Tool: Pink Trombone
Last night in my Music Tech class at Montclair State University, I was showing my students some fun online music tools. One of my amazing students, Elaria, mentioned a website that she used many times called Pink Trombone. I always get excited when a student tells me about a website that I’m not familiar with, and wow am I glad that Elaria told me about this one. Pink Trombone is an interactive website created by Neil Thapen that helps you visualize and HEAR how the human voice works. This is a WONDERFUL tool for any vocal coach/choir director/choral educator. You can control all sorts of parameters to see exactly what is happening inside your mouth when you make various sounds.
As soon as you open up the site, you’ll hear a weird sounding voice. If you click on the circle in the tongue control section, you can move it around to form different vowels. By moving the tongue control, you’ll see the changes that happen in the oral cavity, nasal cavity and the soft and hard palettes. I will admit that it is really weird when you first start using it, but once you get the hang of how the controls work and what’s actually happening when you move them, it is REALLY COOL. If the sound starts bothering you, just click on the always voice button to turn it off. You can add voice wobble by clicking on that button. There is a slider that allows you to change the pitch (up and down) as well as how much air is being moved through the voice box. Here is a short video that shows how it works.
When Thapen was interviewed about his creation by Digital Trends he said “[Pink Trombone] creates speech by modeling — in a simplified way — the physical form and movements of the human vocal tract. Programs like this have been around for a long time, but the examples I’ve seen from academia tend to have unfriendly interfaces. I have tried to make one that is fun to use. You can move the tongue or lips around in real time with your fingers, and see what sound comes out.” I completely agree!
A big thank you to my student Elaria for pointing this one out. Any music teacher who has anything to do with vocal music should bookmark this site for their students today so that they can understand how their voice actually works.