Let’s Talk About Vowels

Vowels are fascinating—did you know they have pitch?

The Pitch of a Vowel?

When you think about what that means, it’s kind of mind-boggling. Try this: hold a steady vocalized note while changing the shape of your mouth. Make silly faces. Move your tongue. Shift the space inside your mouth. You’ll hear different vowel qualities—different “colors”—even though the pitch stays the same.

We don’t usually think of this as pitch variation. We don’t even consciously think about it much. But it’s how we speak. It’s how we communicate.

Vowel Color and Singing

In singing, though, we use words like “space” and “color”—and these are directly affected by our vowels.

I write elsewhere about formants and harmonics. One of my favorite references is Barbara Doscher’s The Functional Unity of the Singing Voice, in which she writes:

“Every vowel therefore needs specific resonating spaces, and the shapes of these spaces have certain resonating frequencies.”

Sound Spectrums and the Human Voice

It’s important to understand that a sung sound produces a spectrum of frequencies. We could dive deep into the physics of sound waves, but let’s focus instead on the singer’s experience, rather than that of a keyboardist or instrumentalist. This is about how the human voice resonates.

A tuner, for instance, typically produces a single pitch. It’s just that pitch—the fundamental. Maybe there’s a little more present, but it’s mostly a simple tone.

The human singing voice, however, resonates in at least five different regions—called formants.

Formants: Your Vocal Fingerprint

These resonances are somewhat unique to each individual. My vocal tract isn’t shaped exactly like yours. However, researchers have averaged out formant placements across different vocal tract sizes, giving us a general sense of where they typically fall.

Those sizes generally correspond to differences in vocal tract length and shape across individuals and voice types.

Moving the Vocal Tract

What’s vital to understand is that we can move many parts of the vocal tract: the tongue, lips, soft palate, jaw, and more.

Think about:

• Singing nasally
• Singing with a wide smile

These subtle physical changes—some voluntary, some more instinctive—create significant shifts in sound quality. They don’t just color the sound; they actually shift the placement of the formants.

Reshaping Acoustic Space

In other words, you’re reshaping the acoustic space around the note you sing. That changes the character of the sound in ways that are both perceptible and measurable.

The Five Major Formants

There are at least five major formants. Typically:

• The first and second formants define the vowel sound.
• The third, fourth, and fifth formants influence the timbre or overall quality of a voice.

These Might Affect Characteristics Like:

• How sweet the voice sounds
• How present or forward it feels

Resonances in the 4000 Hz range, for example, give the voice clarity and projection—this is often what makes a voice “cut through” in a performance space.

Listening to Formants in Action

When I had you sustain a single pitch and shift vowels, you were mostly hearing changes in the first formant. If you whispered those vowels, you’d still notice a shift in perceived “pitch”—that’s the formant at work again, not the fundamental tone.

A Visualization: Whispering Ocean Waves

To visualize this, think about imitating the sound of ocean waves with a whisper. When you whisper a crashing tide or a receding tide pool, you’re manipulating the acoustic space. A large open shape creates one sound; a smaller, compressed shape creates another.

This is the second formant in action. You’re essentially editing that space to get the effect you want.

Why Does This Matter?

Singers often seek greater range—not just in pitch, but in quality. Some singers find this comes naturally, but most of us have to work at it. Building range and sustaining healthy tone requires freedom, efficiency, and relaxation in the vocal tract.

Understanding how vowels work—how to create the right acoustic spaces for different pitches—can be a powerful tool in your practice. It can help you access tones more easily and sing with less strain.

Let’s Continue

Now that we’ve looked at how vowels shape sound, let’s explore vowel modification, the singer’s formant, and how these concepts relate to projection, vocal quality, and even mood and artistry.