What are the secrets of an ‘ugly’ voice? Steps towards answers were provided in 2006 by Professor Johan Sundberg, (personal Chair (Emeritus) in Music Acoustics at the department of Speech Music and Hearing KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm), in his paper for Advances in Cognitive Psychology, 2006 • volume 2 • no 2-3 • […]
Tag: singing
Helium-voice singer dangers (report)
Are you a singer? Are you endeavouring to reach ever higher notes? With the assistance of helium inhalations? Maybe think again. “A 23-year-old singer inhaled helium from a high-pressure tank to produce a change in his voice. The last of the eight inspiratory efforts was accidentally done without pressure reduction. As described by his colleagues, […]
Mousetube
MouseTube is, in the words of its founders, a web application that “allows the exchange of mouse vocalisation recording files“. There are, of course, other, unrelated kinds of mouse tubes that involve song:
Music about trout(s)
Professor Gary Grossman of the Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources, Athens, GA, US, not only writes about trout, see: ‘Not all drift feeders are trout: a short review of fitness-based habitat selection models for fishes’ in: Environmental Biology of Fishes, 05 / 2013; 97(5), he also sings about them, self-accompanied on a ukulele […]
Supper: Data Karaoke
Karaoke has penetrated to so many levels of society that it has reached even the some of the scientists who present data at scientific conferences. This study, by Supper, tells how that came about: “Data Karaoke: Sensory and Bodily Skills in Conference Presentations,” Alexandra Supper, [pictured here], Volume 24, Issue 4, 2015, pages 436-457. (Thanks to Tom Gill […]
Animal squawks squeaks and songs (with helium)
Although a considerable body of scholarly work has examined the effects of Helium (2He) on human voice production [see, for example (Helium-assisted) High note research] we are by no means the only animals to have been investigated in this respect – here is a (non-exhaustive) list of examples of other creatures who have squawked, croaked, […]
The IBM Songbook (an analysis)
It’s been said that “The use of music in organizational management is a rare occurrence.” Rare maybe, but not unknown. A notable exception was Thomas John Watson, Sr. who was long-time chairman and CEO of International Business Machines – more commonly known as IBM. Authors Amal El-Sawad and Marek Korczynski of Loughborough University, UK have […]
Karaoke Reversal: A technical approach
Daisuke Inoue of Hyogo, Japan, was awarded the 2004 Ig Nobel peace prize for inventing karaoke, thereby providing an entirely new way for people to learn to tolerate each other. For the very few of our readers who might not know what karaoke is – we offer this description : ‘It’s a form of interactive […]
Robots speech – Japanese pneumatic style
There are now several well-established ways to create artificial voices – some take a purely electronic approach, while others, like Professor Hideyuki Sawada at Kagawa University, Japan, have explored electro-mechanical methods. The video above shows how pneumatically-driven artificial lips, tongues, voicebox and nasal resonating cavities might simulate speech. Unfortunately, the mpeg videos linked-to via the […]
Most Bad Singers Aren’t Tone Deaf
Despite what you may have heard, acoustical analysis suggests that (1) most people are not horrible singers, and (2) most horrible singers are not tone deaf – they’re just horrible singers. In 2007, Isabelle Peretz and Jean-François Giguère of the University of Montreal, and Simone Dalla Bella, of the University of Finance and Management in […]