Stable, quantised pitch in singing and instrumental music: signals, acoustics and possible origins
Joe Wolfe, Emery Schubert · 2012
Unlike most artificial instruments, the voice usually has no resonator to stabilise the pitch. Singing pitch depends on geometry and muscle tension in the larynx but also, strongly, on the sub-glottal pressure. Consequently, pitch and loudness of the voice are strongly correlated, which is why a messa di voce—a gradual increase and decrease in loudness at constant pitch—remains a difficult exercise. Why do we sing in a style that is suited to musical instruments, but arguably much less suited to the voice itself? This paper discusses the advantages of digitised pitch in musicial signals for storage, processing and harmony. It then uses acoustical and musicological arguments to support the hypothesis that styles of singing with stable, categorical pitch, which is controlled independently of loudness, may have evolved since and because of the development of artificial musical instruments. Because stable pitch instruments are at least tens of thousands of years old, and probably much older, it is possible that this influence on song is similarly ancient. We argue that, through the generational transmission of memes, the mimicking of artificial instruments may have given rise to the 'unnatural' fixed pitch singing, which consequently became the one of the dominant styles in Western and other musics.