Measures of development of the voice of the adolescent singer

There is a general lack of literature regarding developmental models of the young voice (Stathopolous, 2000), and in particular there is no developmental model of the voice of the young singer (Barlow and Howard, 2006). While a number of researchers have undertaken disparate studies relating to particular areas of the young voice, such as physiology of the larynx (Kahane, 1978, Hirano et al, 1983), pitch range of boys' developing voices (Cooksey, 1993) and voice source operation (Barlow and Howard, 2002, 2005), there is a need for a model to be developed which analyses all parameters which affect the young singer.

The authors have recorded voice samples of spoken and sung voices of over 250 young trained and untrained singers using acoustic and electrolaryngographic measures. The data was analysed in relation to parameters of sex, development and voice training, and statistically significant links between these parameters and laryngographic measures of the voice were found. This paper examines these results and relates them to other studies by the authors and other researchers on the voices of children and young people. In light of these results, hypotheses are presented regarding measures of development of the sung and spoken voices of young people, and an outline model for the development of the voices of young singers is proposed