Review of Current Practices and Preliminary Recommendations for Instrumental Singing-Voice Diagnostics

Abstract Advances in acoustic and aerodynamic instrumentation now afford clinicians and researchers a wide range of voice analysis tools for diagnostics and quantitatively measuring treatment outcomes. Within clinical populations, singers are a unique population requiring specialised diagnostic approaches. Their voice complaints are often highly nuanced and context-specific, and in some cases, there are no readily observable structural or functional changes at the level of the vocal folds. To date, few works have explicitly focused on clinically relevant diagnostic approaches for singers. In the absence of laryngeal findings through visualisation, the singing voice should be dynamically assessed using a range of techniques to shed light on ‘zones of interest’ in the client’s voice, related to their self-reported voice concern. Questions remain, however, as to what readily available, cost-effective tools can be successfully used with singing-voice samples in clinical settings. This narrative review discusses relevant acoustic and aerodynamic voice metrics that can be useful for quantifying singing-voice function across a range of sung tasks. Principles of vocal efficiency and economy are discussed, encouraging clinicians and medical professionals to consider the vocal toll of arbitrarily aiming to ameliorate inferential voice metrics (for example, reducing perturbation or increasing sound pressure level). Preliminary recommendations for singing-voice analysis are also offered, along with a protocol and PRAAT script to calculate a range of relevant acoustic voice measures for quantitative and qualitative singing voice analysis.