Collaborations: Dr. Orietta Calcinoni (Voice & Music Professionals Care Team – VMPCT C/o Medico Turati, Milan, Italy), Dr. Silvia Capobianco (Facoltà di Medicina e Chirurgia, Università degli Studi di Pavia, Pavia, Italy) and the Artists of Fondazione di Musica Antica of Collegio Ghislieri.
Fundings: None
The voice production involves the synergic cooperation of the respiratory and the vocal systems. Among voice professionals, singers need to focus on efficient phonation strategies to optimize voice production in their artistic exhibitions. A wearable tool providing quantitative evaluation of breathing pattern and voice production would be very helpful, as current quantitative assessment approaches are based only on the analysis of vocal parameters and do not consider the efficiency of respiratory muscles in producing the sounds. This study was born in collaboration with Dr. Orietta Calcinoni and Silvia Capobianco, during MSc thesis project of Francesca Cunsolo and was aimed at developing a wearable device for the simultaneous measurement of vocal doses and breathing pattern in order to evaluate the interaction between the respiratory and vocal systems in singing voice production. The device included an electronic circuit integrating a skin accelerometer for measuring vocal parameters together with an abdominal (AB) and rib cage (RC) respiratory inductive plethysmography belts for monitoring breathing without interfering with singing (Figure).
The study was approved by the Ethical Review Board of the Politecnico di Milano and the device was successfully used to monitor professional singers during the execution of a series of vocal tasks. This approach may support future research for developing a better understanding of the synergistic interactions between the respiratory and vocal systems, as well as for evaluating the efficiency of the performances.
