VOCAL FRY

Follow the Science

Jimychanga

Jun 25, 2023

It's Summer Time, and while you put another Shrimp on the Barbie, let's talk about another kind of “fry”.

You've heard the term since the first Britney song, but have you ever really dug deep on “Vocal Fry”?

Let's get right into the weeds on this!

What do the Kardashians, Zooey Deschanel and Katy Perry all have in common? They all are well-known for their use of vocal fry, a creaky voice tone. But women aren’t the only ones using vocal fry —men use it too.

What is vocal fry?

Vocal fry is the lowest register (tone) of your voice characterized by its deep, creaky, breathy sound.

When you speak, your vocal cords naturally close to create vibrations as air passes between them. Like a piano or guitar string, these vibrations produce sound (your voice). When you breathe, your vocal cords are relaxed and open to let air pass through freely, which doesn’t produce any sound.

When you use vocal fry, you relax your vocal cords but do not increase the amount of air you’re pushing past your vocal cords, which produces slower vibrations and ultimately results in the lower creaky sound

Vocal Fry isn't all fun and games. Sometimes it takes work, literally.

The vocal issue that could be costing women jobs:

A low-pitched, creaky tone of voice called vocal fry is increasingly common among young American females.

Duke University Fuqua School of Business professor Bill Mayew wondered whether this tone affected the way people -- particularly women -- were perceived. Mayew explains why vocal fry could be hurting women's chances of being hired:

Some people think it's “the vocal equivalent of dragging your feet”:

Fry History:

The vocal fry register has been a recognized and identifiable register in American English only within the past few decades, but its characteristic sound was recognized much earlier. Discussion of the vocal fry or pulse register began first within the field of phonetics and speech therapy and did not enter the vocabulary of vocal music pedagogists until the early 1970s, when it was initially controversial.

However, the controversy surrounding the term within vocal music has subsided as more research into the use of the vocal fry register within the context of singing ensued.^[1] In particular, vocal pedagogist Margaret Greene's videotaping of the physiological processes occurring in the body while singers were phonating in the vocal fry register offered solid evidence that this type of vocal phonation should be considered a vocal register from both speech pathology and vocal music perspectives. Like any other vocal register, the vocal fry register has a unique vibratory pattern of the vocal folds, a certain series of pitches, and a certain type of sound that distinguishes it from other vocal registers.^[Some evidence exists of vocal fry becoming more common in the speech of young female speakers of American English in the early 21st century,^[4]^[5]^[6]^[7]^[8] but its frequency's extent and significance are disputed.^[9]

Researcher Ikuko Patricia Yuasa suggests that the tendency is a product of young women trying to infuse their speech with gravitas by means of reaching for the male register and found that "college-age Americans ... perceive female creaky voice as hesitant, nonaggressive, and informal but also educated, urban-oriented, and upwardly mobile."^[4]

A 2014 national study of American adults found that speech with vocal fry was perceived more negatively than a voice without vocal fry, particularly in a labor market context.^[11] In young adult women, it was perceived as sounding less trustworthy, less competent, less attractive, and less hireable.^[11] The negative evaluation was stronger when the evaluator was also a woman.^[12]

In my best vocal fry, “thank you for giving me this opportunitaaaay”

If (for some reason) you stillwant to learn how to, here you go :)