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International audience; To investigate the influence of room acoustics on singing, four lyrical singers (soprano, mezzo-soprano, tenor, baritone) performed four musical pieces in eight different venues (from dry studio to reverberant church). In addition to vocal intensity measured by a near-field microphone, glottal behavior (vibratory fundamental frequency and contact quotient) was assessed by electroglottography. Statistical linear mixed models showed that the variance in vocal performance was partly explained by room acoustics. Complementary to previous results on voice musical features influenced by timbre and level of the room's response, voice production parameters were mostly influenced by spatial aspects of the room's response.

International audience; During their research-creation residencies at the LIPhy (Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire de Physique, Université Grenoble Alpes), the two artists Lia Giraud and Térence Meunier investigated the mysterious ‘fish songs’, assisted by researchers in physics of bubbles (Philippe Marmottant), voice sciences (Nathalie Henrich Bernardoni), bioacoustics and animal biology.The initial aim of the project was to reproduce the fish sounds by modelling swim bladders and the action of the associated sonic muscle in the laboratory. During their research quest, the two artists were led to question the biomimetic modelling of this phenomenon and to propose a new working methodology inspired by the concrete approach found at the heart of ‘acousmatic’ music. What if these songs were finally just a matter of ‘stick slip’?From an organological approach to biomimetic fantasies, from poetic imagination to the reality of experimental devices, this narrative explores the areas of slippage and friction between different ways of approaching and understanding a phenomenon.We have chosen to restitute this investigation through a corpus of images by means of a portfolio. These documents, collected and created during the experiments and meetings, are the common thread of our reflexion.; Au fil de leurs résidences de recherche-création au LIPhy (Laboratoire interdisciplinaire de physique, Université Grenoble-Alpes), les deux artistes Lia Giraud et Térence Meunier ont enquêté sur le mystérieux « chant des poissons », aidés par des chercheurs spécialisés en physique des bulles (Philippe Marmottant), en sciences de la voix (Nathalie Henrich Bernardoni), en bioacoustique et biologie animale.Ce projet cherchait originellement à reproduire les sons émis par les poissons en modélisant en laboratoire des vessies natatoires et l’action du muscle sonique associé. Au fil de la recherche, les deux artistes ont été amenés à interroger l’approche biomimétique de ce phénomène et à proposer une nouvelle méthodologie de travail inspirée de la démarche concrète que l’on retrouve au cœur de la musique dite « acousmatique ». Et si ces chants n’étaient finalement qu’une histoire de « stick-slip » ?De la démarche organologique aux fantasmes biomimétiques, de l’imaginaire poétique à la réalité des dispositifs expérimentaux, ce récit explore les zones de glissement et de friction entre différentes manières d’approcher et de comprendre un phénomène.Notre choix de format d’écriture s’est porté sur le portfolio, ce qui nous permet de restituer cette enquête par le biais d’un corpus d’images. Ces documents, collectés et produits lors des expérimentations et rencontres, s’offrent comme fil rouge de notre réflexion.

Parmi la diversite des expressions vocales humaines, la voix timbree fascine et questionne. Qu’est-ce qu’une voix timbree ? Quel usage en est-il fait dans la chanson ? Comment se « timbre » une voix ? Ce chapitre definit la notion de voix timbree par une analyse linguistique du discours des chanteurs et des professeurs de chant, et en explore les correlats physiologiques et acoustiques dans les chansons, et en particulier dans le registre de belting. La voix timbree se caracterise comme une voix brillante, avec vibrato et sans souffle, d’intensite moyenne a forte, et ayant une grande richesse spectrale a la fois en basse frequence (premiers harmoniques) et en haute frequence (formant du chanteur). Elle requiert des ajustements pneumo-phono-resonantiels precis, comme une forte pression d’air en entree de l’instrument vocal humain, l’usage du mecanisme larynge M1, et un accord entre harmoniques et resonances.

International audience; Purpose: Studies suggest that singers are over-represented in voice clinics and present a high risk ofdeveloping voice disorders. This retrospective study aims to describe the characteristics of 78 singersconsulting a phoniatrician.Methods: In their medical files, data related to age, gender, occupational status, singing training,musical style, voice complaint, diagnosis, voice-quality grading (GRBAS) and treatment were gathered.Results: The patients were mostly female singers (87%). Non-professional singers (semi-professionalincluded) represented 64%, professional singers 25% and students of singing 11%. The majority ofsingers were choristers (27%) and 22% were classical-style/oratorio-style singers. Two-thirds of thepopulation had intensive vocal activity in speech or singing. Vocal endurance, somatosensory signsand difficulties with high pitches were the most frequent symptoms. Among the patients, 79% presentedwith singing-voice disorders with 85% of these having vocal fold lesions. Generally, their speakingvoices were preserved. Vocal-folds nodules were the most prevalent pathology (37%) followed bysulcus (26%) and voice therapy was the main treatment.Conclusions: This study emphasizes the fact that singers have specific voice complaints related totheir voice usage. The high occurrence of sulcus and other congenital-lesion suspicions, unusual in thegeneral population consulting an ENT phoniatrician, seems to be rather specific for singers in agreementwith the literature.

Acoustic characteristics, lingual and labial articulatory dynamics, and ventilatory behaviors were studied on a beatboxer producing twelve drum sounds belonging to five main categories of his repertoire (kick, snare, hi-hat, rimshot, cymbal). Various types of experimental data were collected synchronously (respiratory inductance plethysmography, electroglottography, electromagnetic articulography, and acoustic recording). Automatic unsupervised classification was successfully applied on acoustic data with t-SNE spectral clustering technique. A cluster purity value of 94% was achieved, showing that each sound has a specific acoustic signature. Acoustical intensity of sounds produced with the humming technique was found to be significantly lower than their non-humming counterparts. For these sounds, a dissociation between articulation and breathing was observed. Overall, a wide range of articulatory gestures was observed, some of which were non-linguistic. The tongue was systematically involved in the articulation of the explored beatboxing sounds, either as the main articulator or as accompanying the lip dynamics. Two pulmonic and three non-pulmonic airstream mechanisms were identified. Ejectives were found in the production of all the sounds with bilabial occlusion or alveolar occlusion with egressive airstream. A phonetic annotation using the IPA alphabet was performed, highlighting the complexity of such sound production and the limits of speech-based annotation.

Composed of collagen, elastin and muscular fibrous networks, vocal folds are soft laryngeal multi-layered tissues owning remarkable vibro-mechanical performances. However, the impact of their histological features on their overall mechanical properties still remains elusive. Thereby, this study presents a micro-mechanical hyperelastic model able to describe the 3D fibrous architecture and the surrounding matrices of the vocal-fold sublayers, and to predict their mechanical behavior. For each layer, the model parameters were identified using available histo-mechanical data, including their quasi-static response for key physiological loading paths, i.e., longitudinal tension, transverse compression and longitudinal shear. Regardless of the loading path, it is shown how macroscale nonlinear, anisotropic tissue responses are inherited from the fiber scale. Scenarios of micro-mechanisms are predicted, highlighting the major role of 3D fiber orientation in tension, steric hindrance in compression, and matrix contribution in shear. Finally, combining these predictions to vibrating hyperelastic Timoshenko beam's theory, the impact of the fibrous architecture of the upper layers on vocal-fold vibratory properties is emphasized.

National audience; Au-delà des fonctions de communication, l’instrument vocal humain est capable de produire une grande diversité de sonorités, et d’imiter toutes sortes d’autres instruments de musique. Parmi les pratiques vocales artistiques actuelles, le Human Beatbox (en français, boîte à rythme humaine) est à l’avant-garde de l’exploitation de ces possibles. Mouvement culturel musical en plein essor, impactant fortement la jeunesse, le beatbox peut se pratiquer a capella ou avec amplification, en individuel ou en groupe. Le musicien pratiquant le Human Beatbox, le beatboxeur, utilise une large palette de techniques vocales afin de reproduire au mieux un son désiré, en donnant éventuellement l’illusion que ce son ne provient pas d’une voix humaine. Dans cette présentation, nous évoquerons les études menées depuis 10 ans pour comprendre les corrélats respiratoires, laryngés, articulatoires, acoustiques et aérodynamiques de la production sonore des beatboxeurs, qui aboutissent à l’étude du Human Beatbox comme un langage musical complexe. Nous nous sommes principalement intéressés à l’analyse de sons percussifs qui imitent différents éléments de la batterie : la grosse caisse (kick), la caisse claire (snare), la charleston (hi-hat), les cymbales (cymbal), ainsi que la technique du rimshot. Une méthode de transmission du beatbox fréquemment utilisée est de s'appuyer sur des séquences syllabiques où le voisement est progressivement supprimé pour ne laisser émerger que la structure consonantique. Nous cherchons à comprendre les similitudes et différences entre la production de ces sons percussifs et les sons consonantiques ayant un lieu articulatoire équivalent. De ces recherches fondamentales ont découlé des applications technologiques, art-sciences et thérapeutiques. En nous appuyant sur des outils de reconnaissance automatique de la parole, nous développons des technologies nouvelles de détection et classification des sons percussifs du Human Beatbox. L’application à une rééducation orthophonique a été explorée, en particulier la rééducation de troubles de la déglutition et de l’articulation dans la maladie de Parkinson.

International audience; Human beatboxing is a vocal art making use of speech organs to produce vocal drum sounds and imitate musical instruments. Beatbox sound classification is a current challenge that can be used for automatic database annotation and music-information retrieval. In this study, a large-vocabulary humanbeatbox sound recognition system was developed with an adaptation of Kaldi toolbox, a widely-used tool for automatic speech recognition. The corpus consisted of eighty boxemes, which were recorded repeatedly by two beatboxers. The sounds were annotated and transcribed to the system by means of a beatbox specific morphographic writing system (Vocal Grammatics). The recognition-system robustness to recording conditions was assessed on recordings of six different microphones and settings. The decoding part was made with monophone acoustic models trained with a classical HMM-GMM model. A change of acoustic features (MFCC, PLP, Fbank) and a variation of different parameters of the beatbox recognition system were tested : i) the number of HMM states, ii) the number of MFCC, iii) the presence or not of a pause boxeme in right and left contexts in the lexicon and iv) the rate of silence probability. Our best model was obtained with the addition of a pause in left and right contexts of each boxeme in the lexicon, a 0.8 silence probability, 22 MFCC and three states HMM. Boxeme error rate in such configuration was lowered to 13.65%, and 8.6 boxemes over 10 were well recognized. The recording settings did not greatly affect system performance, apart from recording with closed-cup technique.

Singing combines speech and music—two activities common to most human cultures. It involves precise, coordinated control of breath, vocal folds, vocal tract, and their interactions. This chapter first introduces the interaction between laryngeal airflow and vocal-fold vibration that produces voiced sounds. It then discusses laryngeal mechanisms or registers, and how nonlinearities in the larynx produce the harmonically rich voice spectrum. Acoustical properties of the vocal tract and its resonances filter the voice spectrum, but also affect vocal fold vibration. Finally, it discusses how singers adjust their tracts using resonance tuning to produce louder, more stable voice with less effort.

International audience; Singing combines speech and music – two activities common and perhaps fundamental to almost all human cultures. Singing involves the coordinated, precise and subtle control of breath, sound production in the larynx, articulation of the vocal tract – and their interactions. This chapter begins with an introduction to the fundamental process of phonation: the interaction between laryngeal airflow and the vibration of the vocal folds and nearby tissues that give rise to voiced sounds. Different biomechanical configurations of the larynx, known as laryngeal mechanisms or laryngeal registers, induce various modes of vibration and help to cover the wide range of frequencies associated with singing. The nonlinearity of their vibration produces the harmonic richness of the voice spectrum. The chapter then introduces the acoustical properties of the vocal tract and its resonances, which act as a filter that selectively enhances the output power of some of the frequencies in the voice. It then discusses the interactions between the vocal folds and the acoustic waves in the vocal tract. Finally, it discusses singing and the techniques of resonance tuning: the ways whereby singers adjust their tract resonances to produce a louder, sometimes more stable voice with less effort.

International audience; During phonation, human vocal fold tissues are subjected to combined tension, compression and shear loadings modes from small to large finite strains. Their mechanical behaviour is however still not well understood. Herein, we complete the existing mechanical database of these soft tissues, by characterising, for the first time, the cyclic and finite strains behaviour of the lamina propria and vocalis layers under these loading modes. To minimise the inter or intra-individual variability, particular attention was paid to subject each tissue sample successively to the three loadings. A nonlinear mechanical behaviour is observed for all loading modes : a J-shape strain stiffening in longitudinal tension and transverse compression, albeit far less pronounced in shear, stress accommodation and stress hysteresis whatever the loading mode. In addition, recorded stress levels during longitudinal tension are much higher for the lamina propria than for the vocalis. Conversely, the responses of the lamina propria and the vocalis in transverse compression as well as transverse and longitudinal shears are of the same orders of magnitude. We also highlight the strain rate sensitivity of the tissues, as well as their anisotropic properties.

International audience; One of the most remarkable characteristics of Persian classical singing is the tahrir technique, an ornament of the melodic line which consists in producing one or more short frequency jumps - called tekye - towards higher pitches. The change in laryngeal mechanism underlying tekye has been reported by different authors. It has recently been questioned, yet without laryngeal-behaviour assesment. To clarify laryngeal physiology in Iranian tahrir, the singing production of two professional Iranian singers was acoustically and electrographically assessed.; Une des caractéristiques les plus remarquables du chant classique persan est la technique du tahrir qui consiste à orner la ligne mélodique principale en produisant un ou plusieurs sauts brefs de fréquence vers l’aigu appelés tekye. Le changement de mécanisme laryngé correspondant au tekye a été signalé par différents auteurs (Caton, During, Castellengo), et a été récemment questionné sans évaluation du comportement laryngé. Nous présentons les résultats d’une étude de la physiologie laryngée par mesure électroglottographique (EGG) avec deux chanteurs iraniens professionnels, Mme Solmaz Badri et le maître M.-R. Shajarian reconnu comme le plus grand interprète actuel. L’investigation a porté sur les relations entre l’analyse acoustique et les caractéristiques vibratoires laryngées des chanteurs pendant la réalisation du tekye.

Le human-beatbox est un art vocal utilisant les organes de la parole pour produire des sons percussifs et imiter les instruments de musique. La classification des sons du beatbox représente actuellement un défi. Nous proposons un système de reconnaissance des sons de beatbox s’inspirant de la reconnaissance automatique de la parole. Nous nous appuyons sur la boîte à outils Kaldi, qui est très utilisée dans le cadre de la reconnaissance automatique de la parole (RAP). Notre corpus est composé de sons isolés produits par deux beatboxers et se compose de 80 sons différents. Nous nous sommes concentrés sur le décodage avec des modèles acoustiques monophones, à base de HMM-GMM. La transcription utilisée s’appuie sur un système d’écriture spécifique aux beatboxers, appelé Vocal Grammatics (VG). Ce système d’écriture s’appuie sur les concepts de la phonétique articulatoire.

International audience; In vitro modeling of phonation requires materials able to mimic the vibro-mechanical features of vocal-fold tissues:ability to (i) endure large deformations under physiological multiaxial loadings and strain rates], (ii) adapt their vibromechanical behavior to external loadings and environmental changes. Among relevant candidates, hydrogels are attractive materials due to their tissue-like water content. However, the mechanical characterization of hydrogels is often limited to single monotonic loadings, mainly in compression, or to standard DMA analyses. These configurations are far from those endured by the tissue in vivo. Here, we manufactured hydrogels with tunable mechanical properties that we characterized under realistic, finite strain, cyclic tension, compression and shear loadings.

International audience; Performers, whether instrumentalists or singers, tend to develop rather individual adaptation patterns across room acoustical conditions. While instrumentalists mostly adapt in terms of tempo, singers tend to emphasize variations of loudness and timbral colour in conjunction with related room-acoustical parameters, namely Stage Support and Bass Ratio. Adaptation to room acoustics has also been investigated on talkers in terms of vocal effort, explicitly mentioned by participants and correlated to voice intensity. Vocal effort while talking was found to be larger in rooms that lack early reflections. Such adaptation should be reflected on glottal-source parameters. Electroglottographic measurements enable to non-invasively assess several features of glottal behaviour, such as contact quotient (duration of glottal contact over a cycle) or its counterpart, open quotient. In speech, contact quotient was found to be correlated to vocal effort. In singing, it was found to be strongly related to vocal intensity in laryngeal mechanism M1, and to fundamental frequency in mechanism M2. The present study aims at investigating the singing adaptation process in rooms with various acoustics, by assessing voice production by means of acoustical and electroglottographical in-situ measurements.

International audience; Human beatboxing is a fascinating vocal art, because it pushes the use of human vocal instrument to its limits and make the most of its possibilities. We will present an overview of the research conducted over the last 10 years in Grenoble to understand the physiological correlates of such amazing sound production.

National audience; Depuis 2010, l’art traditionnel du khöömii mongol (chant diphonique) est inscrit sur la liste représentative du patrimoine culturel immatériel de l’humanité à l’UNESCO. Cet art fascinant dans lequel une personne produit vocalement plusieurs sons simultanément a été l’objet du travail doctoral ethnomusicologique de Johanni Curtet. Son immersion dans la culture mongole lui a permis de rencontrer des maîtres de chant diphonique (khöömiich ou diphoneurs), de se former à leur contact, et de publier la première anthologie du khöömii mongol. Pour sa promotion, une tournée unique internationale a été organisée en 2016 avec 12 diphoneurs et musiciens, hommes, femmes, jeunes et vieux maîtres, bergers, professionnels, issus de différentes provinces de Mongolie. Le fait que les diphoneurs puissent produire une mélodie complexe en gardant la fréquence fondamentale de la voix fixe intrigue les chercheurs depuis longtemps. La tournée de 2016 nous a offert l’opportunité exceptionnelle de mener un programme d'investigation scientifique sur les aspects physiologiques (respiration, phonation, articulation) et acoustiques de cet art afin d’explorer la production des styles les plus usités : isgeree khöömii, tsuurai khöömii, khamryn khöömii, zadkhai kharkhiraa. Les premiers résultats montrent qu’un même style peut faire appel à des jeux de langue ou de lèvres très divers. Sur le plan acoustique, le chant diphonique est un art riche et complexe de contrôle du timbre vocal. Cette interaction pluridisciplinaire et culturelle entre des maîtres de chant diphonique, un ethnomusicologue et des scientifiques de la voix a été illustrée dans le film « Voyage en Diphonie » réalisé par Jean-François Castell (Les Films du Rocher, 2018).Une grande base de données a été acquise, dont seule une petite partie a été exploitée à ce jour, faute de moyens suffisants. Ces résultats sont importants pour la connaissance de la technique vocale et pour enrichir l’enseignement, aussi bien en France qu’en Mongolie.

International audience; Plosive consonants /p, t, k/ are among the most commonly-found phonemes in the phonologicalinventory of the world’s languages [Maddieson & Disner, 1984]. In addition to their linguistic role,they also fulfil an extralinguistic role. Syllables with plosive consonants are used in instrumentalpractice, for playing wind instruments and percussion. They also support vocal practice, as is the casewith scat or Indian konnakol. The linguistic origin of these sounds impacts their articulation evenwhen they are used in an extralinguistic way. Some studies have highlighted articulatory differencesin the plosives used in instrumental practice depending on the player’s first language [Lamkin, 2005,Heyne et al., 2019].This study focuses on Human Beatboxing (HBB) production. HBB is an emerging vocal art thatrelies on the human vocal instrument to produce all kinds of sound for the purpose of music making.Plosive sounds are highly exploited. HBB learning frequently begins with training on speech plosives,syllables or sentences. For instance, kicks, the sounds used to imitate the bass drum, are learned froma [p] or [b] consonant, hi-hats, which reproduce the sound of the hi-hat, stem from a [t] or [ts], orthe rimshot technique, is based on a [k]. An open research question is that of the similarities anddifferences in the articulatory dynamics between speech and HBB. In the present study, we examinearticulatory trajectories and ventilatory volumes, and compare the production of plosive consonantsin speech and plosive sounds in HBB with same places of articulation.Four French speaking beatboxers were recorded. Electromagnetic articulography (EMA) wascombined with acoustic, electroglottographic and ventilatory measurements. The spoken plosives/p, t, k/ were compared to their HBB equivalent in terms of place of articulation: kick, hi-hat andrimshot. The bursts of the plosives were manually segmented and annotated from the audio recordingsusing Praat software [Boersma, 2006]. 3D trajectories of three flesh points of the tongue (apex/blade,middle and dorsum) and four flesh points of the lips (upper and lower, median and lateral) wereextracted from the EMA recordings.Although common features are observed especially regarding place of articulation and trajectory,the detailed analysis of acoustic, articulatory and ventilatory data shows that the production ofplosive sounds in HBB is clearly different from that of plosive sounds in speech. Ventilatory volumesare engaged differently in HBB and speech sound production. The articulatory dynamics ofHBB plosive sound production desplays aspects that are specific to HBB and different from that ofspeech. In the case of the kick compared to a bilabial voiceless plosive, the occlusion can be lateralized.This lateralization of the bilabial occlusion release is observed in some beatboxers, but notsystematically. The side (left or right) of lateralization depends on the beatboxer. This labial gestureis presumably intended to better control lip tension at the occlusion release. The tongue is alsovery active even though the occlusion involves the lips. Articulatory speeds are often higher in HBBthan in speech, especially before the burst. The lingual dynamics of the HBB plosive sounds seemsto be consistent with the use of an ejective mechanism. The very active and reproducible lingual dynamics during articulation of the bilabial plosive sounds of HBB cannot be fully explained by coarticulation.Further, all three tongue coils are recruited in almost the same way, indicating an overallmovement of the tongue. Therefore, this seems to suggest a movement of the tongue in relationto the laryngeal upward movement specific to the ejective mechanism already observed in previousstudies [Proctor et al., 2013, De Torcy et al., 2014, Sapthavee et al., 2014, Blaylock et al., 2017,Patil et al., 2017, Dehais Underdown et al., 2019] and used to increase the acoustic efficiency of thesound. The complex articulatory dynamics and a widespread use of the ejective mechanism make thestudy of HBB plosive sound production a promising research field, which may contribute to a broaderunderstanding of articulatory phenomena at the lingual level.

Summary Objective Vocal fold paralysis in adduction can result in dyspnea. The authors have previously described an original vocal fold lateralization technique performed exclusively through an endoscopic approach. In this work, we studied long and short-term results of this procedure on dyspnea, phonation, and swallowing. Study Design Retrospective cohort study through data from medical records and operative notes. Patients with unilateral or bilateral vocal fold paralysis in adduction who underwent transoral lateralization were included. Methods In all patients, under laryngosuspension, a supraglottic laryngotomy was performed with CO2 laser and a lateralization suture was passed through the thyroid cartilage to the vocal process of the vocal fold with the desired tension allowing lateralization of the arytenoid and corresponding vocal fold. We studied evolution of breathing, phonation, and swallowing in all patients who underwent lateralization suture. We tried to correlate symptoms to preoperative and postoperative glottic area, inter-arytenoid distance, and anterior glottic angle. Results Eighteen patients were included in the study. Three patients were tracheostomy-dependent and were successfully decannulated. All other cases presented short and long-term significant improvement of their dyspnea index score (P Conclusion Our transoral lateralization technique allows enlargement of the glottic aperture in case of laryngeal dyspnea secondary to vocal fold paralysis in adduction. This technique optimally preserves laryngeal structures, especially the mucosa. It is reproducible and reliable for all laryngologists experienced in reconstructive transoral laser microsurgery.