The influence of the vocal tract on the attack transients in clarinet playing.
Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Pamies-Vila M
PROVIDER: S-EPMC7077444 | biostudies-literature | 2020
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Publications
The influence of the vocal tract on the attack transients in clarinet playing.
Pàmies-Vilà Montserrat M Hofmann Alex A Chatziioannou Vasileios V
Journal of new music research 20200120 2
When playing single-reed woodwind instruments, players can modulate the spectral content of the airflow in their vocal tract, upstream of the vibrating reed. In an empirical study with professional clarinettists ( N p = 11 ), blowing pressure and mouthpiece pressure were measured during the performance of Clarinet Concerto excerpts. By comparing mouth pressure and mouthpiece pressure signals in the time domain, a method to detect instances of vocal tract adjustments was established. Results s ...[more]
Similar Datasets
Project description:Clarinettists close and open multiple tone holes to alter the pitch of the tones. Their fingering technique must be fast, precise, and coordinated with the tongue articulation. In this empirical study, finger force profiles and tongue techniques of clarinet students (N = 17) and professional clarinettists (N = 6) were investigated under controlled performance conditions. First, in an expressive-performance task, eight selected excerpts from the first Weber Concerto were performed. These excerpts were chosen to fit in a 2 × 2 × 2 design (register: low-high; tempo: slow-fast, dynamics: soft-loud). There was an additional condition controlled by the experimenter, which determined the expression levels (low-high) of the performers. Second, a technical-exercise task, an isochronous 23-tone melody was designed that required different effectors to produce the sequence (finger-only, tongue-only, combined tongue-finger actions). The melody was performed in three tempo conditions (slow, medium, fast) in a synchronization-continuation paradigm. Participants played on a sensor-equipped Viennese clarinet, which tracked finger forces and reed oscillations simultaneously. From the data, average finger force (F mean ) and peak force (F max ) were calculated. The overall finger forces were low (F mean = 1.17 N, F max = 3.05 N) compared to those on other musical instruments (e.g., guitar). Participants applied the largest finger forces during the high expression level performance conditions (F mean = 1.21 N). For the technical exercise task, timing and articulation information were extracted from the reed signal. Here, the timing precision of the fingers deteriorated the timing precision of the tongue for combined tongue-finger actions, especially for faster tempi. Although individual finger force profiles were overlapping, the group of professional players applied less finger force overall (F mean = 0.54 N). Such sensor instruments provide useful insights into player-instrument interactions and can also be used in the future to give feedback to students in various learning and practising situations.
| S-EPMC4973398 | biostudies-literature
Project description:When playing an instrument, there are two main categories of body movements: instrumental movements, which are necessary for the sound production, and ancillary movements, which are associated with individual musical intentions and expressions. In this study, the particular purpose of ancillary movements of clarinet player was investigated especially in respect to how these movements were related to the musical structure of the piece and to specific audio parameters. 3D motion capture data of 19 clarinet players performing the same piece were analyzed regarding common motion patterns during the performance and in accordance with acoustic features related to pitch, dynamics (RMS energy) and timbre (spectral centroid and flux). A focus of the body movements was on the arms and the knees. The results showed that there were certain motion patterns performed by the players depending on specific musical structures. When playing a melodic part, the players often did so by bending their knees. At musical transitions, however, the knees were mainly stretched. Similarly, arm movements were more pronounced during playing melodious parts. At transitions, the arms were put closer to the torso. Considering the connection with the acoustics, a larger range of knee motions was correlated with a larger variation of the timbre. Moreover, at specific moments during the performance, when some players strongly bent their knees or lifted the arms, the RMS energy of the signal was significantly higher. The correlations of the body movements and the acoustic features showed that some players synchronized their movements with particular audio parameters more than others did. In summary, the ancillary movements of the clarinetists pursued both musical expressive intentions and physiologically necessary movements and tended to be performed with individual differences in terms of visual and auditory expression.
| S-EPMC9330450 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BACKGROUND: Birdsong and human vocal communication are both complex behaviours which show striking similarities mainly thought to be present in the area of development and learning. Recent studies, however, suggest that there are also parallels in vocal production mechanisms. While it has been long thought that vocal tract filtering, as it occurs in human speech, only plays a minor role in birdsong there is an increasing number of studies indicating the presence of sound filtering mechanisms in bird vocalizations as well. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Correlating high-speed X-ray cinematographic imaging of singing zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata) to song structures we identified beak gape and the expansion of the oropharyngeal-esophageal cavity (OEC) as potential articulators. We subsequently manipulated both structures in an experiment in which we played sound through the vocal tract of dead birds. Comparing acoustic input with acoustic output showed that OEC expansion causes an energy shift towards lower frequencies and an amplitude increase whereas a wide beak gape emphasizes frequencies around 5 kilohertz and above. CONCLUSION: These findings confirm that birds can modulate their song by using vocal tract filtering and demonstrate how OEC and beak gape contribute to this modulation.
| S-EPMC2912855 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Vocal individuality is widespread in social animals. Individual variation in vocalizations is a prerequisite for discriminating among conspecifics and may have facilitated the evolution of large complex societies. Ring-tailed lemurs Lemur catta live in relatively large social groups, have conspicuous vocal repertoires, and their species-specific utterances can be interpreted in light of source-filter theory of vocal production. Indeed, their utterances allow individual discrimination and even recognition thanks to the resonance frequencies of the vocal tract. The purpose of this study is to determine which distinctive vocal features can be derived from the morphology of the upper vocal tract. To accomplish this, we built computational models derived from anatomical measurements collected on lemur cadavers and compared the results with the spectrographic output of vocalizations recorded from ex situ live individuals. Our results demonstrate that the morphological variation of the ring-tailed lemur vocal tract explains individual distinctiveness of their species-specific utterances. We also provide further evidence that vocal tract modeling is a powerful tool for studying the vocal output of non-human primates.
| S-EPMC5804192 | biostudies-literature
Project description:An equation describing the time-evolution of glottal volume velocity with specified vocal fold motion is derived when the sub- and supra-glottal vocal tracts are present. The derivation of this Fant equation employs a property explicated in Howe and McGowan [(2011) J. Fluid Mech. 672, 428-450] that the Fant equation is the adjoint to the equation characterizing the matching conditions of sub- and supra-glottal Green's functions segments with the glottal segment. The present aeroacoustic development shows that measurable quantities such as input impedances at the glottis, provide the coefficients for the Fant equation when source-tract interaction is included in the development. Explicit expressions for the Green's function are not required. With the poles and zeros of the input impedance functions specified, the Fant equation can be solved. After the general derivation of the Fant equation, the specific cases where plane wave acoustic propagation is described either by a Sturm-Liouville problem or concatenated cylindrical tubes is considered. Simulations show the expected skewing of the glottal volume velocity pulses depending on whether the fundamental frequency is below or above a sub- or supra-glottal formant. More complex glottal wave forms result when both the first supra-glottal fundamental frequencies are high and close to the first sub-glottal formant.
| S-EPMC3341965 | biostudies-other
Project description:The purpose of this study was to develop a method by which a vowel-consonant-vowel (VCV) utterance based on x-ray microbeam articulatory data could be separated into a vowel-to-vowel transition and a consonant superposition function. The result is a model that represents a vowel sequence as a time-dependent perturbation of the neutral vocal tract shape governed by coefficients of canonical deformation patterns. Consonants were modeled as superposition functions that can force specific portions of the vocal tract shape to be constricted or expanded, over a specific time course. The three VCVs [pa], [ta], and [ka], produced by one female speaker, were analyzed and reconstructed with the developed model. They were shown to be reasonable approximations of the original VCVs, as assessed qualitatively by visual inspection and quantitatively by calculating rms error and correlation coefficients. This establishes a method for future modeling of other speech material.
| S-EPMC2730719 | biostudies-other
Project description:PURPOSE:To develop and evaluate a technique for 3D dynamic MRI of the full vocal tract at high temporal resolution during natural speech. METHODS:We demonstrate 2.4 × 2.4 × 5.8 mm3 spatial resolution, 61-ms temporal resolution, and a 200 × 200 × 70 mm3 FOV. The proposed method uses 3D gradient-echo imaging with a custom upper-airway coil, a minimum-phase slab excitation, stack-of-spirals readout, pseudo golden-angle view order in kx -ky , linear Cartesian order along kz , and spatiotemporal finite difference constrained reconstruction, with 13-fold acceleration. This technique is evaluated using in vivo vocal tract airway data from 2 healthy subjects acquired at 1.5T scanner, 1 with synchronized audio, with 2 tasks during production of natural speech, and via comparison with interleaved multislice 2D dynamic MRI. RESULTS:This technique captured known dynamics of vocal tract articulators during natural speech tasks including tongue gestures during the production of consonants "s" and "l" and of consonant-vowel syllables, and was additionally consistent with 2D dynamic MRI. Coordination of lingual (tongue) movements for consonants is demonstrated via volume-of-interest analysis. Vocal tract area function dynamics revealed critical lingual constriction events along the length of the vocal tract for consonants and vowels. CONCLUSION:We demonstrate feasibility of 3D dynamic MRI of the full vocal tract, with spatiotemporal resolution adequate to visualize lingual movements for consonants and vocal tact shaping during natural productions of consonant-vowel syllables, without requiring multiple repetitions.
| S-EPMC6347527 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The purpose of this study was to further develop a multi-tier model of the vocal tract area function in which the modulations of shape to produce speech are generated by the product of a vowel substrate and a consonant superposition function. The new approach consists of specifying input parameters for a target consonant as a set of directional changes in the resonance frequencies of the vowel substrate. Using calculations of acoustic sensitivity functions, these "resonance deflection patterns" are transformed into time-varying deformations of the vocal tract shape without any direct specification of location or extent of the consonant constriction along the vocal tract. The configuration of the constrictions and expansions that are generated by this process were shown to be physiologically-realistic and produce speech sounds that are easily identifiable as the target consonants. This model is a useful enhancement for area function-based synthesis and can serve as a tool for understanding how the vocal tract is shaped by a talker during speech production.
| S-EPMC5234468 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Birdsong and human speech share many features with respect to vocal learning and development. However, the vocal production mechanisms have long been considered to be distinct. The vocal organ of songbirds is more complex than the human larynx, leading to the hypothesis that vocal variation in birdsong originates mainly at the sound source, while in humans it is primarily due to vocal tract filtering. However, several recent studies have indicated the importance of vocal tract articulators such as the beak and oropharyngeal-esophageal cavity. In contrast to most other bird groups, parrots have a prominent tongue, raising the possibility that tongue movements may also be of significant importance in vocal production in parrots, but evidence is rare and observations often anecdotal. In the current study we used X-ray cinematographic imaging of naturally vocalizing monk parakeets (Myiopsitta monachus) to assess which articulators are possibly involved in vocal tract filtering in this species. We observed prominent tongue height changes, beak opening movements and tracheal length changes, which suggests that all of these components play an important role in modulating vocal tract resonance. Moreover, the observation of tracheal shortening as a vocal articulator in live birds has to our knowledge not been described before. We also found strong positive correlations between beak opening and amplitude as well as changes in tongue height and amplitude in several types of vocalization. Our results suggest considerable differences between parrot and songbird vocal production while at the same time the parrot's vocal articulation might more closely resemble human speech production in the sense that both make extensive use of the tongue as a vocal articulator.
| S-EPMC3233391 | biostudies-literature
Project description:How is the complex audiomotor skill of speaking learned? To what extent does it depend on the specific characteristics of the vocal tract? Here, we developed a touchscreen-based speech synthesizer to examine learning of speech production independent of the vocal tract. Participants were trained to reproduce heard vowel targets by reaching to locations on the screen without visual feedback and receiving endpoint vowel sound auditory feedback that depended continuously on touch location. Participants demonstrated learning as evidenced by rapid increases in accuracy and consistency in the production of trained targets. This learning generalized to productions of novel vowel targets. Subsequent to learning, sensorimotor adaptation was observed in response to changes in the location-sound mapping. These findings suggest that participants learned adaptable sensorimotor maps allowing them to produce desired vowel sounds. These results have broad implications for understanding the acquisition of speech motor control.
| S-EPMC6753102 | biostudies-literature