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The production of speech is a highly complex motor task that involves approximately 100 orofacial, laryngeal, pharyngeal, and respiratory muscles. [2] [3] Precise and expeditious timing of these muscles is essential for the production of temporally complex speech sounds, which are characterized by transitions as short as 10 ms between frequency bands [4] and an average speaking rate of ...
Voice therapy consists of techniques and procedures that target vocal parameters, such as vocal fold closure, pitch, volume, and quality. This therapy is provided by speech-language pathologists and is primarily used to aid in the management of voice disorders, [1] or for altering the overall quality of voice, as in the case of transgender voice therapy.
Speech-language therapy teaches the patient how to eliminate the irritations permanently through habit changes and vocal hygiene. Hoarseness or breathiness that lasts for more than two weeks is a common symptom of an underlying voice disorder such as nodes or polyps and should be investigated medically.
The length of the vocal cords affects the pitch of voice, similar to a violin string. Open when breathing and vibrating for speech or singing, the folds are controlled via the recurrent laryngeal branch of the vagus nerve. They are composed of twin infoldings of mucous membrane stretched horizontally, from back to front, across the larynx.
The upper pitch range of the human voice is, on average, about half as high in males as in females. [3] Even after controlling for body height and volume, the male voice remains lower. Charles Darwin suggested that the human voice evolved through intersexual sexual selection, [ 4 ] via female mate choices.
Arranged by the pitch ranges covered, vocal fry is the lowest register, modal voice is next, then falsetto, and finally the whistle register. [4] [9] While speech pathologists and scholars of phonetics recognize four registers, vocal pedagogists are divided.
In speech, voiceless phones are associated with vocal folds that are elongated, highly tensed, and placed laterally (abducted) when compared to vocal folds during phonation. [ 6 ] Fundamental frequency, the main acoustic cue for the percept pitch , can be varied through a variety of means.
In general, the larger a resonator is, the lower the frequency it will respond to; the greater the volume of air, the lower its pitch. But the pitch also will be affected by the shape of resonator and by the size of opening and amount of lip or neck the resonator has. [3]