Jaw opening in novice and experienced classically trained singers.

This study examined the amount of jaw opening used by two groups of singers, those with less than 4 years of training (novice) and those with more than 8 years of training (experienced) in the Western tradition of opera and art song. Movement of the jaw in the superior-inferior plane was measured with the use of a lightweight head-mounted cephalostat with a strain gauge. The subjects spoke and then sung a carrier phrase "I say b(v)p," where (v) was each of three vowels, [a], [i], and [u]. The phrase was first spoken with a natural inflection and then sung on a repeated pitch at three notes from the low, medium, and high singing voice range. There was no statistically significant difference in jaw opening between the two groups of singers. Vowel was significant for jaw opening in both groups, with [a] being produced with more jaw opening than [i] or [u]. The voicing condition was also significant for jaw opening with greater jaw opening being used as pitch increased. In general the amount of jaw opening was smallest for the low singing voice condition and greatest for the high singing voice condition. The jaw opening most typically was less in the low voice condition than in the speech condition and then increased for both the medium and high voice tasks. All but two singers used more jaw opening on the [a] vowel than the other two vowels at all voicing conditions.