This paper presents some pitch features for the characterization of intermediate vocal productions from the CNRS - Muse ́e de l'Homme sound archives, in the context of the DIADEMS inter- disciplinary project gathering researchers from ethnomusicology and speech signal processing. Different categories — chanting, singing, recitation, storytelling, talking, lament — have been iden- tified and characterized by ethnomusicologists and are confronted by acoustic analysis. A database totalizing 79 utterances from 25 countries spread around the world is used. Among the tested fea- tures, the note duration distribution has proved to be a relevant measure. Categories are mostly characterized by the proportion of 100-ms notes and the duration of the longest note. An eval- uation of these features has been realized through a supervised classification using the different vocal categories. Classification results show that these two features allow a good discrimination between ''speech'', ''chanting'' and ''singing'', but are not suited for discriminating between the ''speech'' subcategories ''recitation'', ''storytelling'' and ''talking''
