1st Edition

Creak Theories and Practices of Pulse Phonation

Edited By Francesco Venturi Copyright 2026
560 Pages 28 Color & 39 B/W Illustrations
by Jenny Stanford Publishing

560 Pages 28 Color & 39 B/W Illustrations
by Jenny Stanford Publishing

This book explores what pulse phonation is, what it can do, and how it develops into a cultural practice. It is a multidisciplinary inquiry that merges theoretical frameworks with embodied practice to discuss the processes of producing and perceiving pulse phonation, its use and significance in contemporary discourse, its functions in the animal world, and its place in a broader reflection on... Read more

Foreword: My days and nights with creaky voice

Diana Sidtis

PART I: Frames

Introduction: What is the matter with pulse phonation?

Francesco Venturi

1. From deviance to the birth of a register

Nassima B. Abdelli-Beruh

2. Vocal fry, creaky voice, and singing voice pedagogy: Singing teacher attitudes and usage

John Nix and Whitney Chappell

3. Voice creakiness in singing

Alexsandro R. Meireles

4. Acoustic, physiological, and paralinguistic analyses of creaky voice in spontaneous dialogue speech

Carlos T. Ishi

5. Generation, acoustic properties, and behavioral relevance of pulse tone vocalizations in bird vocal repertoires

Franz Goller

PART II: Narratives

6. A case study of "vocal fry" in Suffolk: Intersections and contradictions in the sociolinguistic salience and dialectological prevalence of pulse phonation

Madeleine Masters and Christopher Strelluf

7. Creak and embodying gender: A case study of media interviews with an actor before and after coming out as transgender

Robert James Hellyer

8. "It’s chiefly your eyes I think, and that throb you get in your voice": The place of creaky voice in the soundscape of attractive female voices in twentieth and twenty-first century American cinematography

Míša Hejná and Mark Eaton

9. The role of creaky voice in gender perception in Scottish English

Joe Pearce

10. Gilmore Girls, cowboys, bon viveurs and lacanian psychoanalysis: Vocal fry's significance as symptom of object a (capitalist semioblitz, masculine menace, and ineradicable excess)

Tristam Vivian Adams

PART III: Experiences

11. Doing things with creak

Francesco Venturi

12. From extreme to everyday: Vocal fry in contemporary theory and practice of music

Bojana Radovanovićì

13. Transmasculine creaks and cracks

Poe M. Allphin

14. Mothers and creak

Andrew Cheng, Elise McClay, and H. Henny Yeung

15. A case study in creak and creaky voice: The pedagogical impediments and uses

Lisa Quoresimo

16. Dreamvoice: Composing from creaks breaking through the unconscious

Ilona Krawczyk

17. What can the pulse register do?

Francesco Venturi, Katherine Meizel, Margaret Pikes, Francesca M. Dovetto, Nicol Bana, Leah Kardos, Gino Sitson, Dario Buccino, Roberto Panzanelli, Pedro Oliveira and Edoardo Mozzanega.

18. The other side of the human voice

Francesco Venturi and Joan La Barbara

Biography

Francesco Venturi is the director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Voice (CRIV) in Bologna, Italy. A musician-researcher and PhD candidate at Kingston University London, he has lectured in voice theories at the Milan Conservatory and specializes in voice education and live arts curation. As a spokesperson for the emerging field of Voice Studies, his work appears in academic journals and magazines. He presents his research across European universities and leads voice-centered seminars and workshops internationally and intersectionally, collaborating with cultural, educational, and medical institutions. As a composer and voice artist, he has received major commissions, scored award-winning productions, and performed solo and in ensembles across Europe.