Is intrinsic vowel duration maintained when we sing?

This study addressed the question of whether intrinsic vowel duration is maintained in singing. It is motivated by the fact that music and speech have different rhythmical structures: notably that music is characterised by being built from isochronous units, which may be conceptualised as problematic for intrinsic vowel duration.
Experimental research was carried out, using acoustic data of five participants’ speech and singing, to test the hypotheses of whether intrinsic vowel duration is maintained, whether the presence of a metronome has an effect, and finally whether a speed-accuracy trade-off occurs. It is found that the answer to the question of whether intrinsic vowel duration is maintained is not a simple one. Across pooled data, there is little evidence for a complete loss of intrinsic vowel duration in singing. However, individual results show large interspeaker variation, and strongly indicate individuals can employ different strategies: attending to the priority of either temporal accuracy or phonetic accuracy. A speed-accuracy trade-off was found to have occurred to some degree, most noticeably in qualitative differences in vowels’ formant frequencies, and relative durational differences. However, it was found that the presence of a metronome has little effect on the extent to which intrinsic vowel duration is maintained.