Minimising latency of pitch detection algorithms for live vocals on low-cost hardware

A pitch estimation device was proposed for live vocals to output appropriate pitch data through the musical instrument digital interface (MIDI). The intention was to ideally achieve unnoticeable latency while maintaining estimation accuracy. The projected target platform was low-cost, standalone hardware based around a microcontroller such as the Microchip PIC series. This study investigated, optimised and compared the performance of suitable algorithms for this application. Performance was determined by two key factors: accuracy and latency. Many papers have been published over the past six decades assessing and comparing the accuracy of pitch detection algorithms on various signals, including vocals. However, very little information is available concerning the latency of pitch detection algorithms and methods with which this can be minimised. Real-time audio introduces a further latency challenge that is sparsely studied, minimising the length of sampled audio required by the algorithms in order to reduce overall total latency. Thorough testing was undertaken in order to determine the best-performing algorithm and optimal parameter combination. Software modifications were implemented to facilitate accurate, repeatable, automated testing in order to build a comprehensive set of results encompassing a wide range of test conditions. The results revealed that the infinite-peak-clipping autocorrelation function (IACF) performed better than the other autocorrelation functions tested and also identified ideal parameter values or value ranges to provide the optimal latency/accuracy balance. Although the results were encouraging, testing highlighted some fundamental issues with vocal pitch detection. Potential solutions are proposed for further development

Allegories of Sight: Blinding and Power in Late Anglo-Saxon England

The practical necessity of sight to effective participation in Anglo-Saxon life is reflected in the lack of evidence for a prevalent culture of punitive blinding in Anglo-Saxon England.  Contrary to the practices of continental Europe, the sparse records of blindings, legal, political or allegorical, demonstrate a cultural reluctance to use blinding as punitive measure.  Yet late Anglo-Saxon law codes, histories and hagiographies also evidence a growing acceptance of the practical political expedient of blinding as a means to the deprivation of power. Law, history and hagiography each illuminate a different attitude to the practice.  From as early as Edgar’s reign there is evidence for the use of mutilation as a legal means of punishment that preserved the soul for redemption; by Cnut’s reign these laws specified blinding as a punishment for recidivists.  The histories demonstrate blinding as a political tool facilitating the deprivation of a rival’s power, a political tool granted legitimacy through the legal use of blinding.  In contrast, the hagiographies use blindings, attempted blindings and healings as tropes that evidence and bestow the power of God in opposition to political power.  These conflicting narratives demonstrate the conflicted attitude to blinding inherent in a culture that considered sight as a vehicle for power

Allegories of Sight: Blinding and Power in Late Anglo-Saxon England

The practical necessity of sight to effective participation in Anglo-Saxon life is reflected in the multifaceted depictions of punitive blinding in late Anglo-Saxon literature. As a motif of empowerment or disempowerment, acts of blinding permeate the histories and hagiographies of the eleventh and twelfth centuries and each narrative mode illuminates different societal attitudes to the practice. These narratives reflect a social discomfort and lack of evidence for a prevalent culture of punitive blinding, alongside a growing acceptance in late Anglo-Saxon England of the measure as a practical penalty. As a codified legal punishment, blinding was reserved for recidivist criminals: mutilation punished while preserving the soul for the redemption of repentance. An eleventh-century legal innovation, the histories and chronicles relating events of this period similarly display a growing acceptance of blinding as a practical expedient deprivation of personal political agency. In contrast, the trope of blinding in hagiographical narrative frequently displays a social commentary that opposes these political and legal powers. Blindings, attempted blindings and healings are motifs used to correct the wrongs of temporal agents and bestow God's favour upon a saint. The conflicting narratives demonstrate the conflicted attitude to blinding inherent in a culture that considered sight as a vehicle for power

Integration, Assimilation, Annexation: Æthelstan and the Anglo-Saxon Hegemony in York

The 927 AD conquest of Scandinavian Northumbria by the ascendant Anglo-Saxon king, Æthelstan, seems a straightforward action of military annexation. Yet Æthelstan's actions, both leading into, and subsequent to, his annexation of York, demonstrate a nuanced strategy of assimilation of which military dominance formed only a part. Examining chronicle accounts of Æthelstan's reign, alongside a key royal diploma, numismatics, and archaeology, this paper argues that the Anglo-Saxon king's intent was not to establish hegemony over Viking York through force and subsequent occupation alone. Rather, Æthelstan wielded a combination of military power and strategies of social integration to bring the Scandinavian north into his developing English kingdom as a functionally homogenised territory

The Character of the Treacherous Woman in the Passiones of Early Medieval English Royal Martyrs

Early medieval England is well-known for its assortment of royal saints; figures who, though drawn from nearly five centuries of pre-Conquest Christianity, are often best known from eleventh-century hagiography. Common among these narratives is the figure of the “wicked queen”–a woman whose exercise of political power provides the impetus for the martyrdom of the royal saint. Flatly drawn and lacking in complex motivation, the treacherous woman of English hagiography is a trope, a didactic exemplar tailored to eleventh-century English audiences, and a caution of the dangers of female agency. Here biblical archetypes, clerical scholarship, and an inherent social misogyny unite in a common literary framework. Yet it is also true that each of these “wicked queens” has a unique transmission history that displays a complicated progression of the motif within a living narrative. This article examines the role of the treacherous woman as a narrative device in three royal hagiographies: Passio S. Æthelberhti, Vita et miracula S. Kenelmi, and Passio S. Eadwardi regis et martyris. In so doing, it explores the authorial motives and social influences that informed the composition of these figures, arguing that each is formed of a convergence of the historical and regional contexts of the saints’ cults with the political concerns and ecclesiastical anxieties of the tenth and eleventh centuries.</p

London Under Danish Rule: Cnut's Politics and Policies as a Demonstration of Power

In 1016 the young Danish prince who was to become Cnut the Great, King of England, Denmark, and Norway, laid siege to the city of London as part of a program of conquest that would see him crowned as King of England by 1017. This millennial year is an appropriate time to reflect on the consequences of London's defiance as a city that was rapidly evolving into the economic capital of a united English polity. As the siege did not end in Danish victory, the resistance of the independent minded Londoners had implications upon how Cnut would conduct juridical, financial and religious policy in relation to the city. Cnut could not allow the city to exert such oppositional autonomy unchecked. Yet the Danish king had ambitions of establishing an Anglo-Scandinavian Empire and London was a strategically important city in that vision, valued for both its continental connections and its wealth. Cnut could not afford to stunt London's economic life through punitive repression. The Danish king's early years were then characterised by a series of carefully balanced retributive policies that were designed to remove London's agency for rebellion, while not crippling it as an established economic and commercial centre

Constructing a King: William of Malmesbury and the Life of Æthelstan

Gesta regum Anglorum, written by William of Malmesbury in the twelfth century, is a key source for the life of the tenth-century Anglo-Saxon king, Æthelstan (924–939). Contemporary narrative histories provide little detail relating to Æthelstan’s kingship, and the account of Gesta regum Anglorum purports to grant an unparalleled insight into his life and reign. William’s abbey at Malmesbury had a unique connection to Æthelstan—the Anglo-Saxon king had gifted the abbey lands and relics in life, and in death had been laid to rest there. Thus, two-centuries after his death, Malmesbury was perhaps the most likely region in England to retain an affection for Æthelstan. However, due to this regional affinity with the Anglo-Saxon king, William’s narrative must be viewed with some suspicion, designed as it is to emphasise Æthelstan’s connection to Malmesbury and eulogise the abbey’s Anglo-Saxon benefactor. It is a complex literary construction that at times demonstrates an historian’s concern for the veracity of sources and the integrity of their interpretation, while at others is wont to delve into hagiographical hyperbole. This paper undertakes to examine critically William’s historiographical methodologies as identified within his life of Æthelstan, thereby exposing the intrinsic interrelation between source documents, local tradition, material history, and authorial invention in his construct of the Anglo-Saxon king

The Politics of Hegemony and the 'Empires' of Anglo-Saxon England

The term 'empire' is frequently applied retrospectively by historians to historical trans-cultural political entities that are notable either for their geographic breadth, unprecedented expansionary ambitions, or extensive political hegemony. Yet the use of the terminology of empire in historical studies is often ill-defined, as exemplified by the territorial hegemonies of Æthelstan (r. 924-939) and Cnut (r. 1016-1035). In their programs of territorial expansion and political consolidation, modern historians have credited both Æthelstan and Cnut as the creators and overlords of trans-cultural European empires. Yet common characteristics that warrant categorisation of the polities they governed as 'empires' are not readily discernible. Not only were the regions each controlled territorially and culturally distinct, but their methods of establishing political dominance and regional governance were equally varied. This raises the question as to whether the term 'empire' can be considered to define a distinct and coherent category of political power when applied to medieval monarchical hegemonies. By analysing the Anglo-Saxon 'empires' of Æthelstan and Cnut within the frameworks of empire set out by modern political theorists, this paper will establish whether the structural commonalities of their domains supersede their inherent diversity, thereby justifying a common categorisation as 'empires'

The Character of the Treacherous Woman in the passiones of Early Medieval English Royal Martyrs

Early medieval England is well-known for its assortment of royal saints; figures who, though drawn from nearly five centuries of pre-Conquest Christianity, are often best known from eleventh-century hagiography. Common among these narratives is the figure of the “wicked queen”–a woman whose exercise of political power provides the impetus for the martyrdom of the royal saint. Flatly drawn and lacking in complex motivation, the treacherous woman of English hagiography is a trope, a didactic exemplar tailored to eleventh-century English audiences, and a caution of the dangers of female agency. Here biblical archetypes, clerical scholarship, and an inherent social misogyny unite in a common literary framework. Yet it is also true that each of these “wicked queens” has a unique transmission history that displays a complicated progression of the motif within a living narrative. This article examines the role of the treacherous woman as a narrative device in three royal hagiographies: Passio S. Æthelberhti, Vita et miracula S. Kenelmi, and Passio S. Eadwardi regis et martyris. In so doing, it explores the authorial motives and social influences that informed the composition of these figures, arguing that each is formed of a convergence of the historical and regional contexts of the saints’ cults with the political concerns and ecclesiastical anxieties of the tenth and eleventh centuries