58 research outputs found

    Effect of pitch manipulation on the evaluation of credibility in political candidates

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    This MA thesis is dealing with the relationship between the pitch of the fundamental frequency of the speaker's voice and the subjective evaluation of the speaker by listeners on a 7point rating scale. The analysis in this thesis was conducted in the form of a perception test in which 39 listeners participated. Participants in the experiment rated the speaker based on how credible the speaker sounded to them. The material was chosen such that the listeners were influenced as little as possible by any possible external influences. The results of the perception test showed a correlation between the type of manipulation and the listeners' evaluations. The hypothesis of the paper was partially confirmed because listeners decreased their average evaluation the higher the f0 value of the item and this relationship was statistically significant. It was also shown that the lower the f0 value of the item, the more credibility evaluations tended to increase, but this change did not prove to be statistically significant. Key words: Fundamental frequency, f0, credibility perception, pitch, perception, votingTato diplomová práce se zabývá vztahem mezi výškou základní frekvence hlasu mluvčího a jeho subjektivním zhodnocením posluchači na 7stupňové hodnotící škále. Analýza byla v této diplomové práci provedena formou percepčního testu, kterého se zúčastnilo 39 posluchačů. Účastníci experimentu hodnotili mluvčí na základě toho, jak důvěryhodně jim daní mluvčí zní. Materiál byl zvolen takový, aby posluchači byli co nejméně ovlivněni externími vlivy. Výsledky percepčního testu ukázaly korelaci mezi typem manipulace a hodnocením posluchačů. Hypotéza práce se potvrdila částečně, protože posluchači snižovali svá průměrná hodnocení čím vyšší byla hodnota f0 položky a tento vztah je statisticky významný. Prokázalo se také, že čím nižší hodnota je f0 položky, tím má hodnocení důvěryhodnosti stoupavou tendenci, tato změna se však neprokázala jako statisticky významná. Klíčová slova: Základní frekvence, f0, vnímání důvěryhodnosti, melodie, percepce, volbyFonetický ústavInstitute of PhoneticsFaculty of ArtsFilozofická fakult

    Developing Vocal Agility of Light Lyric Coloratura Soprano Voices Through the Neglected Repertoire of French Opéra Comique

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    This document explores light lyric coloratura soprano roles in the French opéra comique genre through an analysis of seven arias and their impact on the development of vocal agility. The opéra comique genre was popular at the beginning of the eighteenth century, but declined to disappear from the stage at the end of the nineteenth century. Despite the opéra comique’s influence on many other vocal genres, the genre is today neglected. Opportunities for singers to improve and practice challenging coloratura in this repertoire are limited. The two most famous arias from the genre which are the Doll Aria and Juliette’s Waltz make the selection of arias in the voice studio repetitive. The disappearance of the genre from the stage took singers away from its large repertoire and limited them on their choice of French operatic arias. This document study poses the following question: How would a revival of neglected French opéra comique arias affect vocal agility practice? The question is answered by presenting a brief history of the opéra comique genre from its creation to its decline. Then, to confer about vocal agility, the author presents a series of exercises from old and modern vocal methods. The purpose is to reconnect singers with the practice of vocal agility and encourage the use of these methods in the repertoire. Finally, seven neglected coloratura arias of the opéra comique genre are analyzed to discuss the synopsis of the opera, character analysis, musical form, and the performance of demanding vocal agility parts. To answer the question at hand, the methodology involved a historical analysis of eighteenth and nineteenth century operatic manuscripts, as well as study of contemporary vocal pedagogy books. Furthermore, vocal pedagogues and musicologists were interviewed throughout the project to offer their insights on the opéra comique genre, the repertoire, and the pedagogy of vocal agility

    VOCAL BIOMARKERS OF CLINICAL DEPRESSION: WORKING TOWARDS AN INTEGRATED MODEL OF DEPRESSION AND SPEECH

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    Speech output has long been considered a sensitive marker of a person’s mental state. It has been previously examined as a possible biomarker for diagnosis and treatment response for certain mental health conditions, including clinical depression. To date, it has been difficult to draw robust conclusions from past results due to diversity in samples, speech material, investigated parameters, and analytical methods. Within this exploratory study of speech in clinically depressed individuals, articulatory and phonatory behaviours are examined in relation to psychomotor symptom profiles and overall symptom severity. A systematic review provided context from the existing body of knowledge on the effects of depression on speech, and provided context for experimental setup within this body of work. Examinations of vowel space, monophthong, and diphthong productions as well as a multivariate acoustic analysis of other speech parameters (e.g., F0 range, perturbation measures, composite measures, etc.) are undertaken with the goal of creating a working model of the effects of depression on speech. Initial results demonstrate that overall vowel space area was not different between depressed and healthy speakers, but on closer inspection, this was due to more specific deficits seen in depressed patients along the first formant (F1) axis. Speakers with depression were more likely to produce centralised vowels along F1, as compared to F2—and this was more pronounced for low-front vowels, which are more complex given the degree of tongue-jaw coupling required for production. This pattern was seen in both monophthong and diphthong productions. Other articulatory and phonatory measures were inspected in a factor analysis as well, suggesting additional vocal biomarkers for consideration in diagnosis and treatment assessment of depression—including aperiodicity measures (e.g., higher shimmer and jitter), changes in spectral slope and tilt, and additive noise measures such as increased harmonics-to-noise ratio. Intonation was also affected by diagnostic status, but only for specific speech tasks. These results suggest that laryngeal and articulatory control is reduced by depression. Findings support the clinical utility of combining Ellgring and Scherer’s (1996) psychomotor retardation and social-emotional hypotheses to explain the effects of depression on speech, which suggest observed changes are due to a combination of cognitive, psycho-physiological and motoric mechanisms. Ultimately, depressive speech is able to be modelled along a continuum of hypo- to hyper-speech, where depressed individuals are able to assess communicative situations, assess speech requirements, and then engage in the minimum amount of motoric output necessary to convey their message. As speakers fluctuate with depressive symptoms throughout the course of their disorder, they move along the hypo-hyper-speech continuum and their speech is impacted accordingly. Recommendations for future clinical investigations of the effects of depression on speech are also presented, including suggestions for recording and reporting standards. Results contribute towards cross-disciplinary research into speech analysis between the fields of psychiatry, computer science, and speech science

    Speech Recognition

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    Chapters in the first part of the book cover all the essential speech processing techniques for building robust, automatic speech recognition systems: the representation for speech signals and the methods for speech-features extraction, acoustic and language modeling, efficient algorithms for searching the hypothesis space, and multimodal approaches to speech recognition. The last part of the book is devoted to other speech processing applications that can use the information from automatic speech recognition for speaker identification and tracking, for prosody modeling in emotion-detection systems and in other speech processing applications that are able to operate in real-world environments, like mobile communication services and smart homes

    The discourse of New Zealand and French television advertising: a comparative approach

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    This thesis explored two television advertising discourses. In a response to a need for more qualitative inductive approaches to cultural/national advertising whereby each culture is seen as unique and is not compared to another through the use of standardised American tools and values, this study blended specific quantitatively oriented strategies with interpretive sensitivity in an effort to engage in a cross-cultural “de-naturalisation” of New Zealand and French television advertising specificities. In this endeavour, the contrastive framework was particularly helpful as it made possible the “de-naturalisation” of advertising representations that are usually taken for granted in a particular culture. The exploration revealed interesting specificities peculiar to each advertising environment. The identification of major discursive objects in the television advertising discourse of each country, the subsequent in-depth analysis of these discursive objects, together with insight into communicators’ thinking, showed that the French and the New Zealand television advertising discourses differ both in terms of communicative approach and in terms of selection of imagery. Two main findings emerged from this study. The French television advertising discourse can be characterised by a heavy reliance on seduction, to the point that advertising and seduction were almost fused. This reliance on seduction was illustrated in the frequent use of feminine soft signs such as female voice-overs and female seductive characters, and the strong reluctance of French communicators to use a direct communicative approach. Interviews with French communicators revealed that their reliance on seduction - embodied in a range of texts that appeal to aesthetics, set up metaphorical or emotionally charged situations, and use female bodies and voices - was due to their being caught in strong traditional discursive formations on politeness and money that create knowledge about the act of selling as a shameful activity. In the New Zealand television advertising discourse, the act of selling was not considered as a shameful activity but was well accepted as the foundation of the communication exchange between advertising communicators and their potential viewers. As a result, New Zealand television advertising discourse did not rely as much on soft signs, on concealment, aesthetics, or on creating the illusion of emotion as French television advertising did, but used a more immediate, direct, and authoritative communication approach. This approach was embodied in the overwhelming amount of male characters and male voice-overs used in commercials, as well as in a majority of explicit messages. Whereas French communicators argued categorically that explicit reference to national values was not helpful in advertising, New Zealand communicators assumed that nationalistic discourse would have a commercial value and would inspire New Zealand viewers to consume products or brands. Their usage of discourses followed a cultural logic prescribed by a strong discursive tradition on the importance of nation. Products or brands were recurrently placed within a national framework embodied in linguistic forms, and so viewers were invited to think of themselves as citizens, and to think about products or brands in terms of their socio-national universe. In order to promote consumption, New Zealand television advertising also drew on sport as a combination of masculinity rituals, social instruction, moral training, and declarations of identity. Mythical kiwi ingenuity imagery was also instrumental in the promotion of consumption and in giving models of consuming behaviour to subject viewers. The thesis revealed that the content and form of advertising messages springs from communicators’ cultural communicative habitus. The choice of advertising elements is made according to rules of cultural communication based on traditional discursive formations internalised by individuals evolving within a particular institutional and cultural structure

    Approaches to Hungarian 16.

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    Ephemeral repetitions; deconstructing vocal technique and freeing spontaneous expression for authentic vocal performance

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    In this thesis, I argue that somatic methodologies used in actor and dance training can be applied to a classical singer’s process to effectively address the dichotomy of technique to freedom in vocal expression. My research is informed by my multi-disciplined background as a performer and educator and, in drawing on these practices and investigating the liminal spaces between them, I uncover a separation in the pedagogy. In response, I propose approaches which encourage a mobilisation of new multidisciplinary tools that may prove useful in finding a deeper connection in performance. My research integrates the exploration of phenomenological insights as they relate to vocality. Vital in my findings is how deconstructing traditional texts and forms, through autoethnographic performance practices, can successfully serve as a key method for developing deeper somatic reflexivity, accessing the responses of the body and leading to a more expressive, authentic voice. These finding are reflected in my praxis through the music theatre piece, The Crook of Your Arm. Devised through an improvisational process, the autobiographical narrative that surfaced became key in supporting my assertions that examining the connections between the lived body and voice, through the centralisation of self, is critical in the singer’s process

    Real Rock: Authenticity and Popular Music in Canada, 1984-1994

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    This dissertation investigates the production and reception of English-Canadian rock music sound recordings, from 1984 to 1994, in relation to mutually constitutive understandings of race, ability, gender, sexuality, class, age, and place. It examines how different forms of domestic Anglo rock served to reinforce or subvert the dominant ideologies undergirding the social order in Canada during the late twentieth century. This study analyzes a multifaceted discourse about authenticity that illustrates the ways in which a host of people including musicians, music journalists, record label representatives and other professionals from across the music industries, government administrators, and consumers categorized recorded sound, defined bodily norms, negotiated commerce and technology, and evaluated collective communication in Canada. This study finds that the principle of originality fundamentally structured the categorization of sound recordings in Canada. Originality, according to rock culture, encompassed the balancing of traditionalism with innovation. This dissertation determines that Whiteness organized English-Canadian rock culture in terms of its corporeal standards. White bodies functioned as the norm against which racialized Others were compared and measured. This study also shows how the concept of autonomy encouraged the proper negotiation of commerce and technology in an increasingly neoliberal political and economic condition. Independence of will fostered acceptable behaviour. Finally, this dissertation reveals that the rock status of a given concert rested upon the actions of the performers as well as the composition and reactions of ticket holders in the audience

    Ahots murmurikatuaren zenbait ezaugarri akustikoz

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    Ikerketa honen helburu nagusia ahots murmurikatuaren zenbait ezaugarri akustiko aztertzea da. Horretarako, lagina 36 esaldik osatzen dute, horietako 18 ahots arruntean gauzatuak eta beste 18ak ahots murmurikatuan. 12 galdera azentuen gauzapena ikertzeko erabili dira eta 6 intonazioarena ikertzeko. [a] bokalaren formakinak aztertzeko esaldi mota guztiak erabili dira (datuen azterketaren atalaren azpiataletan esaldi zehatzak agertuko dira). Inkesta egiteko eduki dugun informatzailea Igorreko 23 urteko andrazko bat izan da. Berorren ama-hizkuntza bertako euskararen barietate tradizionala izan da eta ikasketa guztiak euskaraz egin ditu. Emaitzen artean, hurrengoak dauzkagu: (1) ahots murmurikatuaren ezaugarririk nabarmenenak, ahots arruntaren aldean, f0rik ez egotea eta intonazioa apalagoa izatea dira; (2) iraupenari dagokionez, ahots murmurikatuan eginiko esaldiak luzexeagoak dira, berau estatistikoki esanguratsua izan ez arren; (3) [a] bokalaren formakinen azterketan ahots mota estatistikoki esanguratsua da bokalaren f1 eta f2 formakinei dagokienez; horrela bada, ahots murmurikatuan [a] bokala irekiagoa eta aurreratuagoa da ahots arruntean baino; (4) ahots murmurikatuan azentuaren korrelatu akustiko nagusia iraupena da; (5) silaba azentuduna luzeagoa da azentu bakoa baino; azkenik, (6) adierazpenezkoen eta bai/ez erako galderen bereizkuntzan iraupena eta intonazioa biak erabiltzen dira, baina esaldiaren azken silaban kontraste handiagoa gertatzen da gainerako egonguneetan baino. Bai/ez erako galderen azken silabak luzeagoak eta intentsitate altuagokoak dira adierazpen-esaldienak baino.; The main objective of this research is to analyze the acoustic characteristics of whispered voice. To this end, the sample consists of 36 phrases, of which 18 are produced in modal voice and the other 18 in a whispered voice. We used 12 questions to observe the accent placement and 6 to examine the intonational proprieties and, along with the analysis of vowel formants for [a]. The informant who answered the survey was a 23-year old woman from Igorre. Sentences were produced in her mother tongue, namely, the local variety of Igorre. Results can be summarized as follows: (1) whispered voice shows no f0 along with lower rates of intensity. The most notable characteristics of the murmured voice, compared to the common voice, are the absence of f0 and a lower intonation; (2) with respect to duration, whispered voiced were longer than modal voice; (3) The mean average for vowel formants F1 and F2 were higher for whispered voice, suggesting that [a] is produced more opened and fronted than in modal voice. (4) the main acoustic correlate is duration for whispered voice; (5) the stressed syllable is always longer than the unstressed syllable; finally, (6) in the expressive phrases and in the distinction of the yes / no questions, duration and intensity are used as acoustic correlates of pitch, but in the last syllable of the phrase there is greater contrast. The last syllables of the yes / no questions show longer and with higher intensity than the declarative sentences
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