Understanding Formants

Today's lab exercise is intended to provide you with an understanding of formants and the formation of vowels. Please answer the following questions and hand in a completed copy of this by the end of the week. Your grade will be a simple pass/fail.

1. In you own words explain what a formant is. You can use on-line resources to help but it is important that you explain this in a way that enables you to understand the concept. Cutting and pasting won't accomplish this!
2. Work in a mixed gender group of three. Set up the LoggerPro interface and capture waveforms and accompanying FFTs for the vowels "Oh", "Ee" and Ah. Identify the first three formants for each vowel and compare the results for both male and female speakers. Use "snippet" or a similar image capture program to attach the graphs to your submission.
3. Discuss which parts of the sound spectra that you captured are more a product of the vocal folds and which parts are more a product of the trachea.