I, and I also took a psychology course that fall I would need later. This past spring semester, I took Calculus II, Introduction to Mechanics (which what calculus-based Physics I is called here), and another psychology course online. Do SLPs need calculus and calc-based physics? No. But I took them because during my leveling program, I starting thinking I would actually continue to get my PhD after my master's degree, and strong math/physics knowledge would help in one of my research interests immensely. (I'm kinda an over-achiever like that. And besides, I also figured taking some classes beyond what most SLP undergrads take would set me apart, so I figured it was a win-win...as long as I got good grades.)
And luckily, my gamble paid off! I got into both schools! Yay! *Big happy dance* So now, here I sit. Waiting to actually begin my journey of becoming an SLP. Well, I suppose that's not entirely true, since I've spent two years studying to get here, but I sorta feels true. It's been a much longer journey just to begin the privilege of clinical training than I ever thought it would be. If this journey was shown in some movie-montage, it would be probably be a very boring montage; mostly consisting of me sitting and studying at a coffee shop, at home, and at school. (Huh...I guess there's a good reason Hollywood has stayed away from the study-themed montage.) If I had known it would take this long would I have done it? I'm honestly not sure, but now that I've learned what I've learned so far, I'm glad I did it. If I have one talent and passion for any one thing it's learning. (I. am. a. geek.)
I'm sitting here with aspirations of greatness...not too unlike my 18-year-old singer-self back in undergraduate days. The only difference is, my 18-year-old self was doing her best not to be crippled by the fear of failure, but my thirty-something self has no such fear. Not because failure couldn't happen, I know enough of probability to never say never, but because experience as taught me that failure really isn't something to fear. I know, I know, could I be more cliche? Here's the distinction I really want to draw for you, though: Not fearing failure isn't the same as inviting failure. I'd be quite content if failure never showed up ever again and I'm going to plan my ass off and work my ass off to keep it at bay. But by not fearing it, I can look at any challenge square in the face and say, "Bring it. Cause I'm all in." Cliche? Yes. Freeing? Absolutely!
Sunday, February 19, 2012
The Physics of Sound: Resonance and Standing Waves
So what does happen when two sound waves are in phase with one another? The two waves constructively interfere with one another to result in one wave that this double the amplitude of the two waves. Basically, they both add up like some awesome crime-fighting team...and they...help people hear and stuff. (Yeah...I don't know where I was going with that metaphor.) Anyway, to better understand this, let's talk a little more about the phenomenon of interference.
Interference is when two waves sorta "line up" together. Depending on how they "line up," the two waves combine to form one wave that is either of lesser or greater amplitude than the two waves were just on their own. Think of it like this: If one wave is going along with an amplitude of, let's say, 2 dB, and it meets up with another wave that's out of phase with this first wave, and the second wave's amplitude is 1.5 dB, then the resultant effect will be the 1.5 dB wave "canceling out" some of the amplitude of the first wave. So you'd get a net result of a 0.5 dB sound wave. If, however, the 2 dB sound wave meets up with a wave that's totally in phase with it, and this wave is going along at 2 dB, the resultant wave will be 4 dB. So, yes, interference is very much like when you hang out with that soul-sucking person you really shouldn't be around (destructive) or that person who just makes you feel great (constructive). (That's a super-basic way to represent interference mathematically, and the real math is much, much more detailed and complex, but it's just there to give you an idea. So please don't go around thinking it's just addition and subtraction when scientists are figuring out interference. It'd be a bit like those people who think a graduate degree in vocal performance just means you sing karaoke all day and get a degree for it.)
Sound waves travel along just fine until they hit a boundary. When that happens, the waves bounce off the boundary and become reflected waves. The initial wave, called the incident wave, can meet up with the reflected wave where the two waves interfere with one another to form a new wave that is the sum of the other two waves. This is called the principle of superposition. (I know I'm getting a bit redundant, but hang with me here.) If, during superposition, two waves meet up that are completely in phase, the result is a standing wave.
As you can see above, one type of standing wave doesn't travel anywhere. It stays in the same place constantly. This results in areas where the displacement is zero, called nodes (shown by the red dots above), and areas of maximum displacement called antinodes (the tall peaks and valleys above). So the constructive interference of an initial wave meeting up with a reflective wave to form a standing wave looks something like this:
But how do standing waves that don't go anywhere contribute to a singer's resonance? Well, that question is kinda jumping a bit farther ahead than where we are now. For now, just think about standing waves on a medium that is fixed on both ends, like a string. Ever played with a string or necklace where you bounce the string up and down? If you have, you actually formed a standing wave at the string's first resonant frequency, called the fundamental frequency. But the string does have other frequencies it could resonant at, called overtones.
But why am I talking about strings? What do strings have to do with vocal resonance? Think about it a second: What acts like vibrating strings with fixed ends when we speak or sing? Yup, the vocal folds. But, the vocal folds vibrate in patterns that are much more complex than just a single string. Remember how the air opens them from the bottom to the top, due to subglottal air pressure, and then the folds get sucked in laterally because of the Bernoulli effect? The resulting wave pattern is very intricate,which results in a complex waveform (multiple simple sine waves going out at once) being produced at the level of the vocal folds. The fundamental frequency and all of the overtones of the human voice originate at the level of the vocal folds.
*That last bit is very, very important, and it seems to be where a lot of singers get very confused...usually not due to any fault of their own. The vocal tract absolutely cannot create sound waves or overtones to those sound waves: Not the singer's formant, not the harmonics, not any of it. All of the frequencies picked up by a spectrograph originate from vocal fold vibration. The vocal tract only acts as a filter for the frequencies sent out by the vibrational pattern of the vocal folds. And that's where we'll pick up next time!
Raphel, L. J., Borden, G. J., Harris, K. S. (2007). Speech science primer: Physiology, acoustics, perception of speech (5th ed.). Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott Williams & Williams.
Interference is when two waves sorta "line up" together. Depending on how they "line up," the two waves combine to form one wave that is either of lesser or greater amplitude than the two waves were just on their own. Think of it like this: If one wave is going along with an amplitude of, let's say, 2 dB, and it meets up with another wave that's out of phase with this first wave, and the second wave's amplitude is 1.5 dB, then the resultant effect will be the 1.5 dB wave "canceling out" some of the amplitude of the first wave. So you'd get a net result of a 0.5 dB sound wave. If, however, the 2 dB sound wave meets up with a wave that's totally in phase with it, and this wave is going along at 2 dB, the resultant wave will be 4 dB. So, yes, interference is very much like when you hang out with that soul-sucking person you really shouldn't be around (destructive) or that person who just makes you feel great (constructive). (That's a super-basic way to represent interference mathematically, and the real math is much, much more detailed and complex, but it's just there to give you an idea. So please don't go around thinking it's just addition and subtraction when scientists are figuring out interference. It'd be a bit like those people who think a graduate degree in vocal performance just means you sing karaoke all day and get a degree for it.)
Sound waves travel along just fine until they hit a boundary. When that happens, the waves bounce off the boundary and become reflected waves. The initial wave, called the incident wave, can meet up with the reflected wave where the two waves interfere with one another to form a new wave that is the sum of the other two waves. This is called the principle of superposition. (I know I'm getting a bit redundant, but hang with me here.) If, during superposition, two waves meet up that are completely in phase, the result is a standing wave.
 |
 |
| The red and blue waves meet up to form the standing wave in black. Other cool animations can be found here and here. |
 |
| First fundamental and first six overtones of a string |
*That last bit is very, very important, and it seems to be where a lot of singers get very confused...usually not due to any fault of their own. The vocal tract absolutely cannot create sound waves or overtones to those sound waves: Not the singer's formant, not the harmonics, not any of it. All of the frequencies picked up by a spectrograph originate from vocal fold vibration. The vocal tract only acts as a filter for the frequencies sent out by the vibrational pattern of the vocal folds. And that's where we'll pick up next time!
Raphel, L. J., Borden, G. J., Harris, K. S. (2007). Speech science primer: Physiology, acoustics, perception of speech (5th ed.). Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott Williams & Williams.
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Physics of Sound Series: The Waveform (or, What the Heck am I Looking At?)
We now know that a sound wave is made up of moments of compression and rarefaction, and we know a little bit about a waveform as well. But there are other parts to a wave that we need to know about before we get into just what resonance really is. Those parts are: Period, frequency, amplitude, phase, and wavelength.
No doubt, you've heard of some of these before. Frequency and amplitude, in particular, get a lot of attention in the music world. A lot of times, we talk about frequency and amplitude as synonymous with pitch and loudness, and for most purposes they are. However, when I talk about frequency and amplitude, I'm going to be referring to the actual physical properties of the sound wave (or waves), meaning the parts of the wave that can be measured with proper instrumentation and then studied. Therefore, frequency and amplitude are objective measurements. Pitch and loudness are usually associated with the perceptual properties of the wave, i.e. just how loud or how high/low a person perceives that sound differs from person to person (and from ear to ear, for that matter); so pitch and loudness cannot be measured per se, but rather discussed subjectively. (And remember from my previous post: Anytime I'm talking about perception, I'm talking about the interaction from a sensory signal with a person's higher cognitive functions and life experiences. Therefore, perception is always subjective.)
When you look at the waveform of a basic sine wave (the red line) shown above, you'll see that it has a repeating pattern. The number of repeats of this pattern in a given amount of time is called the frequency of the wave. This is usually given in Hertz, but can also be stated as the number of cycles per second of the wave pattern. (See, it was originally called cycles per second (cps), but then the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) decided to honor Heinrich Hertz's contribution to the field of electromagnetism, so they gave him a unit of measurement, cps, and called it Hertz (Hz). Scientists are always re-naming units to honor the great contributors to the field. Sorta like how medical terminology is also littered with the names of big anatomy contributors, etc.) So, for the famous A440 that orchestra's (supposedly) tune to, the frequency is 440 cycles per second, or 440 Hz. In math terms, frequency is shown by: frequency = velocity over wavelength (f = v/λ). Sounds pretty fancy, but the reason I'm putting this here is because the period of a wave is related to the frequency. The period is how long it takes for one cycle of the wave pattern to complete itself. So if the frequency could be shown as: 1/period, then the period is shown by: 1/frequency. Seems like we're talking about the same thing, but in general, the frequency refers to how often the wave pattern is repeating itself where the period refers to how long it takes for one pattern of the wave to complete itself. Why do we bother with this distinction? Well, because it comes in really handy for mathematical analysis of wave patterns. Why should singers bother to know about this? Because...well...I'll get there for ya. (Besides, if your ever playing around with PRAAT or some other spectrograph software, you'll probably see options for period or frequency change, and you might want to know what you're changing out as you play around.)
Wavelength corresponds to the distance one cycle of the wave travels. Slower frequencies have longer wavelengths, so one cycle of A440 travels double the distance through the atmosphere than A880. (In the above equations, wavelength is represented by that funny-looking symbol, which turns out to be the Greek letter lambda. So now, when you poke around wikipedia and see frequency equations, you'll know some of what you're looking at.)
The amplitude of a wave corresponds to it's perceptual loudness, and is related to the amount of displacement the air particles go through in the sound wave. Because it has to do with how far each particle is being "pushed," amplitude represents the atmospheric pressure of a sound wave, and is measured in decibels (dB). In the waveform shown above, amplitude is represented on the vertical axis. So if the sine wave had a higher amplitude, it would have taller peeks and lower valleys, going past the 1.00 marked above. Even though amplitude of sound is represented by this vertical displacement on the waveform, in longitudinal waves, the displacement in the real world is happening horizontally. This is different for other wave types, like light, but the math and the graphical representations are the same. (I just want to point that out because it's easy to misinterpret the sound waves from your mouth as looking just like the waveform representation, but if we could see the sound wave, it would like more like the animation here. That's kinda important to remember once we get to the anatomy of the ear and the role the ear drum plays in hearing. And, oh yeah! I'm going to get into the anatomy of the ear and how it plays a role in resonance as well, for both the audience and the singer!)
Phase is where we start to get into some important stuff when it comes to understanding resonance, and especially the phenomenon of standing waves. The phase of the sine wave in the above picture basically is where in the cycle the wave starts when you're looking at the vertical axis. Let's look at it more closely:
See how the sine wave is passing through the vertical axis where the horizontal line equals 0? Now look at the cosine wave (blue, dotted line). Cosine is passing through that vertical axis where a horizontal line equals 1. So the phase of the sine wave is not the same as the phase of the cosine wave. The fancy way of saying that is that cosine has a different phase shift than sine. In fact, that's actually the main difference between sine and cosine: The phase shift between the two.
Phase is really, really important because if you have two sound waves that are out-of-shift like this:
You'll see how when one wave has a peek in its amplitude, the other wave has a valley, or a negative amplitude. This means that when one wave is in it's period of compression, the other is in rarefaction. The result is that these two waves actually cancel each other out, because if the atmospheric pressure is equally positive in one wave while the pressure is equally negative from the other wave, the two pressure differences cancel each other out. 1-1=0, right? Crazy, huh?
But what happens when two sound waves are perfectly in phase? What if you've got 1 + 1 instead of 1 -1? That's where the phenomenon of standing waves comes in, and that's what we'll start up with next time. Stay tuned!
Raphel, L. J., Borden, G. J., Harris, K. S. (2007). Speech science primer: Physiology, acoustics, perception of speech (5th ed.). Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott Williams & Williams.
No doubt, you've heard of some of these before. Frequency and amplitude, in particular, get a lot of attention in the music world. A lot of times, we talk about frequency and amplitude as synonymous with pitch and loudness, and for most purposes they are. However, when I talk about frequency and amplitude, I'm going to be referring to the actual physical properties of the sound wave (or waves), meaning the parts of the wave that can be measured with proper instrumentation and then studied. Therefore, frequency and amplitude are objective measurements. Pitch and loudness are usually associated with the perceptual properties of the wave, i.e. just how loud or how high/low a person perceives that sound differs from person to person (and from ear to ear, for that matter); so pitch and loudness cannot be measured per se, but rather discussed subjectively. (And remember from my previous post: Anytime I'm talking about perception, I'm talking about the interaction from a sensory signal with a person's higher cognitive functions and life experiences. Therefore, perception is always subjective.)
 |
| Yup, those are the same sine and cosine functions from trigonometry that you see on your calculator. |
Wavelength corresponds to the distance one cycle of the wave travels. Slower frequencies have longer wavelengths, so one cycle of A440 travels double the distance through the atmosphere than A880. (In the above equations, wavelength is represented by that funny-looking symbol, which turns out to be the Greek letter lambda. So now, when you poke around wikipedia and see frequency equations, you'll know some of what you're looking at.)
The amplitude of a wave corresponds to it's perceptual loudness, and is related to the amount of displacement the air particles go through in the sound wave. Because it has to do with how far each particle is being "pushed," amplitude represents the atmospheric pressure of a sound wave, and is measured in decibels (dB). In the waveform shown above, amplitude is represented on the vertical axis. So if the sine wave had a higher amplitude, it would have taller peeks and lower valleys, going past the 1.00 marked above. Even though amplitude of sound is represented by this vertical displacement on the waveform, in longitudinal waves, the displacement in the real world is happening horizontally. This is different for other wave types, like light, but the math and the graphical representations are the same. (I just want to point that out because it's easy to misinterpret the sound waves from your mouth as looking just like the waveform representation, but if we could see the sound wave, it would like more like the animation here. That's kinda important to remember once we get to the anatomy of the ear and the role the ear drum plays in hearing. And, oh yeah! I'm going to get into the anatomy of the ear and how it plays a role in resonance as well, for both the audience and the singer!)
Phase is where we start to get into some important stuff when it comes to understanding resonance, and especially the phenomenon of standing waves. The phase of the sine wave in the above picture basically is where in the cycle the wave starts when you're looking at the vertical axis. Let's look at it more closely:
See how the sine wave is passing through the vertical axis where the horizontal line equals 0? Now look at the cosine wave (blue, dotted line). Cosine is passing through that vertical axis where a horizontal line equals 1. So the phase of the sine wave is not the same as the phase of the cosine wave. The fancy way of saying that is that cosine has a different phase shift than sine. In fact, that's actually the main difference between sine and cosine: The phase shift between the two.
Phase is really, really important because if you have two sound waves that are out-of-shift like this:
 |
| Look at the three middle waves to see the phase difference. |
But what happens when two sound waves are perfectly in phase? What if you've got 1 + 1 instead of 1 -1? That's where the phenomenon of standing waves comes in, and that's what we'll start up with next time. Stay tuned!
Raphel, L. J., Borden, G. J., Harris, K. S. (2007). Speech science primer: Physiology, acoustics, perception of speech (5th ed.). Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott Williams & Williams.
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