Voice production mechanisms of vocal vibrato in male singers

Vibrato constitutes one of the most interesting features of singing voice. It has been the topic of interest of many researchers in different knowledge areas such as acoustics, physiology, and psychoacoustics. In spite of this, some basic aspects related to vibrato production still remain unclear, such as the origin of its most relevant acoustical features, (frequency and amplitude variations of the partials) or the relevance of recently identified physiological effects, such as pitch synchronous variations of the voice organ. In this paper, a novel interactive vibrato production model will be proposed in order to accomplish a realistic voice production description, in such a way that the source-tract interaction will be included in the prediction model. This will allow us to identify, from the acoustical signal, additional effects typical of vocal vibrato, such as slight pitch synchronous variations of the vocal tract response, as well as to analyze the relationship between the acoustical features of vibrato and the voice production elements.