The effects of varied movement conditions on acoustic and perceptual measures of treble singers’ voicing

Passing by a choral classroom on a typical day, one might observe students walking to the beat of the song or moving their arms in a circular motion to promote legato phrasing. Many choral pedagogues and researchers highlight the ways in which movement may support singers including tuning, tempo, articulation, and breath energy. Though there has been some research on singer perceptions while doing specific arm movements, less is known about how movement size reflects singer perceptions and acoustic output.

The main goals of this study were to consider how different arm movements affected treble singers’ voice in terms of pitch matching, perceived volume, and potential breathiness. Another goal was to measure the singers’ perceptions of the difficulty and musicality of each movement. Each singer individually sang a section of “Happy Birthday” while performing the following movements in a random order: hand rolling (small), hand rolling (large), paintbrush stroke (small), paintbrush stroke (large), pulling tissue (small), pulling tissue (large), no movement, and free movement. After completing the audio recordings, singers completed a questionnaire about their perceptions while singing.

Among primary findings: (a) singers moving with larger gestures were on average more in tune than when they moved with the smaller gestures; (b) the college participants usually sang more in tune than the middle/high school participants; (c) all participants sang louder on average when using larger movements; (d) both groups of participants preferred the smaller gestures over their paired larger gestures; (e) the highest overall rated condition was free movement.

Teachers can support their students with tools for mitigating vocal inefficiencies that arise during voicing. With this study, I explored using arm movements as a possible tool for promoting healthy singing.