
At the upper end of his range there are a limited number of strategies a tenor can employ to get the optimal effect from the exposed high notes that are part of the substance of opera. Two of the most commonly employed are illustrated in these examples of A4 (440 Hz), vowel [a], approached by arpeggio, by two tenor subjects. The first subject uses primarily the resonance of the second formant, at the frequency of the third harmonic, to amplify his sound. The second subject uses primarily the singer's formant, here a cluster of the third and fourth formants resonating the sixth harmonic, as his source of vocal power. While the preferred resonant harmonic exceeds all others by at least 8dB on both A4s, from the spectrograms it is evident that the two voices show strength as well in the resonance that is secondary. The typical result of the singer's formant strategy is a "darker" sound.