Mariah Carey

Whole Song

Vibrato:

I tracked exactly ten instances of pure vibrato throughout this song, listed in the table below. While there are multiple occasions of vibrato-styled sustainment, Carey often shifts between pitches while persisting with a “wavy” tonality, which does not meet the pure standard of vibrato - as there cannot be pitch jumping. I have identified the ten instances of pure vibrato in the table, and have an image example of the longest one, which occurs at the end of the song. Here are some key statistics for the vibrato instances:

• Average Number of Cycles: 6.4

• Average Duration: 1.07 sec

Pitch

Carey displays an impressive range throughout her rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner," topping out at over 1000 Hz:

• Average Pitch: 355.10 Hz

• Lowest Pitch: 100.62 Hz

• Highest Pitch: 1052.02 Hz

Presence of Autotune

Mariah Carey did not use autotune for this performance. Throughout the song, there are voice cracks and other vocal imperfections, among them one notable voice crack towards the close of the song. 

Presence of Belting

There is a clear presence of belting, visible in the long-form FFT of the entire song in the image below. The second partial is not the loudest in the song. It comes in at 39.7 dB (identified with the arrow), and there are partials seen as high 43.4 dB throughout the song. 

Rocket's Red Glare Analysis (46.46-58.17 secs) (Audio)

Pitch Interruption:

In this section, Carey is largely consistent with her pitch except for two instances that occur at 48.98 secs and 57.03 secs (see the arrows in the image). Here, she experiences vocal cracks when sustaining front vowels, /e/ and /ae/ respectively, in the words “glare” and “air.”

Presence of Vibrato:

In this section, there are two instances of vibrato. Coincidentally, they follow after the above vocal cracks in “glare” and “air.” The stats for the vibrato are here, see the two instances highlighted in the image below:

Instance 1

• Time: 51.03

• Cycles: 5

• Duration: 0.63 secs

Instance 2

• Time: 57.23

• Cycles: 5

• Duration: 0.61 secs

Full Vibrato Details ("Glare"), Instance 1

• Total duration: 0.63secs 

• Total Cycles: 5

• Average Vibrato Rate: 5/0.63 = 7.93 Hz

• Average Pitch: 493.21 Hz (Close to a B4)

• Average Max Pitch: 523.61 Hz

• Average Min Pitch: 469.66 Hz

• Full Range: 469.32 - 523.71 Hz

• Extent: 15.20 Hz

• Extent in Semitones: 0.94 st (using the log base 2 function)

• Extent Description: 469.44 Hz ± 0.94 st

Intelligibility of Consonants

Carey’s smoothness has a noticeable effect on the intelligibility of the consonants, which are barely voiced in this section. In the pitch tracking of the spectrogram below, you can see how even the most intensely pronounced consonants do not draw much attention on the varying partials. The only noticeable stops are for the two voice breaks which are highlighted in the first portion of this section. 

Singer's Formant

Through deriving a long-term FFT of this section, there is the clear and observable presence of a moderate singer's formant. The highest decibel peak reached, indicated on the right side of the image below, is at 44.4 dB, whereas the peak closest to 3000 Hz, identified at 3327.75 Hz, is tracked at 18.9 dB. This is within the accepted 30 dB range but not severe, showing the presence of a moderate singer's formant.