THE SCIENCE OF STRAW SINGING
WE'VE TAKEN CARE OF THE SCIENCE, SO YOU CAN TAKE CARE OF YOUR VOICE
WHAT ARE SEMI-OCCLUDED VOCAL TRACT EXERCISES?
SOVT stands for 'Semi-Occluded Vocal Tract' - which actually is just a really elaborate way of saying that the mouth is partially closed. This partial occlusion allows air pressure and acoustic energy to be reflected backward from the lips, decompressing and helping the vocal folds vibrate more easily, and with less muscular effort.
This 'back pressure' provides some important benefits to the voice user, allowing for an overall more efficient sound production process by...
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POSITIVE BACK-PRESSURE
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...Sending 'positive' pressures back down the vocal tract to counter and balance the other pressures coming from the lungs. This provides a 'cushioning' later preventing harsh collision forces - basically, it FEELS easier to sing!
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LOWERING PHONATION THRESHOLD PRESSURE
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...Lowering phonation threshold pressure (PTP), which basically means your vocal folds have to do less work to resist the buildup of pressure coming from the lungs. This allows the vocal folds to more easily be set into motion!
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ENTRAINING THE VOCAL FOLDS
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...Entraining the vocal folds to sustain their movement and oscillation with ease once PTP has been achieved.
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ALIGNING THE VOCAL FOLDS
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...Aligning the vocal folds more aerodynamically, which means that they're more complimentary to the airflow.
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SOVT exercises help with creating sufficient airflow as well as helping to check that the voice isn't being overworked. More importantly, SOVT is gentle enough to be used as a way of warming up the voice for singing, warming down the voice after singing, and everywhere in between - these exercises can also be used as a 'reset' button. In addition, SOVT can be used to help ease tired and fatigued vocal folds, as the exercise works to minimise the vocal fold collisions by providing a protective 'air cushion'.
When used with our specialised SOVT Straw, you create an elongation of the vocal tract too, essentially lengthening it by the protruding distance of the device from the mouth. This helps to reposition (up or down) and stabilise your voice 'break', making higher pitches more easily accessible.
ONE STRAW SIZE DOESN'T FIT ALL
INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES
Every single person is anatomically different. Everyone has a slightly different vocal tract length and size, vocal folds lengths, and different muscle strengths - this all impacts on the natural resistance of the voice, and as a result, each individual will require a slightly different straw configuration in order to balance the system.
AC / DC
TASK DEPENDENT
FLOW RATE
In a study by Maxfield et al (2014), intraoral pressures were explored across 13 different SOVT tasks. The aim was to compare these SOVT gestures, which in turn might inform how user might select a particular SOVT gesture to suit. The table to the left shows the mean intraoral pressures associated with these 13 gestures, when performed on a comfortable pitch/loudness. The most important take-away points are:
- The darker bar represents females, whilst the lighter grey represents males. As expected, the intraoral pressure within the female participants was lower than males when using exactly the same SOVT mechanism. Why is this important? It shows that a single universal straw/tube will not be suitable for all users, as males and females will require different lengths/apertures in order to equalise the pressure difference between gender.
- The extra black lines rising from the columns indicates "standard deviation" - basically, this represents how individual differences can affect the results. In this instance, the individual differences of lung pressure account for this factor - which is another key point to highlight... EVERYONE IS UNIQUE! The only solution is for a variable resistance device that users can hone in for their own unique individual voices.
And finally... STRAWS! Maxfield at el. looked at three different types of straws, noted below and ranked in order of least resistance to most resistance:
- Large Straw (6mm internal diameter, 195mm length)
- Small Straw (3.5mm internal diameter, 141mm length)
- Straw In Water (5mm internal diameter, 360mm length, 70mm depth in water)
So, if you want a more athletic resistance styled workout, then a narrower diameter is going to offer the most benefits. For a more therapeutic workout, or if you want to ease tired and fatigued vocal folds, the larger diameter is clearly the winner.
SCIENTIFIC CLAIMS YOU CAN TRUST
We are currently conducting our own research into the efficacy of SOVT devices, with particular interest in understanding how airflow (velocity and pressure) move through the straws/tubes. At present, we are working to build three types of experiments in order to empirically validate the efficacy of our SOVT Straw, which will in turn allow us to confirm the range of resistances the user experiences across these 12 configurations.
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Our first experiment is to use Computational Fluid Dynamics in order to simulate the flow of air through our device. We’re using this to set the “perfect world” baseline for our experiments.
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We've also build a full mathematical model, taking into account the complexity of the physics and theory of Straw Phonation. The model will allow us to calculate the back-pressure of ANY straw configuration.
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Finally, we’ve designed and 3D printed a physical rig that’ll allow us to flow air through our SOVT Straw, allowing us to measure resistance offered across any number of vocal tasks in the 'real world'.