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Music Training And Vocal Production Of Speech And Song, Elizabeth L. Stegemoller, Erika Skoe, Trent Nicol, Catherine M. Warrier, Nina Kraus

Elizabeth L. Stegemoller

Studying similarities and differences between speech and song provides an opportunity to examine music’s role in human culture.Forty participants divided into groups of musicians and nonmusicians spoke and sang lyrics to two familiar songs.The spectral structures of speech and song were analyzed using a sta- tistical analysis of frequency ratios.Results showed that speech and song have similar spectral structures,with song having more energy present at frequency ratios corresponding to those ratios associated with the 12-tone scale. This difference may be attributed to greater fun- damental frequency variability in speech,and was not affected by musical experience.Higher levels of musical experience were …