Is it an auditory illusion (we only perceive it to sound lower), or something with the vocal chord structure?
In: Physics
This is a very interesting question. When you ask music people a question like this, you usually get a circular answer like “They have a lower timbre,” which of course just begs the question “What the hell is a timbre, and why can’t you just answer my question?” So that’s what I’m going to do.
The pitch of a sound made by an object is dependent on the speed of its vibration. A steel girder and a mouse whisker will make the same note if can get them moving at the exact same speed. But vibration can be more complicated than “object goes up, object goes down.” Within the main vibration there can be additional vibrations at other frequencies, usually at some whole number ratio to the main vibration.
What this means for human voice is that when you have larger vocal chords, you’re not just making the note that you’re singing. You’re also producing some lower notes as well. You can see this clearly when you load male and female voices into an audio editor like Audacity. If you raise the pitch of a male voice, you don’t get a female voice, even if you raised it to the exact frequency of a typical female voice. But if you take a male voice, and simply mute the lower components of it, leaving the higher notes alone, the voice will sound more like a female voice.
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