Results From a Pilot Longitudinal Study of Electrolaryngographically Derived Closed Quotient for Adult Male Singers in Training

Measures of electrolaryngogtaphically derived vocal fold closed quotient (the closed phase in each vocal fold vibrational cycle expressed as a percentage of the period of that cycle) for adults with varying degrees of singing training has indicated that there is a patterned variation of closed quotient with fundamental frequency as a function of the number of years singing training/experience.This variation has been established for adult groups ofboth males and females.The purpose of this paper is to report the results of a pilot experiment to investigate if such a variation can be observed on a longimdinal basis to establish whether the effect can be at all attributed to the training process itself.Closed quotient/fundamental frequency measurements have been made for two adult male singing students at York University based on recordings taken at regular intervals over seven months.Results indicate that changes do occur with singing training and it is suggested that the use of a real-time visual display of closed quotient against time could thereftne be bene cial in the training process.