Interprofessional Approaches to Acoustic Voice Analysis

When teaching voice for actors, much of the teacher's work dwells in the realm of perceptual skills and assessment. Acting voice pedagogy often requires students to imagine physiological processes using the teacher's descriptive imagery. Students' progress may benefit from the incorporation of technology to teach and envision aspects of the voice that cannot be seen or are difficult to imagine. Acoustic assessment using computer software offers potential opportunities for making the intangible or imperceptible more precise and perceivable. Acoustic measures provide objective information to correlate with auditory perceptual judgments of vocal quality, discriminate between normal and disordered vocal quality, and are sufficiently stable to assess change in performance across time. For the acting voice teacher interested in exploring acoustic assessment, this paper introduces the parameters of acoustic analysis and envisions its potential uses in the studio or classroom. The teacher who explores acoustic assessment may discover new ways to discuss voice production and new tools to describe and vivify voice work using an unexpected artistic source: data. In concert with clinicians on the actor's voice care team, the acting voice teacher versed in acoustic voice analysis may offer their students an enhanced approach to acting and speaking voice habilitation.