Vibrations and how they get to your ears.
Noise for airports is a blog about culture, sound, music, and technology.
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Updated (sometimes) by Nick Seaver.
On Smith’s mind was an age-old difficulty all soprano singers face: They mispronounce lyrics when singing powerfully in the top half of their range. This “soprano problem” was formally recognized at least as far back as 1843, when French composer Hector Berlioz wrote in his Treatise on Instrumentation that “[sopranos] should not be required to sing many words on high phrases, since this makes the pronunciation of syllables very difficult if not impossible.” It does not appear, however, that Berlioz—or anyone else—ever understood why this problem occurred.
This article in Seed describes how it was discovered that in Wagner’s operas there is a statistically significant correlation between high pitches and vowels that are easier for sopranos to sing at high pitches. Go figure.
(via Kottke)
