The Effects of Pitch, Dynamics, and Vowel on the Emotional Characteristics of the Soprano Voice

This paper considers how the emotional characteristics of the soprano voice differ with Pitch, Dynamics, and Vowel, by conducting listening tests. Listeners compared the tones pairwise over ten Emotional Categories, and the results were derived using the Bradley-Terry-Luce model. The results showed that Angry, Comic, Happy, Heroic, and Scary were stronger for loud notes, while Calm, Mysterious, Romantic, Sad, and Shy were stronger for soft notes. In terms of Pitch, Calm, Comic, Happy, Heroic, Mysterious, Romantic, Sad, and Shy had an arching shape that peaked at A5. In contrast, Angry had a U-shape with a valley at A5. Scary generally increased with Pitch, while Shy slightly decreased with Pitch. Vowels A and U were each individually prominent across seven Categories, whereas Vowel E was only prominent across three. These results quantify emotional nuance in the voice, which perhaps would be of interest to composers, vocalists, and audio engineers.