Meri Aawaaz Hi Pehchaan Hai

It was my birthday earlier this month and I received a lot of phone calls from my well-wishers. The phone flashed the names for most of them, thanks to google contacts that we don’t lose the contacts on switching or losing a phone set. Few of my well-wishers though, called from a new cell number and liked playing the old school game of ‘Pehchaan Kaun’. I succeeded in a few attempts, failed miserably for some people(these people need to call me more often) in attempt to identify them by the only input I had : their voice.

voice modulation

Human voice is generated by action of three body parts: the lungs, the voice box, and the articulators. Let us take a minute to understand their individual functions.

The lungs: There role in voice generation is to generate the right amount of air flow and air pressure required to vibrate the vocal cords(also called vocal folds).

The Voice Box:  Also called Larynx or vocal cords or vocal folds, it vibrates using the air flow from the lungs and create pulses of audible sound. The cords are capable of adjusting their length and tension to set the tone and pitch of the voice.

Articulators: The part of voice tract beyond Larynx: cheeks, lips tongue etc are the articulators. Articulators, by mechanism of opening or narrowing create the filter and modulation effect along with larynx

Collectively, the above three parts are capable of creating a large range of sounds which often, by means of voice modulation, reflect human emotions such as anger, joy, surprise etc.

Voice for each human is unique. The reason is fairly simple. Each one has a different body. The size of larynx varies for each individual and so does the size of rest of vocal tract and most importantly the manner of articulation.

The well-wishers who wanted to play the game were playing it fair in their opinion, because in  the theoretical world, I had all the sufficient information to identify them: their voice. But that’s only in theory and practical aspects of network distortion cannot be ignored. Or at least I believe so to explain why I can’t recognize them.

Nerd note 1: there is a significant difference in the size of vocal chords for males and females(when measured vertically, male folds are usually 17mm to 25mm compared to female folds of 12.5mm to 17mm) thus making the female and male voices characteristically different.

Nerd note 2:  The manner of articulation and the manner of speech for a person can be copied with some skills. This is what comedians mostly do in their acts of mimicry.

Nerd note 3: Voice resonation is the process of enhancing one’s voice in intensity or tone using one’s capability to create air filled cavities causing voice to resonate inside the vocal tract. Skilled singers use this technique to make their voice sound better.  

A singer using voice modulation and resonation

And see how beautifully this  song from  Jitendra, Dharmendra and Hema Malini starrer movie ‘Kinara’ described the uniqueness of our voices.  “Naam gum jayega, chehra yeh badal jayega, meri aawaaz hi pehchaan hai, agar yaad rahe” (translation : My name will be forgotten and my face will change. My voice is my only identity, if you choose to remember). Kudos to Gulzar for the deeply meaningful lyrics and R D Burman for the soothing music. Needless to say, Lata Mangeshkar ji is awesome as ever.

And as always,

Thanks for reading.

Ayush!!!