Search

STUDY QUESTION How is timing of voice break related to other male pubertal milestones as well as to BMI? SUMMARY ANSWER We provide a comprehensive temporal analysis of male pubertal milestones, including reproductive hormone dynamics, confirm voice break as a late milestone of male puberty and report a likely causal relationship between higher BMI and earlier age at voice break in men. WHAT IS KNOWN ALREADY Voice break represents a late pubertal milestone and recalled age at voice break is frequently used in epidemiological studies as a measure of puberty. In contrast, clinical studies use mainly testicular enlargement and/or genital tanner stage as the marker of pubertal onset. However, neither correlation of pubertal milestones nor reproductive hormone dynamics have been assessed in detail previously. Further, although BMI and puberty timing are known to be closely linked, cause and effect between these traits are not known. STUDY DESIGN, SIZE, DURATION The study included a population-based mixed cross-sectional and longitudinal cohort (2006–2014, COPENHAGEN Puberty Study) of 730 healthy Danish boys. Data for 55 871 male research participants from the 23andMe study were obtained, including genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphism data and age at voice break. PARTICIPANTS/MATERIALS, SETTING, METHODS We performed a detailed evaluation of pubertal milestones and reproductive hormone levels (study population 1). A Mendelian randomization (MR) approach was used to determine the likely causal link between BMI and timing of voice break (study population 2). MAIN RESULTS AND THE ROLE OF CHANCE Voice break occurred at mean age 13.6 (95% CI: 13.5–13.8) years. At voice break, mean (95% CI) testosterone levels, LH levels and bi-testicular volume were 10.9 (10.0–11.7) nmol/L, 2.4 (2.2–2.5) IU/L and 24 (23–25) mL, respectively. Voice break correlated moderately strongly with timing of male pubertal milestones, including testicular enlargement, gonadarche, pubarche, sweat odor, axillary hair growth and testosterone above limit of detection (r2 range: 0.43–0.61). Timing of all milestones was negatively associated with age-specific BMI (all P ≤ 0.001). MR analyses inferred likely causal effects of higher BMI on earlier voice break in males (−0.35 years/approximate SD, P LIMITATIONS, REASONS FOR CAUTION Participation rate of the population-based cohort was 25%. Further, boys that were followed longitudinally were examined approximately every 6 months limiting the time resolution of pubertal milestones. Using adult BMI as exposure instead of prepubertal BMI in the MR analysis and the known inaccuracies of the testosterone immunoassay at low testosterone levels may be further limitations. WIDER IMPLICATIONS OF THE FINDINGS We provide valuable normative data on the temporal relation of male pubertal milestones. Further, the likely causal relationship between BMI and puberty timing highlights the importance of preventing obesity in childhood. STUDY FUNDING/COMPETING INTEREST(S) This work was supported by Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation (09-067 180); Danish Ministry of the Environment, CeHoS (MST-621-00 065); Capital Region of Denmark (R129-A3966); Ministry of Higher Education and Science (DFF-1331-00 113); Innovation Fund Denmark (InnovationsFonden, 14-2013-4); The International Center for Research and Research Training in Endocrine Disrupting Effects of Male Reproduction and Child Health. B.H., F.R.D., J.R.B.P. and K.K.O. are supported by the Medical Research Council (MC_UU_12015/2). The 23andMe study is supported by the National Human Genome Research Institute of the National Institutes of Health (R44HG006981). Members of the 23andMe Research Team are employees of 23andMe, Inc. and hold stock or stock options in 23andMe. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER NCT01411527

Background & Objectives: Studying voice acoustic parameters in vowel production is a crucial component of every standard voice evaluation. Voice Analysis is non-invasive. Nowadays, computerized Voice Analysis is growing rapidly. Therefore, understanding acoustic parameters in healthy and unhealthy individuals is more significant than before. This research is a step toward boosting our knowledge about voice acoustic parameters. The main purpose of this research is to study acoustic characteristics in dysphonic and healthy Iranian individuals. Methods: The current study was descriptive-analytic. Vowel Analysis was conducted through Praat software. Voices of 50 dysphonic patients and 50 healthy participants were evaluated. The acoustic parameters included average, standard deviation, and range of fundamental frequency, jitter, shimmer, the number and degree of voice breaks, and harmonic to noise ratio. Results: In all studied acoustic characteristics, patients’ mean scores were higher than controls’ mean scores, except for harmonic to noise ratio which was higher in the healthy individuals. Although, the number of voice breaks in healthy male and female population was zero, it was 1.8 in male patients and 4.4 in female patients (P

Vocal development of cranes (Gruidae) has attracted scientific interest due to its special stage, voice breaking. During voice breaking, chicks of different crane species produce calls with two fundamental frequencies that correspond to those in adult low-frequency and juvenile high-frequency vocalizations. However, triggers that affect voice breaking in cranes are mainly unknown. Here we studied the voice breaking in the Siberian Crane (Leucogeranus leucogeranus) and test its relation to the body mass and testosterone level. We analyzed 5846 calls, 39 body mass measurements and 60 blood samples from 11 Siberian Crane chicks in 8 ages from 2.5 to 18 months of life together with 90 body mass measurements and 61 blood samples from 24 Siberian Crane adults. The individual duration of voice breaking and dates of its onset, culmination and completion depended neither on the body mass nor on the testosterone level at various ages. But we found correlation between the testosterone level and mean deltas of percentages of the high and low frequency components in Siberian Crane calls between the closest recording sessions. We also observed some coincidence in time between the mean dates of voice breaking onset and the termination of body mass gain (at 7.5 months of age), and between the mean dates of voice breaking completion and the start of a new breeding season. Similar relations have been shown previously for some other crane species. We also showed for the first time that the mean dates of voice breaking culmination correlated with the significant increase of the testosterone level (at 10.5 months of age). So, we suggest that voice breaking in cranes may be triggered by the end of chicks’ body growth, is stimulated by the increase of testosterone level and ends soon after adult cranes stop taking care of their chicks.

The timing of puberty is highly variable and has important consequences for long-term health. Most of our understanding of the genetic control of puberty timing is based on studies in women, as age at menarche is often recorded. Here, we report a multi-trait genome-wide association study for male puberty timing, based on recalled timing of voice breaking and facial hair, with an effective sample size of 205,354 men, nearly four-fold larger than previously reported. We identify 78 independent signals for male puberty timing, including 29 signals not previously associated with puberty in either sex. Novel mechanisms include an unexpected phenotypic and genetic link between puberty timing and natural hair colour, possibly reflecting common effects of pituitary hormones on puberty and pigmentation. Earlier male puberty timing is genetically correlated with several adverse health outcomes and, in Mendelian randomization analyses, shows causal relationships with higher risk of prostate cancer and shorter lifespan. These findings highlight the relationships between puberty timing and later health outcomes, and demonstrate the value of genetic studies of puberty timing in both sexes.

Evidence on whether early puberty increases the risk of adult asthma is suggestive but inconclusive in women, and very scarce in men. To overcome the issue of residual confounding in observational studies and provide evidence on casual effects, we used Mendelian randomization (MR) with 332 SNPs as instrumental variables for age at menarche in women, and 18 SNPs for age at voice breaking in men. Age at menarche was categorised as early ( 14), while age at voice breaking was recorded and analysed as at a younger, average or older age. Based on 243,316 women and 192,067 men from UK Biobank (9.2% and 6.3% with post-pubertal asthma, respectively), we find detrimental effects of early puberty on asthma. In women, an 8% increase in asthma risk for early and an 8% decrease for late menarche suggest a linear effect of pubertal timing. Similar effects are observed in males, even though the power is lower and the confidence intervals much wider (Figure). There is evidence of modest pleiotropy, but our findings are consistent across different methods robust to pleiotropy (Figure). We show detrimental effects of early puberty on asthma. As similar patterns are seen in both sexes, the effect in women is unlikely to be mediated by female sex hormones as hypothesised, suggesting instead a role of common (biological or psychological) factors related to early physical development. [ALEC, EU Grant #633212]

Background: Childhood obesity is associated with an accelerated skeletal maturation. However, data concerning pubertal development and sex steroid levels in obese adolescents are scarce and contrasting. Objectives: To study sex steroids in relation to sexual and skeletal maturation and to serum prostate specific antigen (PSA), as a marker of androgen activity, in obese boys from early to late adolescence. Methods: Ninety obese boys (aged 10-19 y) at the start of a residential obesity treatment program and 90 age-matched controls were studied cross-sectionally. Pubertal status was assessed according to the Tanner method. Skeletal age was determined by an x-ray of the left hand. Morning concentrations of total testosterone (TT) and estradiol (E2) were measured by liquid chromatographytandem mass spectrometry, free T (FT) was measured by equilibrium dialysis, and LH, FSH, SHBG, and PSA were measured by immunoassays. Results: Genital staging was comparable between the obese and nonobese groups, whereas skeletal bone advancement (mean, 1 y) was present in early and midadolescence in the obese males. Although both median SHBG and TT concentrations were significantly (P < .001) lower in obese subjects during mid and late puberty, median FT, LH, FSH, and PSA levels were comparable to those of controls. In contrast, serum E2 concentrations were significantly (P < .001) higher in the obese group at all pubertal stages. Conclusion: Obese boys have lower circulating SHBG and TT, but similar FT concentrations during mid and late puberty in parallel with a normal pubertal progression and serum PSA levels. Our data indicate that in obese boys, serum FT concentration is a better marker of androgen activity than TT. On the other hand, skeletal maturation and E2 were increased from the beginning of puberty, suggesting a significant contribution of hyperestrogenemia in the advancement of skeletal maturation in obese boys.

The vocal development of cranes (Gruidae) has attracted scientific interest due to a special stage, so-called voice breaking. During voice breaking, chicks produce both adult low-frequency and juvenile high-frequency vocalizations. The triggers that affect voice breaking are unknown. For the first time, we study the vocal development of the Demoiselle Crane (Anthropoides virgo). We describe the age and possible drivers of the onset of voice breaking. We analyse the calls of 21 Demoiselle Crane chicks, and compare them with the calls of six adult birds, noting the day when adult low-frequency calls are first recorded as the day when voice breaking begins. The age of voice breaking onset does not depend on hatching date, clutch order or chick body mass. Thus, there is no correlation between body growth and the onset of voice breaking for individual Demoiselle Crane chicks. However, there is a strong relationship between body mass and voice breaking among different crane species. Demoiselle Cranes stop intense body growth at the age of 2 months and start voice breaking at 70 ^ 46 days. By way of comparison, Red-crowned Cranes finish the period of intense body growth at the age of 7 months and start voice breaking at 211 ^ 60 days. Thus, we show that the Demoiselle Crane has a sudden vocal development, similar to other crane species, and we suggest that the end of intense body growth is the trigger for the onset of voice breaking in cranes.

Overview: Working music theater singers (MTS) typically have a heavy vocal load and little is known about their perception of vocal function. The Evaluation of the Ability to Sing Easily (EASE) was used to assess professional MTS' perceptions of current singing voice status and to compare scores across demographic and performance characteristics and to evaluate the construct validity of the EASE and its subscales (VF = Vocal Fatigue, PRI = Pathologic-Risk Indicators). Methods: Professional MTS (n = 284) completed an online survey including the EASE and two additional Vocal Concern (VC) items. Scores were compared across age, gender, whether currently working, role, perceived vocal load over the past 24 h and self-reported voice problem. Results: For the whole cohort, statistically significant differences were found on all subscales according to whether or not singers perceived themselves to have a voice problem (p < 0.001). Currently performing singers were significantly different from those not performing in a show on the EASE Total (p = 0.014) and VF (p = 0.002), but not for PRI and VC. In the currently performing singer group, significant differences were found for gender, role and perceived voice problem on the EASE Total and all subscales (p < 0.01). Significantly higher VF scores were recorded for singers with heavy vocal load (p = 0.01), but there were no differences on the EASE Total (p = 0.57), PRI (p = 0.19) or VC subscales (p = 0.53). Among these performing singers, no significant age differences were found for any EASE subscales. Conclusions: These findings provide further validation of the EASE as a useful tool for measuring singers' perceptions of vocal function and suggest that the subscales should be scored separately. Future evaluation of the EASE against objective clinical assessments (e.g., videostroboscopy) is recommended. © 2014 S. Karger AG, Basel

Birds that do not possess vocal learning exhibit contrasting styles of vocal development. For some Anseriformes, Galliformes and Charadrii species, gradual changes of call-frequency variables throughout development have been reported, while for some Gruiformes, Procellariiformes and Coraciiformes species, the changes are jump-like. The distribution of the vocal development types among other bird taxa, however, is poorly known. We analyzed early vocal development in three auk species (Alcidae): Crested Auklet (Aethia cristatella), Tufted (Fratercula cirrhata) and Horned Puffin (F. corniculata). All three species have semi-precocial chicks that stay in nest-burrows until fledging. We recorded calls from 26–35 chicks of each species at 4–5 ages between hatching and fledgling at a breeding colony on Talan Island, Sea of Okhotsk, and compared main acoustic variables of calls across ages and with common adult calls. In all species, we observed the lack of a gradual change in the fundamental frequency of calls between hatching and fledging despite a considerable increase in body size. Fundamental frequency actually increased slightly over development and was always higher than that of adult calls. We also observed two-frequency calls at the beginning of voice breaking in two Tufted Puffin chicks just before fledging. Thus, we confirm the presence of jump-like vocal development in Alcidae and speculate that such a pattern of vocal development is widespread among bird species from altricial spectrum.

In a speech signal, Voice Onset Time (VOT) is the period between the release of a plosive and the onset of vocal cord vibrations in the production of the following sound. Voice Offset Time (VOFT), on the other hand, is the period between the end of a voiced sound and the release of the following plosive. Traditionally, VOT has been studied across multiple disciplines and has been related to many factors that influence human speech production, including physical, physiological and psychological characteristics of the speaker. The mechanism of extraction of VOT has however been largely manual, and studies have been carried out over small ensembles of individuals under very controlled conditions, usually in clinical settings. Studies of VOFT follow similar trends, but are more limited in scope due to the inherent difficulty in the extraction of VOFT from speech signals. In this paper we use a structured-prediction based mechanism for the automatic computation of VOT and VOFT. We show that for specific combinations of plosives and vowels, these are re-latable to the physical age of the speaker. The paper also highlights the ambiguities in the prediction of age from VOT and VOFT, and consequently in the use of these measures in forensic analysis of voice.

This chapter sets out the questions to be addressed in the book as a whole. It introduces the notion of women’s ‘different voice’ as both a linguistic and a sociopolitical construct, and reviews research dealing with gender as an influence on verbal behaviour in political and other public or institutional settings. It then outlines the context and main events of the 2015 General Election campaign in the UK, including the two televised leaders’ debates which are at the centre of this book’s case study of female political leaders’ speech. The chapter ends with a brief account of the case study approach, and summarizes the aims and methods of the present study.

Although the rapid development of speaker recognition technology is happening, there are still many problems to be solved. The biggest problem arises when the cases of disguised voice samples are come across for the purpose of identification. The samples of disguise are frequently encountered in the forensic scenario like in case of anonymous calls, ransom calls and threatening calls where the speaker makes a deliberate effort to change their voice in order to hide their identity due to the fear of being caught. Voice disguise complicates the process of speaker identification by causing damage to the normal vocal parameters of the speakers; especially fundamental frequency (F0) which is the basic frequency with which the vocal cords of individuals vibrates. The aim of this paper is to study the amount of variation occurring in F0 of disguise and normal speech samples of speakers. This will also aid in determining the validity and reliability of F0 parameter of voice under different disguise conditions.

For voice handicapped people, an easy to use voicing aid device is wanted. In mobile telephony, so-called non-speaking speech communication is an expected solution for essential privacy as well as for acoustic nuisance prevention. The study introduced here intends to cover both issues, introducing a system where the whispering (non-speaking voice or talk without vocal fold activation) signal is converted to pseudo-real voice signal, which is to be sent to, or heard by, the other party. The study also includes validation tests with multiple volunteers for its output legibility. Unlike general concept of speech regeneration being inclined to signal recognition or decomposition to text followed by electronic reading (voicing), our system converts it almost directly without recognition or decomposition steps. The processing is based on repetitive playback of short time autocorrelation, conducted by synthetic pitch pulse. A real time software pipeline process is under development.

Summary Voice breaking is a process associated with puberty of human males that also occurs in adolescence in some birds. This study reports the jump-like vocal changes occurring during voice breaking in adolescent red-crowned cranes (Grus japonensis). We investigated acoustic parameters of chirp and trill calls during vocal ontogenesis from hatching to the age of 1.5 years in 17 male and 31 female captive red-crowned cranes and compared them with definitive calls of 5 male and 8 female conspecific adults. During voice breaking, trills and chirps of both sexes contained two non-overlapping independent fundamental frequencies: the upper one, representing the retained juvenile frequency, and the lower one, the newly attained adult frequency. Before voice breaking, the calls contained only the upper frequency, whereas after it only the lower one. Voice breaking occurred between the age of 7 and 11.5 months. We test whether sex, dates of birth and body mass gain are associated with voice breaking and speculate whether voice breaking triggers the disruption of the parent‐ chick bond or vice versa, or both events are driven by a third, yet unidentified trigger.

Most studies on avian vocal ontogenesis have focused on taxa exhibiting some kind of vocal learning. This study provides a detailed analysis of vocal processes through early and late ontogenesis in 17 chicks of the Red crowned Crane Grus japonensis, a species lacking vocal learning. Three basic structural classes: trills, PE-chirps and PS-chirps and their transitional forms are described. Trends in call parameter values are presented for 10 age classes in the course of a period from birth to 9.5 months. We discuss our vocal classification with those reported for other crane species, relate the revealed stages of vocal ontogenesis in the Red-crowned Crane to biologically relevant life stages in this species and advance a hypothesis for the proposed function of retaining high juvenile frequencies in adolescent cranes for a prolonged period, up to voice breaking (a rapid significant decrease in fundamental frequency). We conclude, that voice breaking is universal for both sexes and that the retained...

The African American high school students’ narratives that are presented in this chapter are from a case study that explored students’ perceptions about attending an HBCU. A case study is an investigation on a single unit, group, or entity in search of relationship meaning between a given context with aims to describe, explore, and explain real-life situations (Yin, 2009).

There are two kinds of function for all sound voice, the first is true voice, which is from the function of true voice; the second is false voice, which is from the falsetto. The good combination of the two kinds of function can produce good singing. This paper studies on the value of falsetto in the national vocal music singing and teaching systematically and semantically through analyze the advantages and disadvantages of existing definitions for falsetto, to presents the author ' s own view: the falsetto is the sound of singing produced by the resonance effect which is formed by the falsetto functional movement of vocal cords and corresponding head resonance. This paper objectively evaluates the advantages and disadvantages of four kinds of voice, which are art true voice, art false voice, natural and false voice connect, natural and false voice mix and list the existing forms of falsetto in the original national singing art category to argument the value of falsetto. This paper redefines the scope of national vocal music: China's national vocal music art include the Chinese songs which are sang by Chinese language(including Chinese minority script ) and bear Chinese style. This paper also discusses the application of falsetto in the National vocal music singing and believes that the proportion of true voice and false voice in the full range should be different in various style vocal music works.

"Throaty" voice quality has been regarded by voice pedagogues as undesired and even harmful. This study attempts to identify acoustic and physiological correlates of this quality. One male and one female subject read a text habitually and with a throaty voice quality. Oral pressure during p-occlusion was measured as an estimate of subglottal pressure. Long-term average spectrum analysis described the average spectrum characteristics. Sixteen syllables, perceptually evaluated with regard to throaty quality by five experts, were selected for analysis. Formant frequencies and voice source characteristics were measured by means of inverse filtering, and the vocal tract shape of the throaty and normal versions of the vowels [a,u,i,ae] of the male subject were recorded by magnetic resonance imaging. From this material, area functions were derived and their resonance frequencies were determined. The throaty versions of these four vowels all showed a pharynx that was narrower than in the habitually produced versions. To test the relevance of formant frequencies to perceived throaty quality, experts rated degree of throatiness in synthetic vowel samples, in which the measured formant frequency values of the subject were used. The main acoustic correlates of throatiness seemed to be an increase of F1, a decrease of F4, and in front vowels a decrease of F2, which presumably results from a narrowing of the pharynx. In the male subject, voice source parameters suggested a more hyperfunctional voice in throaty samples.

Summary Ontogenetic changes and sexual differences in the acoustic structure of green woodhoopoe (Phoeniculus purpureus) ‘kek’ calls were investigated in a wild population. At fledging, the calls of males and females were indistinguishable in terms of fundamental frequency, frequency modulation, peak frequency and call duration. After 3-5 months, however, the male voice ‘broke’ (i.e. underwent a significant decrease in fundamental frequency), while there was no change in female call structure. Consequently, the fundamental frequency of adult male calls was 48% lower than that of adult females, and there was no overlap in the call frequencies of the sexes in adulthood. The change in male voice occurred within a 23 week period and no intermediate call frequencies were recorded. The timing of the voice break did not correspond with a change in overall body size, suggesting that growth of the syrinx was not the proximate cause. However, it did coincide with the stage in development when male bill length grew to exceed that of all females and when males began to lose their distinctive brown throat patch, providing some indirect evidence that hormonal control may be important.

This student paper is the result of preliminary studies on the topic of different ways of voice alteration and their analysis. It is based on the author's experience derived from applying for voice acting roles of various characters, as well as author's study and observation of his own voice and voices of his colleagues in the voice-over industry. First the author will supply a necessary theoretical background, then he follows with a number of observations on how the use of certain vocal techniques can produce different effects perceived by the recipients. The paper is concluded with a basic analysis of five examples of different voices created by the author.

International audience; Voice impersonators possess a flexible voice which allows them to imitate and create different voice identities. These impersonations present a challenge for forensic analysis and speaker identification systems. To better understand the phenomena underlying successful voice impersonation, we collected a database of synchronous speech and ElectroGlottoGraphic (EGG) signals from three voice impersonators each producing nine distinct voice identities. We analysed glottal and vocal tract measures including F0, speech rate, vowel formant frequencies, and timing characteristics of the vocal folds. Our analysis confirmed that the impersonators modulated all four parameters in producing the voices, and provides a lower bound on the scale of variability that is available to impersonators. Importantly, vowel formant differences across voices were highly dependent on vowel category, showing that such effects cannot be captured by global transformations that ignore the linguistic parse. We address this issue through the development of a no-reference objective metric based on the vowel-dependent variance of the formants associated with each voice. This metric both ranks the impersonators natural voices highly, and correlates strongly with the results of a subjective listening test. Together, these results demonstrate the utility of voice variability data for the development of voice disguise detection and speaker identification applications.

Summary Objective/Hypothesis It is known that singers are able to control their voice to maintain a relatively constant vocal quality while transitioning between vocal registers; however, the neural mechanisms underlying this effect are not understood. It was hypothesized that greater attention to the acoustical feedback of the voice and increased control of the vocal musculature during register transitions compared with singing within a register would be represented as neurological differences in event-related potentials. Study Design/Methods Nine singers sang musical notes at the high end of the modal register (the boundary between the modal and the head/falsetto registers) and at the low end (the boundary between the modal and the fry/pulse registers). While singing, the pitch of the voice auditory feedback was unexpectedly shifted either into the adjacent register ("toward" the register boundary) or within the modal register ("away from" the boundary). Singers were instructed to maintain a constant pitch and ignore any changes to their voice feedback. Results Vocal response latencies and magnitude of the accompanying N1 and P2 event-related potentials were greatest at the lower (modal-to-fry) boundary when the pitch shift carried the subjects' voices into the fry register as opposed to remaining within the modal register. Conclusions These findings suggest that when a singer lowers the pitch of his or her voice such that it enters the fry register from the modal register, there is increased sensory-motor control of the voice, reflected as increased magnitude of the neural potentials to help minimize qualitative changes in the voice.

The speaking voice and the singing voice both originate from the same source: the larynx. Beyond that obvious fact there are quite different issues facing the singer/actor's use of the voice in terms of placement, pitch, registration, breath support, etc. Most studies of the voice deal with the singing voice because it is easier to measure, as it deals with exact not approximate pitches. The professional speaking voice is another matter. Either it is ignored in studies or is treated as an extension of the singing voice. Singers have a difficult time getting out of the "head" voice after singing at high pitches for a long time and actors sometime have difficulty accessing the "head voice" to sing after a long emotional scene, and are often afraid of singing high pitches. The body of the paper will be an exploration of these issues through interviews with voice professionals concerned with both the singing and the speaking voice, with the focus on developing a shared pedagogy that recognizes the demands of ...

In this paper, we investigate the acoustic features that can be modified to control the perceptual age of a singing voice. Singers can sing expressively by controlling prosody and vocal timbre, but the varieties of voices that singers can produce are limited by physical constraints. Previous work has attempted to overcome this limitation through the use of statistical voice conversion. This technique makes it possible to convert singing voice characteristics of an arbitrary source singer into those of an arbitrary target singer. However, it is still difficult to intuitively control singing voice characteristics by manipulating parameters corresponding to specific physical traits, such as gender and age. In this paper, we focus on controlling the perceived age of the singer and, as a first step, perform an investigation of the factors that play a part in the listener’s perception of the singer’s age. The experimental results demonstrate that 1) the perceptual age of singing voices corresponds relatively well to the actual age of the singer, 2) speech analysis/synthesis processing and statistical voice conversion processing don’t cause adverse effects on the perceptual age of singing voices, and 3) prosodic features have a larger effect on the perceptual age than spectral features. Index Terms: singing voice, voice conversion, perceptual age, spectral and prosodic features, subjective evaluations.

We describe a multimedia installation that provides users with the experience to sing like a tenor from the early 20th century. The user defines vowels with her mouth but does not produce sound. The mouth shape is recognized and tracked by a depth-sensing camera and synthesized using a dedicated sound analysis using formants. Arm gestures are recognized and used to determine pitch and volume of an artificially generated voice. This synthesized voice is additionally modified by acoustic filters to sound like a singing voice from an old gramophone. The installation allows to scan the user's face and to create an individual 3D model of a tenor character that is used to visualize the user performance.

The Voice Range Profile (VRP) measurement offers a method for the investigation of voice modalities i.e. speaking voice, shouting voice and singing voice in their mutual pitch and intensity relations. The parameters FO and SPL are evaluated by means of automatic pitch and SPL measurements from (1) sustained phonation /a:/ in the speaker's natural pitch and intensity range, (2) the continuous speaking voice beginning with Pianissimo up to Fortissimo, (3) the shouting voice. Vocal intensity is plotted vertically, vocal pitch horizontally. The displays of the vocal intensity versus fundamental frequency are defined as singing voice range profile (VRP), speaking VRP and shouting VRP. The VRPs are superimposed on the same plot. Their form, their shape and their position to each other are analysed. The physiological relationships between the VRPs of the different voice modalities to each other are defined. The pathological relationships between the VRPs (i.e. reduction, shifting) give information about etiology and pathomechanism of voice disorders.

There are some techniques expressing emotion in singing. One of the techniques used by some professional singers is controlling breathiness of uttered voice intentionally. However, this breathiness control can make it difficult for an amateurish singer to keep pitch and pressure of uttered voice steady. In this publication, we verify what kind of feature is appropriate for representing breathiness of singing voice by converting the feature of normal voice into that of breathy voice. Extracted features for conversion are aperiodicity index and STRAIGHT spectrum (“voice quality parameters” below) obtained through STRAIGHT analysis of recorded vowel singing whose pitch, pressure and breathiness are constant and under several conditions. We have tested two conversion methods; one compensates voice quality parameters of normal voice statically so that the averaged parameters of generated voice are equivalent to those of high-breathiness voice, another exchanges voice quality parameters of normal voice totally ...

International audience; Voice impersonators possess a flexible voice and thus can change their voice identity. They are able to imitate various people and characters which differ in age, gender, accent and voice quality. State of the art electronic voice conversion systems are not able to successfully mimic their human counterparts as they lack naturalness. To understand why human impersonators are successful and what parameters they rely on to change their voice, we analyze nine voices produced by a professional voice impersonator. We compute different acoustical measures and discuss their linguistic implications. The acoustical measures include pitch, speech rate and formant frequencies. Our results show that differences in the voice identity features such as age and gender are reflected in the acoustic parameters of the impersonations. The analysis is distinguished from previous studies on impersonators in giving full consideration to voice identity features.

The people whose experiences inform this book spoke out because they wished to tell the wider world what resettlement had meant to them, to their families, and to their communities. They were not the subjects of a conventional research assignment, but rather participants in a communication project that aimed to give voice to people who had found themselves unwilling experts in the complex effects of displacement.

A considerable amount of contemporary Japanese pop music includes high tones that cannot be sung using only one vocal register. Indeed, attempting to do so often results in throat strain, a situation that often occurs in karaoke. Previous research has focused on evaluating trained, classical, and operatic styles of singing. There is insufficient research on automatic evaluation of the quality of high tones. We have developed a system with 25 dimensions that automatically determines a user's voice quality by identifying his/her vocal register and then recommends a more suitable one. The analysis primarily used fundamental frequency, formant, harmonics, and residual signal. An electromyogram was used to analyze a “tightening voice” in modal voice, which sounds strained and/or represents suffering. The identification rate of the state of utterance while singing was 91.7% per unit of note.

Singing voice synthesis is an interesting research due to its wide application in entertainment systems. The generation of singing voice normally replies on techniques of changing the fundamental frequency of existing vocal recording. When the fundamental frequency of vocal signal is changed to match the intended pitch contour of the song, the melody is correctly implemented. However, if there is a great change over the pitch of a vocal signal, the spectrum of the signal should also change accordingly so as to generate a natural singing voice. Unfortunately, currently the spectrum differences for singing voice at different pitch level are unclear. Therefore, the relationship between the spectrum and pitch needs to be examined. As formants are important elements of spectrum, therefore in this research we look at the relationship between formants and pitch. For a start, we first examine the sound of 'ah' at different pitch levels for both male and female voices.