Timbral analogies between vowels and plucked string tones

Classical guitarists vary plucking position to achieve different timbres from nasal and metallic - closer to the bridge - to round and mellow -closer to the middle of the string. An interesting set of timbre descriptors commonly used by guitarists seem to refer to phonetic gestures: thin, nasal, round, open, etc. The magnitude spectrum of guitar tones being comb-filter shaped, we propose to see the local maxima of that comb filter structure as vocal formants. When guitarists talk about a guitar sound as being round, it would mean that it sounds like a round-shaped-mouth sound, such as the vowel /O/. Although the acoustic systems of the guitar and of the voice mechanism are structurally different, we highlight the fact that guitar tones and a particular set of vowels display similar formant regions. We also investigate the possibility of applying some distinctive features of speech sounds to guitar sounds.