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VOCOLOGY: The Science and Practice of Voice Habilitation
(A Vision for Utah)

Ingo R. Titze, Ph.D.


  • Director, National Center  for Voice and Speech
  • Distinguished Professor
  • Speech Pathology and Audiology and the School of Music
  • University of Iowa
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20-25%  of the U.S. workforce use voice as a primary tool of trade
  • Teachers
  • Counselors
  • Telephone workers
  • Agents
  • Receptionists
  • Lawyers
  • Ministers, etc.
  • Actors, Singers
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Voice Habilitation for teachers, singers, and other heavy voice users


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The Problem –Overexposure to tissue vibration, resulting in
  • Nodules
  • Polyps
  • Chronic edema
  • Vascular hemorrhages
  • Vocal fatigue
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Two Fundamentally Different Types of Vocal Fatigue
  • Muscle fatigue
  • Lamina propria material fatigue
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Risk Factors for Lamina Propria Fatigue
  • Vibration over-dose
  • Lack of recovery time
  • Poor tissue environment
  • Genetically weak tissue structure


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Genetics Factors
  • Thickness of mucosa
  • Toughness of skin (epithelial cells), basement membrane, and extracellular matrix
  • Proteoglycan (liquid) composition
  • Vocal fold geometry (length, thickness, left-right symmetry, etc)
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Poor Tissue Environment
  • Dehydration
  • Smoke, chemicals, pollens
  • Drugs
  • Inadequate Nutrition
  • Reflux
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Vibration Dose Depends on
  • Amplitude of vibration
  • Frequency of vibration
  • Duration of vibration
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Vibration dose criteria derived from industrial tool use (Griffin,1990)
  • For hand-transmitted vibration
  • Continuous exposure
  • Based on “white finger” and “numbness of hands” responses


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Safety limits for hand-transmitted vibration (Griffin, 1990)
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Maximum Vocal Vibrational Doses
  • Less than 17 minutes  of continuous vibration
  • Less than 100,000 cycles of continuous vibration
  • Less than 0.5 joule/cm3 of continuous energy dissipation into heat
  • Less than 0.5 km distance traveled in a cyclic pattern
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How do we study vibration exposure?
  • Understand the mechanism of recovery
  • Build recovery times into vocal dose criteria
  • Design auto-perceptive ratings of fatigue and recovery
  • Test the exposure and recovery model on tissue in vitro and on human subjects


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Recovery times
  • SHORT TERM


  • restore circulation
  • restore water to tissue
  • remove lactic acid
  • replenish calcium
  • LONG TERM


  • repair extracellular matrix
  • repair blood vessels
  • grow epithelial cells
  • repair basement membrane
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Use of “Inability to produce soft high voice” (IPSV)as a means of testing lamina propria fatigue
  • /hi-hi-hi-hi-hi/
  • Pitch glides
  • “Happy Birthday” song
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Inability to produce soft voice (IPSV) rating scale
  • Currently a 1-10 point rating scale
  • Higher values reflect voice breaks, delay of voice onset, lack of low intensity
  • The speaker rates himself (autoperception)
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Some hypotheses about IPSV
  • Vocal warm-up reduces IPSV in proportion to the length of silence prior to phonation
  • Adaptation to vocal warm-up is quick (0-1 hour) and the benefit lasts on  the order of 5-10 hours
  • Lamina propria fatigue increases IPSV in proportion to the short-term accumulated vocal dose, with a lag-time of 48-72 hours


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Vocal exercises that are known to produce results


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Group 1: Semi-occluded vocal tract exercises
  • Lip trills
  • tongue trills
  • lip-tongue trills (raspberry, or razz)
  • bilabial fricatives
  • humming
  • phonation into thin straws
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What semi-occluded vocal tract exercises accomplish
  • They maintain a positive supraglottal pressure to keep the vocal folds slightly abducted under high lung pressures
  • They “square-up” the vocal folds vertically
  • They lower the threshold pressure to get vibration started
  • They allow pitch and lung pressure to be raised to high levels without excessive vocal fold collision
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Group 2: Staccato exercises
  • Repeated notes, different rhythmic patterns
  • Different speeds, including diadochokinesis
  • Triads and arpeggios
  • Mixes and matches of pitch , rhythm, and speed
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What staccato exercises accomplish
  • They build strength, speed, and accuracy of vocal fold posturing
  • They establish a clean onset of a dominant mode of vibration
  • They facilitate superposition of small breath group modulations over an otherwise steady breath support
  • They can be used as precursors to trillo and rapid accents in coloratura singing
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Group 3: Messa di voce exercises
  • Crescendo-decrescendo in mixed registration only
  • Crescendo-decrescendo with breathy onset and offset
  • Crescendo-decrescendo at higher pitches with a closed  vowel like /u/
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What messa di voce exercises accomplish
  • They recruit tissue layers gradually into vibration and require the vocalist to match tension across the layers (ligament and muscle)
  • They coordinate CT muscle activity, TA muscle activity, and lung pressure to maintain a constant pitch with variable loudness
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Group 4: Pitch glide exercises
  • Descending pitch only, falsetto register
  • Descending pitch only, falsetto register to mixed register
  • Descending-ascending pitch, register balanced
  • Ascending-descending pitch, register balanced
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What pitch glide exercises accomplish
  • They gradually turn on the CT muscle while turning off the TA muscle, and vice versa (differential muscle control)
  • By thinking down when singing up, they help to keep the larynx from ascending
  • By resisting the use of excessive lung pressure when changing pitch , they prevent transient vibrational modes
  • They allow seamless register changes to occur
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Group 5: yawn-twang exercises

  • Twang-creak combination for voice onset
  • Yawn-sigh combination for voice onset





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Rules for modifying voice quality

  • Lowering larynx will lower all formant frequencies (longer vocal tract)
  • Lip rounding will lower all formant frequencies
  • Pharynx widening will lower F1 (yawn); pharynx narrowing will raise F1 (twang)
  • Lip spreading and/or jaw lowering will raise F1


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Vocal Ring  has wide pharynx and narrow epilarynx tube ; it is
the combination of twang and yawn


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What yawn-twang exercises accomplish
  • They allow control over voice quality
  • They help position the laryngeal vestibule for maximum vocal ring in the epilarynx tube (a tweeter boost)
  • They can lengthen the vocal tract (acoustically) by coupling energy into the trachea (a woofer boost)
  • They widen the pharynx for an additional woofer boost


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Group 6: Phonation-articulation independence exercises
  • Tongue rolls (waves, curls)
  • Tongue extensions and retractions
  • Jaw opening and closing
  • Etc.
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What phonation-articulation independence exercises accomplish
  • Keep larynx from moving vertically with articulation
  • Keep vocal fold vibration from being perturbed
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Group 7: Shriek exercises
  • Uvular scrape
  • Ary-epiglottal scrape
  • Loud falsetto
  • Falsetto-scrape combinations
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Song or Shriek
  • In the animal world, sound-making tends to be either song-like or shriek-like
  • In song-like vocalization, the emphasis is on melody and the sounds are nearly periodic
  • In shriek-like vocalization, the emphasis is on rhythm and the sounds are mostly aperiodic
  • The degree of nonlinearity in tissue dynamics, aerodynamics, and acoustics determines whether peridicity or aperiodicity rules
  • Many animals can “linearize” or “non-linearize” their sound production systems to sing or shriek
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A Vision for Utah
  • Build strong multi-disciplinary voice teams
  • Remain neophytes- never stop learning. When we attain stature, we become statues.
  • Attend the Summer Vocology Institute
  • Keep America singing – follow the Sweden model
  • Support local performing arts


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The End