Long-term-average spectrum characteristics of Kunqu Opera singers' speaking, singing and stage speech.

Long-term-average spectrum (LTAS) characteristics were analyzed for ten Kunqu Opera singers, two in each of five roles. Each singer performed singing, stage speech, and conversational speech. Differences between the roles and between their performances of these three conditions are examined. After compensating for Leq difference LTAS characteristics still differ between the roles but are similar for the three conditions, especially for Colorful face (CF) and Old man roles, and especially between reading and singing. The curves show no evidence of a singer's formant cluster peak, but the CF role demonstrates a speaker's formant peak near 3 kHz. The LTAS characteristics deviate markedly from non-singers' standard conversational speech as well as from those of Western opera singing.