An Examination of Correlations Between Flutists Linguistic Practices and Their Sound Production On The Flute

 

An Examination of Correlations between Flutists’ Linguistic Practices and Their Sound Production on the Flute Linda Landeros Lamkin, Department of Woodwinds, School of Music, Indiana University, United States [email protected]  [email protected]  Proceedings of the Conference on Interdisciplinary Musicology (CIM05) Actes duMontréal Colloque(Québec) interdisciplinaire musicology (CIM05) Canada, de 10-12/3/2005

Abstract

The purpose of this project is to study the recorded flute sound and articulation of flutists in comparison with the recorded speech of the subject’s native language (L1) and other languages they may speak [L2, L(n)]. Three hundred years of pedagogical literature recommending shape of mouth, embouchure placement besides the use of linguistic comparisons with four consonants, /t/, /d/, /k/, and /g/, along with every vowel have been used in syllable combination to recommend the optimum output, that of beautiful music. Language culture can influence subtle choices in tone production; hearing ranges of timbre, clarity, rise and fall, cadences, and rhythm could be the basis from which players develop tone as well as maintain repetitive r epetitive precision in the execution of syllable choice(s). The performance recordings revealed correlations between vocal and instrumental timbre using sound analysis software. The initial alveolar stops of speech matched that of the subject’s flute playing in the spectral envelope in the power spectrum, as well as in the harmonic envelope in the spectrogram. Implications for further research in music perception, semiotics and ethnomusicological analysis, flute of emotions and vocal imitation arepedagogy, discussed.performance parameters of the communication

Introduction Qui va la? Qui que tu sois, Parle, Transparence! 

Torū Takemitsu’s Voice: for solo flutist , (Takemitsu, 1971) asks in a Japanese haikū poem in French,  “Who goes there? there? Speak, Transparence, Transparence, whoever whoever you are!” The performer performer must say the words words into the flute, as part of the special effects, which include multiphonics, amplified flute, whisper tones, growling, and flutter-tonguing. Takemitsu notated almost all the fingerings so as to get the slightest differences in timbres of notes of the same pitch. One can almost see the composer calling past a veil in an effort to elicit a response to his question from the unknown muse. In the same way, some of the most gifted performers performers on the flute almost seem to be speaking when they play, drawing the audience in with their musical storytelling prowess. Likewise, some compositions beg the performer to recall some prosody or some poetry that is just out of reach of the definable melody. One of the principal aims in the performance performance of music is communicating. We, the t he listeners, are attracted to the beauty and contrasts in the process of that communication. Among some of the most important processes of sculpting tonal contrasts in flute playing is articulation. Flute is the only instrument whereby the sound is generated with a jet stream, crossing to the back wall of the embouchure plate, with nothing in the mouth to impede the movement of the air or the tongue. The instrument truly closest to being able to speak the music is the flute. This study will will examine four aspects aspects of music music and speech: music production as compared to speech production, and speech perception as compared to music perception. Music production: (a) flute performance

In performing in different venues, as an orchestral flutist, chamber musician, and recitalist, the author has had opportunity to evaluate both strategies and outcomes in an effort to seek a better output in her performance. When performing off the North American continent, the author noted that much of the time her playing had improved. After discarding reasons such as more practice time, fewer distractions, more focus, more hydration, more rest, and a higher standard of living for performing artists, the main difference had to be a synchronized learning process involving better acoustic CIM05, Montréal, 10-12/03/2005 10-12/03/2005 

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Linda Landeros LAMKIN feedback from the architecture and more lingual practice using the tongue differently in languages such as Italian, Spanish, French, and Hebrew. Which came first? Was one more influential than the other? Making minute adjustments in articulation was so much easier and faster, giving more time to focus on phrasing, expression, vibrato, dynamics, and colors or timbre of tone in different pieces. Flutists imagine sound to be created, involving complex interactions of physical formations, breathing and aural reaction to reverberation. Flutists assess whether or not the sound matches their internal imagination by making changes based on stored based on muscular iinformation nformation learned from practice and cultural information (lore, practice, practice, culture, language). Where do flutists obtain obtain this image in the first place? This paper is part of a larger document in performance to provide a basis to discuss modern flute performance practice, integrating pedagogical, acoustic, linguistic, and aesthetic considerations, for the completion of the doctorate. In the twentieth century there were and still are at least four schools of flute playing: the French, German, English, and American schools. There are differences in tone quality (particularly in the low register), articulations, and dynamic ranges. In master classes or sound recordings of Jean-Pierre Rampal, James Galway, Severino Gazzellloni, Peter Lloyd, William Bennett, Barthold Kuijken, and Julius Baker, and Andras Adorján, the author has heard these differences readily. These flutists have spoken about the different tone qualities, articulations, and dynamics in their teachings. Perhaps the most proven measurement of their opinions is the volume of sales of music. The vast majority of music enthusiasts have democratically chosen, through dollars spent on recordings and concerts, which artists have the most convincing musical communication in performance. Pilar Estevan interviewed Jean-Pierre Rampal, the most recorded flutist in history, (Estevan, 1976, 7). A selfconfessed natural player, Rampal takes the interviewer through his view of interpreting musical phrase: If some people overblow on the flute, they t hey should be asked, "How would you sing this phrase?" Not as a singer, but naturally, without any effort -- for the pleasure. Try it out with a man who has a bad style, and he will not sound the same because he is singing naturally. You can not [sic] force something which is natural. So listen to your playing, listen to your singing -- that is the thing, to  play like you sing or like you act, like you speak. Then Then you will find the truth. 

Music production: (b) pedagogy

Music performance research has not concentrated on the creation and control of performance as it happens. Instead, for the past three hundred years, most pedagogical treatises have concentrated on the articulatory preparation and execution. To be fair, historically, the development of humanistic approach to study is about the same age as the first writings to appear to include how to play wind instruments in general, and the German flute, in particular. Ardall Powell described the writings of Thionot Arbeau, in a 1589 French dancing manual, Orchesographie, about the articulation of the Swiss military fifers used in that day(Powell 2002, 30-32). He described a characteristic Swiss playing style, in which fifers using a special hard articulation played together with large side drums, Arbeau noted that “the fife’s bore as “very narrow, only the thickness of a pistol bullet, it has a shrill note,” (i.e. pitch or instrument, tone).’” Onepossibly wonderstwo what flutistfeet would not use a hard articulation to get a sound out of narrow bore to three in length. In an attempt to categorize articulation choices, all permutations of the use of the articulators in the forms of a consonant-vowel syllable (CV) for /t/, /d/, /k/, /g/, and /r/ (not as a liquid, but a flapped alveolar stop) in combination with al l  vowels were found in the literature. The list here is merely representative of the large body of treatises, manuals, and articles that have attempted to guide generations of flutists on how to tongue on the flute. There are more CV combinations than listed here, but five variations should incite some discussion.  /Ca/ includes descriptions descriptions of articulations by John Barcellona Barcellona ([no author] 2001) 2001)  /Ce/ includes descriptions of articulations by Louis Drouet in the nineteenth-century in an article by Kathleen Goll-Wilson (Goll-Wilson 1990)    /Ci/ includes descriptions descriptions of articulations articulations by Johann Joachim Q Quantz uantz (Quantz, (1966) (1966) 1752)    /Co/ includes descriptions descriptions of articulations articulations by James Pellerite Pellerite ([no author] 2001) 2001)    /Cu/ includes descriptions of articulations by Jacques-Martin Hotteterre (Hotteterre, (1968) 1707)    

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Linda Landeros LAMKIN Even in the latter half of the twentieth-century, there was a reluctance to talk about how to make color, or harmonic differences in the timbre of flute tone using language changes, as a rule. Even after the richness from one of the golden ages of flute playing, with Marcel Moyse firmly adding to the opulent pedagogical heritage established by Paul Taffanel and Philippe Gaubert of the Paris Conservatoryy at the turn of the twentieth century (Moyse 1934, 1928, 1978; Taffanel 1923 and 1958), Conservator one developed it within the routines of technical mastery of the flute. Roger S. Stevens’ 1967 monograph entitled  Artistic Flute: Technique and Study   provides unique oscillographs of flute tones with descriptive analysis (Stevens 1967, 53-56). Mr. Stevens was a former principal solo flutist of the Los Angeles as well as one of thehad teachers the western United States musical center, Philharmonic the UniversityOrchestra, of Southern California, who studiedat with Joseph Mariano and William Kincaid, founders of the American school of flute playing. Not only did he go beyond the routines developed by Kincaid (Kincaid 1967, 1968, 1975; Krell 1973) and his (Kincaid’s) teacher, Georges Barrère (Barrère 1935), but he exploited the timbral transparence of the flute within a thirty-three-chord routine (Stevens 1967, 90). His book is also the book with the lips, photographs of embouchures of some of the most famous Los Angeles studio musicians of that era (Stevens 1967, 14-16). His photographic study of embouchures offers a tantalizing view of the possible interpretation of different uses of vowels. Mr. Stevens was a master at assisting the student to attain acoustical awareness of timbre through his use of rigorous arpeggio routines, enhancing the frequency components with incredibly strenuous workouts, if done properly, with embouchure control. By far and away, the best routine to develop harmonic acoustic awareness using the natural harmonic features of the flute and simple octave relationships was exploited through travel of the three or more octaves, in overlapping segments, building signal strength in the interlocking harmonics. Mr. Stevens had one of the most beautiful color or timbral ranges on the flute, but avoided the question of how to produce them: “Very little will be said in this section regarding the specific regimens for developing a versatile spectrum and for routines further refining tone. It as is suggested, thathis theaural advanced flutist usecolor the tone development already the established a means of rather, increasing acuity and color flexibility, thus providing a more complete palette of the colors latent in the instrument,” (Stevens 1967, 52). One other master teacher must be mentioned in conjunction with Mr. Stevens and the study of flute color, and that is Mr. Robert Willoughby. The author has had no experience with this flutist, but through personal communications with colleagues, as well as perusal of the American flute journals, by all accounts, he invested his art in the study of colors on the flute. There are not many acoustic studies of the flute sound itself. J. W. Coltman’s and N.H. Fletcher’s three to four decades studies of wind instruments in the physical acoustics literature, and of the physics of the flute and organ flues, in particular, provide information about the action of the jet (breath) and possible explanations of the sound wave through the open system (Coltman 1979, Fletcher 1975 for examples). Studies in vibrato will be discussed later in this paper. Speech production

In flute playing, flutists shape the inside of their mouths in a fashion similar to the way they do in speaking. In speaking, different culturesA use mouthculture and tongue formations to make the consonant andpeople vowel with sounds of theirlanguage own language. language is a group of people speaking a language with a particular style or inflection. For example, Belgian French sounds different from Parisian French. British English sounds different from English spoken in Australia or the United State. The Spanish language sounds different if spoken by persons from Spain, Mexico, or Argentina. Even a politically defined region of the world has different dialect sounds. American English sounds different in the Southeast than in the Northeast. It is possible that players from different language cultures use different mouth and tongue formations and placements while playing the flute, similar to those of their native tongue.

The Experiment The acoustic studies of languages, linguistic comparisons, learning languages, and speech production abound with methodologies to snare the phonetic components held within subject populations. A study by James Emil Flege offers validation to test subject’s speech habits by looking at part of their spoken speech in the same exact CV combinations noted in the flute pedagogical literature (Flege 1984). Flege’s experiments in ascertaining foreign accent recognition are examples that prescribed a preliminary model by which to organize and qualify not only /tu/ and other stop combinations, but also CIM05, Montréal, 10-12/03/2005 10-12/03/2005 

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Linda Landeros LAMKIN the /t/-burst and all accompanying articulatory choices. Flege’s experiment was comparing the comprehension of speech spoken by native French speakers and native English speakers. He specifically looked at /tu/: “/tu/ was edited from the phrase “two little dogs” and “two little birds.” The segmentation of /u/ from the following /l/ was based on changes in waveform shape and/or intensity,” (Flege 1984, 695). The experimental method used in this process included recording speec speech h and flute articulation samples to examine spectrographic evidence for any correlation between the two acoustic phenomena, using sound analysis software. Speech Linguistic choices were based on the subject pool. Participants were to be asked to speak several

sentences in English and in the subject’s own native tongue if the latter was not English. Those languages included included French, French, Dutch, Chinese, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, German, German, and Hebrew. Native speakers and high-fluency speakers of the languages chosen were asked to design sentences to feature /t, d, k, g, dl, u, o, y/ specifically. The individuals who designed the sentences included professors of the different languages at Indiana University (IU), the principal designer of the experiment, Dr. Nina Fales, a world-renowned timbre expert who had done postdoctoral work at the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM) in Paris, France, and the author. (Please see acknowledgments at the end of this paper.) The sentences were designed so that the first and last words would not be used due to changes in pitch inflection in speech habits in all languages. The target syllables were placed in word-initial, inter-syllabic, and word-final positions. Not all permutations sought were incorporated into the sentences. (Please see the section on design improvements.) In addition, appropriate federal government permission protocol for use of human subjects was applied for and granted.

Speech perception  could only be obtained through a self-rating process at this point. A questionnaire instrument was designed to acquire the subject’s personal statistics, including age, length of playing the flute, native language, knowledge of other languages, and experience in taking flute lessons in a language other than the subject’s native language. Included in the questionnaire were a release document, an eighteen-question survey, and a short section for the participants to write their own perceptions of hearing their own sound while they play. They were told that their identities would be kept confidential forever. This aspect of confidentiality was crucial as most of these individuals were just starting their careers as performers, if not actively pursuing performance opportunities around the globe. In the high sensitivity field of music, the respect and care for the musicians was paramount to the experiment design. No assignation as to the character of an identified individual’s playing would be jeopardized for his or her career.

Music production: the repertoire choices

Six pieces chosen to of elicit playing Some behavior on themay modern well within the were playing ability all typical the subjects. subjects haveflute. had These some pieces of the were excerpts memorized for orchestral auditions. They were placed in an order that hopefully would allow the player to exhibit contrasting articulation tendencies with enough rest between the three targeted articulatory demanding excerpts. The first piece played was the  Allemande from the Suite in A Minor, BWV 1013, by Johann Sebastian Bach (Bach 1990). This piece was chosen for its endless single tonguing. The author thought that the fatigue factor the movement usually engenders would cause the subject to keep to his/her hi s/her most basic linguistic practices in the perpetual attempt to stay relaxed enough for the duration of the selection. It was placed first so that player would be at his/her freshest playing condition. The second piece chose was the Largo from the Concerto in F Major, " La La Tempesta di Mare," for Flute and Orchestra, F. VI, n. 12 by Antonio Vivaldi (Vivaldi 1971). The primary reason it was chosen is that it allowed the player to rest his/her tongue. The Vivaldi was chosen also because the preliminary document proposal used the excerpt in recordings by James Galway and Severino Gazzelloni to illustrate the harmonics seen in the tone production spectrogram in isolation on the speech analysis anal ysis software, SoundScope. This work was also chosen for future work on studies in vibrato and expression. The third selection was the first movement, Prélude gravement , from Concert Royaux, No. 4 by François Couperin. While this piece was probably not as familiar to all the subjects, its inclusion served several purposes. The first CIM05, Montréal, 10-12/03/2005 10-12/03/2005 

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Linda Landeros LAMKIN purpose was to see if there would be any exhibition of characteristics that would also be found in French speech tendencies in the spectrogram analyses, as it is one of the high points in the French Baroque flute literature. The second purpose was to provide a break from the other pieces as they are some of the most played pieces in the literature. This piece was a great equalizer among experienced and inexperienced alike, to practice sight-reading skills. Whatever the linguistic practices the flutist would normally be smoothed away by years of practicing, would be sufficient distraction in the reading of the notes to be able to elicit the most natural response. The fourth piece chosen was the most employed audition piece around the world, the first movement,  Allegro maestoso, from the Konzert in G für Flöte und Orchester   by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Mozart 1986). Whatever tendencies the flutist may have in linguistic production would be influenced by years of flute study with at least one professional-level teacher. This piece also had more variation in the rhythmic articulation passages than the Bach and Mendelssohn excerpts. Probably one of the most recognized pieces in the flute literature, Syrinx   pour Flûte Seule by Claude Debussy (Debussy 1927), was included as a resting stage before the final excerpt. As with the Vivaldi, this piece will be used for future study in vibrato and expression. The final excerpt has been one of the top three orchestral excerpt selections requested by professional orchestra audition committees, the Scherzo from Midsummer Night’s Dream  by Felix Mendelssohn (Mendelssohn [n.d.]). The piece allows the player to exhibit double-tonguing, a rapidly repeating /CV/-/CV/ motion from the alveolar stop to the velar stop and back again. The piece served to elicit tonguing contrasts between front and back stop releases within the vocal tract, causing fatigue. The players performed the first section within the first formal compositional section of the movement of each piece only once. The subjects: the speakers and the players

The participants were from the flute studio of the Department of Woodwinds, School of Music, Indiana University. All participants were highly trainedinflutists pursuing performance andined education ucation at one the largest schools of music in the world one ofpur thesuing largest flute classes the world.degrees All three professors of flute agreed to the study, Professor Jacques Zoon, Professor Kate Lukas, Professor James Scott. The professors allowed recording time to coincide with the time the regular master class met during the school week. The subjects understood that the recording process was to be an opportunity to practice audition techniques in exchange for reading sentences and being in an experiment for the author’s doctoral document requirement. All participation was voluntary, and the subjects were told that they could withdraw their participation at any time. Not all flutists of the studio participated. Thirty-three students out of forty total participated. Seven countries were represented including Israel, Japan, Hong Kong, The Netherlands, Canada, and Venezuela, and the United States. Seventeen states from the United States were represented including 40% from the Midwest, 28% from the South, 20% from the Pacific Coast, and 12% from the East Coast. The subjects’ years in the United States ranged from seven months to thirty-six years. Eleven individuals had spent time outside of their native country. Twenty-one individuals had not spent time outside their native country. Five subjects were participating in performance intensive programs, and twenty-seven were participating in of academic degree programs ranging from a Bachelor of Science with an Outside Field to a Doctor Music. Thirteen subjects studied with Professor Jacques Zoon, eleven subjects studied with Professor Kate Lukas, six studied with Professor James Scott, one subject studied with Jan Gippo of St. Louis, and one subject did not have a current flute teacher. The shortest time any subject had been playing the flute was 6.5 years. The longest time any subject had been playing the flute was twenty-four years. The average number of years playing flute was 11.94 years. The mean age of starting to play the flute was at twelve years old. Only eight of the twenty-four subjects claimed to not play another instrument. The subjects had a difficult time interpreting two questions about playing other instruments as they did not know if other  meant  meant instruments other than those t hose of the flute family, i.e. piccolo or traverso or alto flute. Twenty-six subjects claimed English as L1. Two subjects spoke Hebrew as their native language, while there was only one subject for each of the Japanese, Mandarin, Dutch, and Spanish languages identified. Twenty-six claimed some familiarity with L2-n. Six subjects had no foreign language experience. The subjects, again, had confusion, this time in answering fluency self-ratings because reading, writing, and speaking, were not separated out from the main question. Only 25% had flute lessons in languages other than L1. Of that small group, only 25% were native English speakers. The languages of the flute lessons included English (6), French (2), Spanish (1), and CIM05, Montréal, 10-12/03/2005 10-12/03/2005 

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Linda Landeros LAMKIN German (1). Thirty-three subjects answered questionnaires. Thirty-two subjects completed the recording section of the experiment. One subject withdrew from the experiment. The recording process

The recordings took place in a choral classroom on the fourth floor of the Music Annex at the School of Music during the time of the regularly scheduled flute master class. The room was adjacent to the master class room. Several make-up sessions were accomplished to accommodate schedule changes. The recordings took place over a period of time from March 25, 1997 through May 13, 1997. The author enlisted the servicesset-up of colleagues whofor handled analog tapesubject equipment video equipment. The microphone was the same speech the as for flute. The stood and in front of a music stand with the microphone hanging from a boom over the music stand, approximately thirteen to fourteen inches from the subject’s face. The only change the subject had to make was to move the pages from one side of the music stand to the other to see the next excerpt. The subject first answered the questionnaire while waiting outside the door for his/her turn to participate. The subject was instructed as to the proceedings of the experiment, provided with the test instruments and told to start when ready. The English sentences were read first. If the subject’s native language was not English, the especially sentences constructed in his/her native language were read after the English sentences. Finally, if the subject knew any more languages, those other language sentences were read, in order of self-rated level of fluency. The subjects spoke each sentence at least twice. If the speaker made a significant mistake or the frequency of mistakes within the sentence was high, the speaker repeated the sentence once or twice more. At no time were the subjects coached in the pronunciation of any word. After speaking the sentences, the subjects were then asked to play selections from the standard flute repertoire.

The Results One subject was fluent in four languages. That subject, Subject 42, is the study of this paper.  Computing

In the Folklore and Ethnomusicology Sound and V ideo ideo  Analysis and I nstruction nstruction Laboratory (SAVAIL), .aiff  at IU, the data was digitized and cut into word length   sound files and stored in different media  sound around the IU campus. Different versions of the SoundScope software were used. The program uses a Fourier Analysis equation to make the picture of the sound that was recorded in an analog format. A sound wave can be described as a fluctuation of air pressure over a period of time. The pressure change event is evaluated using the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) algorithm based on the principle of Fourier’s Theorem, which states that any timewave can be expressed as a sum of sinusoidal waves. The more complex the sound, the more frequency components, or harmonics, occur in the picture, called a spectrogram (Coughlan 1992, A-1). After some experimentation with the data, the author realized she had no experience reading the spectrograms to make appropriate observations of the event presented. Joseph P. Olive, A Greenwood, and J. Coleman’s book entitled  Acoustics of American English Speech A Dynamic Approach, With 211 Illustrations,   served as a textbook to learn about identification of formants, consonants, and vowels in the American English language (Olive, Joseph P, A. Greenwood, and J. J. Coleman, 1993). Problems with hardware on which the original version of SoundScope  program was located forced the author to move to another sound editing software program, CoolEdit , which was bought by the software company, Adobe, to be reincarnated as  Adobe Audition. The data sound files were finally installed in one location to be able to be brought up into the software for quick comparison. In that environment, the author was able to create stable, reproducible spectrograms in which measurement markers could be saved. The following is a list li st of equipment and software used so far in this flute-linguistics project.  

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Recording Set-Up: Sony AF AutoHandcam Video 8, Model CCD-V5 Sony Professional Stereo Cassete-Corder, Model TC-D5M Sony ECM-959A Electret Condenser Microphone  Mono Adapter Macroplug, 1 AA battery 90° setting with RadioShack Microplug Stereo →

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Linda Landeros LAMKIN Sony Walkman Professional Stereo Cassette-Corder, Model WB-D6C RadioShack PZM Semihemispherical Microphones Microphones (2), 1 N battery in each   Playback System: Sony Walkman Portable CD Player, Model No. D-CJ406CK, 2AA batteries RadioShack Goldseries 42-2570 42-2570 4" (10.1 cm) Stereo Headphone Cable Y-Adapter Sony Dynamic Stereo Headphones MDR-51 Sony Walkman Headphones MDR-027   Computer Software/Hardware: Software/Hardware: SoundScope (Digitize analog recordings and analysis of . aiff  files,  files, with GW Sound card installed)  Adobe Audition 1.0  (Measure VOTs and MOTs)  Adobe PhotoShop  (Snapshots of Spectrograms, Spectrograms, various versions) Grab (Screen capture of spectrograms from SoundScope) Preview  (Screen  (Screen capture of spectrograms from SoundScope) MS Word  (Text)  (Text) Excel  (VOT  (VOT Lists) Peak TDM 2.53 (Create an audio file to burn on a CD from an .aiff file) Roxio Toast Titanium 5.1.4 (CD burning, and older version) SCSI Probe 4.3 (Compress .aiff files for storage) Various File Transfer Protocols and Storage Arrays MacOS9 G4 Hard drive Mac OS X G5 Hard drive Power Computing Power Tower 200e Sony Trinitron Amultiscan 17sfII Computer Monitor NTSC EV-C100 Videocassette Recorder Roland Sound Canvas Sony Trinitron TV Monitor IU LAN Appleshare for Macs, IU LAN for PCs

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Linguistics

The stopped consonants in English can be placed in two general categories of voicing quality and place of articulation (Olive 1993, 81). In the category of voicing quality, the stop may be voiced /b/, /d/, /g/ or unvoiced /p/, /t/, /k/. The voiceless stops have two allophonic realizations of aspirated or unaspirated. The second category of place of articulation indicates the placement of the stop in the vocal tract. The stops which have placement at the lips are called bilabial /p/ and /b/. The stops which have placement at the alveolar ridge located just behind the front teeth include /t/ and /d/. The stops which have placement at the velum are called velar stops /k/ and /g/. The length of time from the release of the burst of the stop to the time the vowel sound starts is only milliseconds long, yet that area within the action of release is what turned out to be the telling area of individual characteristics in an individual’s speaking compared to flute playing. In fact, the aspiration length after the burst of the stop wasmore onlyimportance of secondary importance. Beyond the aspiration, present, the consonant. following vowel would have in the anticipatory preparation found in ifthe preceding This phenomenon is called coarticulation (Olive 1993, 36). The shape, height, and amplitude of the frequency components of the burst were the most significant features that could be compared to the same phenomenon in the spectrograms of the music. The length of time from the beginning of the burst to the onset of any formant start of the vowel was measured for the Voice-Onset-Time or VOT (Olive, 81-82). The same parameters used in the speech measurements were used for the music measurements, Music-Onset-Time (MOT). Microsoft Excel was used to create spreadsheets to catalog each utterance of /t/, /d/, /k/, and /g/ for VOT. The same was done with the initial attacks in the music (MOTs). At the time of this presentation, an ANOVA had not yet been completed.  Adobe  Audition was used to create the voice-onset time and music-onset time tables. Soundscope was used to make the spectra. One of the problems in the design of the tools used in the experiment was in both the sentence construction and the choice of music excerpts. No English sentence contained a /d/-initial word. Not all vowels combinations were used in all the languages for CV. The music excerpts did not contain enough silences so that the jet stream carrying the sound wave could disappear before the appearance of next articulation. While one could hear the articulation, the amplitude of the sound wave was high enough (or too loud) that it continued past the time of the ensuing burst. It is a problem for the experimenter, experimenter, CIM05, Montréal, 10-12/03/2005 10-12/03/2005 

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Linda Landeros LAMKIN not for the player. When the sound continues in that manner, the flutist has achieved true control of the air stream in terms of maximizing resonance of the tube a vocal tract combination in producing flute tone. There were much fewer measurements able to be made in the music samples. The appearance of the stops /t, d, k, g/ on the spectrograms is small compared to the exquisitely shaped vowels, sometimes very faint (low amplitude), and appears very high in the frequency range, and usually well above the second and third formants or above three kilohertz (kHz). In Zaki B. Nossair and Stephen A. Zahorian’s examination of acoustic features for initial stop consonants, they find that a consistent presentation of a stop consonant is an elusive target in speech recognition research analysis they “The identification acoustic research,” correlates (Nossair, for stop consonants remainswhen one of thewrote: most challenging problemsofin invariant acoustic-phonetic Saki B. and Stephen A. Zahorian 1991, 2978). The most important part of the stop is the burst for the study of flute articulation. In speech recognition “The burst onset appears to be the critical timing point in the signal,” (Nossair, Saki B. and Stephen A. Zahorian 1991, 2989). More importantly, in another study, the “burst provided very reliable information about stop place since listeners identified correctly 87% of the stops, without a priori   knowledge knowledge of the following vowel… Performance however was context-dependent,” (Bonneau, A., L. Djezzar, and Y. Laprie 1996. 555). The burst provides important information that can be difficult to see on spectrograms. For the purposes of this presentation the author provided a study of alveolar stops of Subject 42 to demonstrate the wide variability in pronouncing /t/’s and /d/’s. Sound files are provided of each sentence spoken using the target words. The sentences listed below are the ones used in the study of alveolar stops.  

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Dutch sentence for tafel : Een delegatie van dreihondertachtendertig peodels zit rond een gammele, gedekte t a fel  delicatessen te proeven.  English translation of Dutch sentence for tafel :

A delegation of 338 poodles sits around a wobbly set table t able to sample delicatessen. [Insert Sound File 42 Dutch tafel.aiff.wav (LAMKIN_L_2) here.]

 

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Dutch Sentence for d i s c o t h eek  : Nadat de ganster de garderobe van een d i s c o t h eek    leeggestolen heft, stapt hij met zijn viola da gamba in een wachtende taxi.  English translation of Dutch sentence for discotheek : When a gangster has robbed the cloakroom of a disco, he gets into a waiting taxi with his viola da gamba. [Insert Sound File 42 Dutch discotheek.aiff.wav (LAMKIN_L_1) here.] French sentence for dig nité and for t êt e :  Avec dig nité , le vieux professor dodelinait de la téte   aux sons de deux instruments discordants, parce que l’exercise didactique du xylophone et de la guitare était difficile.   tête English With dignity, translation the old of French professor sentence shookfor his head : gently at the sounds of the two discordant instruments, because the instructive exercise of the xylophone and the guitar was difficult. [Insert Sound File 42 French dignité tête.aiff.wav (LAMKIN_L_4) here.]

 

English sentence for took  and  and for today : I and my fiddle took  two  two taxis today  to  to go to school.   [Insert Sound File 42 English took today.aiff.wav (LAMKIN_L_3) here.]

 

German sentence for T ü c k e  and for d e n :1 

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 The reader is correct in that the sound files for Tücke and for den appear to be or sound the same. They are not. They are of two different iterations. The word Tücke  was stated in the second iteration of the sentence in the speech recordings. It was a better choice between the two iterations of the word Tücke. The word den was from the first iteration of the same German sentence and the number 2 after the word, den, represents that it is the second den in the sentence. In the original catalogs of subject, sentences, words, and music, the name of the sound wave file reflected the numbering schema. CIM05, Montréal, 10-12/03/2005 10-12/03/2005 

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Linda Landeros LAMKIN Mit List und T ü c k e   schwang der tolle Xaver das Ruder und traf den doofen Türken, der nun über seine x-Beine stolperte und in d e n  Tümpel fiel. English translation of German sentence for Tücke and den: With a sly mind, the mad (insane) Xaver swung the paddle and hit the stupid Turk, who now stumbled over his own knock-kneed stance and fell into the pond.  [Insert Sound File 42 German Tücke.aiff.wav (LAMKIN_L_6) here.] [Insert Sound File 42 German den2.aiff.wav (LAMKIN_L_5) here.]

Spectrograms  of the words as well as accompanying sound files are provided.

Please see Figure 1. A Study of Alveolar Stops [Please insert Figure 1.] Spectrograms  of the words as well as accompanying sound files are provided.

Please see Figure 1. A Study of Alveolar Stops [Please insert Figure 1.] Sound File Names: 1.  42 Dutch discotheek.aiff.wav (LAMKIN_L_1) (LAMKIN_L_1) 2.  42 Dutch tafel.aiff.wav (LAMKIN_L_2) 3.  42 English took today.aiff.wav (LAMKIN_L_3) 4.  42 French tête dignitê.aiff.wav (LAMKIN_L_4) 5.  42 German den2.aiff.wav (LAMKIN_L_5) 6.  42 German tücke.aiff.wav (LAMKIN_L_6) [Please insert the listed sound files here.] Acoustic study of the eight words revealed that the /t/’s exhibit a wider range of frequencies than

the /d/’s, although the French /t/ and /d/ are remarkably similar except for the French /d/’s lowest formant which the French /t/ does not have. Each subject had a remarkable variation of VOTs within the /t/ and within the /d/ of his/her own L1 and within L2 if he/she spoke another language. In this case, Subject 42’s French VOT range for each of /t/ and /d/ was much smaller, as compared to the other languages the subject spoke. The sound had much more of a chance to be consistent in French than in Dutch, English, or German. French is a syllable-timed language, where as the others are stress-timed languages. Another added piece of the puzzle is that the “French /t/ are dental consonants, whereas English /t/ are alveolar consonants,” (Bonneau, A., L. Djezzar, and Y. Laprie 1996, 564). The salient features of the “stop bursts can be decomposed in the following successive segments: the transient, the fricative segment which contains frication noise, and the aspirative segment,” although the “aspirative segment is generally absent from French bursts,” (Bonneau, A., L. Djezzar, and Y. Laprie 1996, 564). One may ask why the /d/ was matched, when the /t/ had higher amplitude. It is possible that while the /t/ has more energy, the other factors of frequency, length of time of occurrence, as well as lack of aspiration could account for a better match. Bonneau, Diezzar, and Lapire’s research indicate that “dentals are less intense than alveolars,” and “the amplitude cue could be less reliable for dentals than for alveolars,” (Bonneau, A., L. Djezzar, and Y. Laprie 1996, 564). The choice of vowel is important because the “burst conveys information about the identity of the following vowel,” (Bonneau, A., L. Djezzar, and Y. Laprie 1996, 563). The results of the study by Bonneau, et al., “showed that the identity of the following vowel influenced the identification of the stop place, thus confirming the existence of a phonetic influence on feature identification,” (Bonneau, A., L. Djezzar, and Y. Laprie 1996, 563). It is possible that the shape of Subject 42’s vocal tract while playing the flute mirrors that of when the subject says /i/, following the /d/ for coarticulatory reasons. For these reasons, the word dignité was chosen to demonstrate correlation with the Subject 42’s flute articulation. The music recording of Subject 42 was examined for articulatory presentations. The written music example is shown below in Figure 2. [Please insert Figure 2 here.] The first note of the excerpt was used in the analysis of the flute sound. Please see Figure 3. SUBJECT 42: /d/ of “dignité” (French) vs G4 of Mendelssohn with Power Spectra.

[Please insert Figure 3 here.] Sound File Name: 7.  Mot42Mn.aiff.wav (LAMKIN_L_7) [Please insert the sound file here.] CIM05, Montréal, 10-12/03/2005 10-12/03/2005 

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Linda Landeros LAMKIN

The researchers, Bruno H. Repp and Hwei-Bing Lin studied “Acoustic properties and perception of stop consonant release transients,” in which the subject of their experiment was a native German speaker who had spoken almost exclusively English for the preceding eighteen years, who still had an accent (Repp, Bruno H and Hwei-Bing Lin 1989, 379-396). The most important part of the /d/ or /t/, according to them, is the burst (Repp, Bruno H. and Hwei-Bing Lin 1989, 380): The most consonantal part, then, should be the initial release transient ,  , which represents the impulse response of the vocal tract to the sudden pressure release (the “explosion”). … According to acoustic immediately theory, the spectrum of the transient contain reflecting thethe vocal tract resonances after the release. Since theshould excitation is sopeaks brief and uniform, transient  provides essentially an acoustic snapshot of the vocal tract   (Repp, Bruno H. and Hwei-Bing Lin 1989, 380).

Even though a clear vowel shape cannot be seen in the spectrogram of the flute playing, the transient is isolated and very clear: “If transients could somehow be isolated, they might provide excellent information about the state of the vocal tract immediately after the release, especially with regard to the extent of its preparation for the following vowel (i.e., anticipatory coarticulation).” (Repp, Bruno H. and Hwei-Bing Lin 1989, 381). The two initial transients, t ransients, that of /d/ in dignité and the first note of the beginning of the music excerpt show a correlation in the envelope of the power spectra, a phonetic match, as well as a correlation in the envelope of the harmonic spectra, a perceptual match. As with the Bonneau, A., L. Djezzar, and Y. Laprie 1996 study, the Bruno H. Repp and Hwei-Bing Lin study foresaw that: [Initial stop consonants] consonants] consist of three distinguishable distinguishable phases phases:: an initial transient, a fricative segment, and an aspirative segment. The transient represents the response of the vocal tract to the impulse of the sudden while pressure the and fricative segment segment results from turbulence generated at the constriction it is release; still narrow; the aspirative reflects a glottal noise source that replaces the frication as the constriction is widened. These phases overlap in natural speech and cannot be easily separated in the waveform. …It is likely that, even within the short time span of a 10 to 30-ms release burst, there is considerable acoustic structure and dynamic spectral change. As the oral constriction widens rapidly, the release burst becomes increasingly “vocalic” and less “consonantal.” (p. 380) 

Here is the perceptual value of of this information: flute articulation and quality of so sound und are directly correlated with the way the flutist speaks.

Design Improvements The experiment design would benefit from many improvements. Initially, the tools of the experiment, the sentences and the music, need to contain a more precise load for eliciting clearer compar comparison. ison. The CV inventory could have been more strictly adhered to so that, for instance, there would be a wordinitial /d/ in English. When the author spoke with the various contributors of sentences in the different languages, the emphasis emphasis was on /t/ and on on /u/. A better syllable library for the contributors from which to work would have been more ideally suited to make up for the missing combinations. The music choices were too long and did not contain enough silences to allow the articulation to be prevalent in the recordings. Perhaps beginning etudes would be more conducive to elicit a higher percentage of beginning sounds. Other articulation exercises, such as Moyse’s principle articulation exercise in De La Sonorité would have been a better choice (Moyse 1934, 16). The questions on the questionnaire pertaining to L2 fluency should be parsed out to delineate the elements of speaking, reading, and writing. The author attempted to accommodate the flute professors’ requests to not interrupt the students’ schedules in recording in the room immediately adjacent to the regular master class room. The air conditioner was very loud in the room, and may have contributed to the poor recording quality of some of the subjects’ contributions. Perhaps recording in a performance hall or a sound studio elsewhere in the building would be a better choice for future experiments. Using a minidisk player, instead of the analog tape recorder would vastly speed up the process of being able to see the data on the sound analysis software. The choicecalled of sound analysis software needstoto operate be re-evaluated. The University of Lund in Sweden has Pratt  software   that may be easier than SoundScope . There is other measuring CIM05, Montréal, 10-12/03/2005 10-12/03/2005 

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Linda Landeros LAMKIN equipment with significantly higher cost used by professionals in other fields that may be more sensitive to the pressure wave captured by the microphone. In this study, the author looked at the measurement of the sound pressure wave as it exited the flute embouchure hole as recorded by the microphone to compare data with that of the player’s speech. In a study by J. Epps, J. R. Smith, and J. Wolfe, “acoustic resonances of the vocal tract using a non-invasive technique (real-time acoustic vocal tract excitation or RAVE) were measured that involves exciting the vocal tract just outside the lip with a broadband acoustic current source and suppressing the speech signal component of the measured pressure spectrum, (Epps, J., J. R. Smith, and J. Wolfe 1997). In other words they used the inversion of this experiment. The device outside the mouth pushed the sound pressure wave into the vocal tract to excite the vocal cords to measure activity. One suggestion Dr. Robert Port, Professor of Linguistics at Indiana University, and world authority on phonetics made, was to insert a small tube into i nto the side of the flutist’s mouth to measure the pressure changes in the back of the vocal tract. The pressure changes would indicate more information about the CV combination. N. H. Fletcher, an Australian acoustics pioneer, broke ground in 1975 when he did use a small tube in his vibrato measurement measurement experiment: “the air pressure in the player’s player’s mouth was measured using a 1-mm catheter tube inserted into one corner of the lip opening,” (Fletcher 1975, 233). Isabelle Cossette and C. William Thorpe did attempt measuring flute playing qualities with other measuring devices on or near the flutist: Five professional flutists, playing on the same flute, performed four well-known pieces of the flute repertoire in invasive and noninvasive conditions. The invasive condition consisted of apparatus on the flute head joint to measure the jet velocity and lip aperture, and trans-nasal catheters to measure respiratory pressures. The acoustic output of the flute was recorded and characterized by measuring the fundamental frequency and relative magnitudes of the harmonics. The results did not show any significant change in the acoustic parameters overall, although several subjects exhibited some differences (