Glottal adduction is a crucial aspect in voice education and vocal performance: it has major effects on phonatory airflow and, consequently, on voice timbre. As the voice is a non-visible musical instrument, controlling it could be facilitated by providing real-time visual feedback of phonatory airflow. Here, we test the usefulness of a flow ball (FB) training device, visualizing, in terms of the height of a polystyrene ball placed in a plastic basket, phonatory airflow during phonation. Audio and electroglottographic recordings of five postgraduate, classically trained singer students were made under three subsequent conditions: before, during, and after phonating into the FB. The calibrated audio signal was inverse-filtered, using an electroglottograph signal to guide the manual tuning of the inverse filters. Mean phonatory airflow, peak-to-peak pulse amplitude, and normalized amplitude quotient were extracted from the resulting flow glottograms. After the FB condition, increases of mean flow and peak-to-peak pulse amplitude were observed in four singers. In addition, the singers’ mean normalized amplitude quotient increased significantly. The findings, although exploratory, suggest that reduction of glottal adduction can be observed immediately after FB phonation.

声门内收是声音教育和声乐表演的一个关键方面：它对发声气流有重大影响，因此对声音的音色也有重大影响。由于声音是一种不可见的乐器，因此可以通过提供发声气流的实时视觉反馈来促进控制。在这里，我们测试了流动球 (FB) 训练装置的实用性，根据放置在塑料篮中的聚苯乙烯球的高度，可视化发声过程中的发声气流。五名研究生、受过古典训练的歌手学生的音频和电声门录音是在三个后续条件下制作的：在向 FB 发声之前、期间和之后。校准后的音频信号被逆滤波，使用电声门信号来指导逆滤波器的手动调谐。平均发声气流，峰峰值脉冲幅度和归一化幅度商是从所得的流动声门图中提取的。在 FB 条件下，在四位歌手中观察到平均流量和峰峰值脉冲幅度增加。此外，歌手的平均归一化幅度商显着增加。这些发现虽然是探索性的，但表明在 FB 发声后可以立即观察到声门内收的减少。