The effects of crescendo on vocal vibrato

The purpose of this research was to investigate the effects of crescendo and decrescendo on the width of vocal vibrato. A second interest was whether the frequency at which the crescendo or decrescendo occurred would be a factor. Nine singers each produced nine phonations. The first set of three phonations was crescendo from pp to ff at low, medium, and high frequency. The second set of three was decrescendo from ff to pp at the three frequencies and the third set was from pp to ff to pp at each frequency. The vibrato width during each phonation was measured via a Kay Visipitch. The results generally indicated that vibrato width increased with increasing crescendo. With decrescendo, however, the vibrato width tended to remain constant even though the intensity was decreasing. The greatest vibrato width occurred at the middle frequencies.