Acoustic distinctions between speech and singing: Is singing acoustically more stable than speech?

Abstract

In this paper we study how spoken and sung versions of the same text differ in terms of the variability in duration and pitch. These two modalities are usually studied separately and few works can be found in the literature that report results about the comparison of their acoustic properties. In this work, recordings of both speech and singing of Brazilian Portuguese popular songs were conducted. Then, the variability was measured by statistical analysis of the fundamental frequency and speech rate, specifically the mean and variance. In a first study this was done at the syllable and sentence levels and latter at the phone level for further analysis. In general, results show that speech and singing variability cannot be differentiated in terms of the variance. We expected different results because singing is more constrained than speech both in terms of pitch (small variation within the note) and duration (metrical constraint). It seems that the results of higher pitch stability for singing reported in the literature cannot be generalised, particularly for the popular genre in which there is a prosodic proximity between singing and speech. These interesting findings also motivate to analyse other aspects of dynamic pitch and duration to better understand the prosodic differences between the two modalities.

A review of the speech-music continuum and its categorization: Evolution, form, and function

“…Important cues for discriminating speech and song are spectral noisiness, pitch precision and harmonicity related to the singer's formant, rhythmicity, the presence of vibrato, the proportion of unvoiced frames, and potentially, pitch stability or discreteness (Gerhard, 2003;Raposo de Medeiros & Cabral, 2018, Raposo de Medeiros et al, 2021Stegemoller, 2008). In general, song has higher pitch and spectral precision and stability, higher harmonicity, higher rhythmicity, more vibrato, and a smaller proportion of unvoiced frames than speech.…”

“…Speech and music also differ by texture, though with less distinctness; speech is usually dialogic and occasionally monologic, whereas music is most commonly choric, and occasionally mono-or dialogic (Haiduk & Fitch, 2022). Although less-studied, it is generally assumed that song is an intermediate between speech and music for all of these features; certain studies that compare these features for speech and song replicate those comparing speech and music, though with less clarity in the distinction (Raposo de Medeiros & Cabral, 2018;Stanev et al, 2016).…”

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RUNNING HEAD: THE SPEECH-MUSIC CONTINUUM acclaim that song is musical (e.g. Raposo de Medeiros & Cabral, 2018;Gerhard, 2003;Merrill et al, 2012). These accounts would seem to place the speech-music boundary solidly between speech and song.

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Vocal92: Audio Dataset With a Cappella Solo Singing and Speech

“…The research shows that singing stretches or lengthens acoustic features, while speech sacrifices acoustic features. B. Raposo et al [4] invited three speakers and three singers to give a lecture and sing on a book of modern Brazilian literature. They tested the hypothesis that singing is more stable than speech, particularly pitch and duration.…”