The Short-Term Acoustic Effects of Vocal Warm-Up on Voice Quality in Non-disordered, Untrained, Female Voices

Abstract

This study aims to collect accurate, reliable and valid quantitative data using acoustic analysis of voice, to determine if, and to what extent, vocal warm-up (WU) results in short-term improvement of voice quality in non-disordered, untrained, female voices. In this paper, “non-disordered voice” is defined as a voice with no history of laryngeal pathology and an “untrained voice” is defined as a voice with no history of voice training or therapy. This study will recruit 20 participants from Queen Margaret University (QMU) in Edinburgh, to record and analyse their voices. The inclusion criteria are females aged between 18 to 40 years old. The exclusion criteria are professional voice users, history of laryngeal pathology, previous voice training or therapy and vocal complaints. From the 20 female participants, 10 will be randomly allocated to the experimental subject group, and the remaining 10 will form the control group. The experimental subject group will be recorded before and after receiving a 5-minute vocal WU. All recordings will be made in a sound-treated room at QMU. To determine the objective voice quality, the objective measurement protocol Acoustic Voice Quality Index (AVQI) will be used, which will be determined using the computer program Praat.