Vocal Fry, aka “crackling sound,” is a distinctive drop in pitch, typically at the end of sentences, particularly associated with the speech patterns of young women. Britney Spears’ use of it in her 1998 hit song “Hit Me Baby (One More Time)” is a prime example of the trend, and she’s far from the only one.
But what if that popular gender stereotype is wrong? McGill University graduate student Jeanne Brown, detailing her experimental findings in a paper, found that vocal fry are actually more common in men than in women. meeting this week of the Acoustical Society of America in Philadelphia. Per Brown, we perceive it more prominently in young women.
It’s a vocal fry the lowest of the human vocal registers, others are the modal and falsetto registers, as well as the whistle register. Weakening of the vocal cords causes irregular vibration and a crackling or crackling sound that is heard like a gushing of air. Vocal frying is characterized by very low fundamental frequencies around 70 Hz. (The lowest end of the human hearing range is 20 Hz.)
Ten years ago I informed In an experiment by John Nix, professor of voice at the University of Texas at San Antonio, he concluded that singers such as Spears, Katy Perry and Lady Gaga use vocal frying in pop music because it increases expressiveness. “Unamplified styles like classical music tend to mask effort and express emotion in more subtle ways,” Nix told me at the time. “Amplified styles like popular music tend to portray effort as something authentic, intimate, raw, exciting, and emotional. Fry can be a way to convey that kind of effort or honest, raw emotion.” Vocal frying is not only used by female singers: Justin Bieber, Tim Storms (who holds the world record for the lowest note produced by a human) and gospel bassists such as Mike Holcomb have also used it.
