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The Impact of Vibrato Usage on the Perception of Pitch in Early Music Compared to Grand Opera Helena Daffern, Jude Brereton, David Howard

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The Impact of Vibrato Usage on the Perception of Pitch in Early Music Compared to Grand Opera Helena Daffern, Jude Brereton, David Howard The impact of vibrato usage on the perception of pitch in early music compared to grand opera Helena Daffern, Jude Brereton, David Howard To cite this version: Helena Daffern, Jude Brereton, David Howard. The impact of vibrato usage on the perception ofpitch in early music compared to grand opera. Acoustics 2012, Apr 2012, Nantes, France. hal-00811314 HAL Id: hal-00811314 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00811314 Submitted on 23 Apr 2012 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Proceedings of the Acoustics 2012 Nantes Conference 23-27 April 2012, Nantes, France The impact of vibrato usage on the perception of pitch in early music compared to grand opera H. Daffern, J. Brereton and D. M. Howard University of York, Audio Lab, Electronics department, Heslington, YO10 5DD York, UK helena.daff[email protected] 3949 23-27 April 2012, Nantes, France Proceedings of the Acoustics 2012 Nantes Conference Previous studies on the pitch of long-duration vibrato tones have typically used synthesised modulator tones to assess the perceived pitch in relation to its arithmetic or geometric mean fundamental frequency. In this study a listening test was conducted with expert listener subjects matching recorded vibrato tones sung by professional singers using a method of adjustment and free response paradigm as employed in previous research. Example tones selected from recordings by 16 singers were used in the test, 8 of whom were employed at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and the remaining singers specialised in Early Music Performance. Previous research into vibrato usage by these singers shows a noticeable difference in the use of vibrato between these performance groups, particularly in terms of extent throughout long tones. The impact of these differences in vibrato is assessed in terms of the perception of fundamental frequency in long tones as performed by the two groups of singer. 1 Introduction GHSHQGVPRVWRQWKHHQGVRIWRQHV¶[14]. Van Besouw et al. XVHG D GLIIHUHQW SURWRFRO WR G¶$OHVVDQGUR LQ ZKLFK WKH Vibrato is known to be an important factor in the subject heard a modulated tone of one second before and measure of vocal quality, particularly in Western classical after the tone being tuned by the listener and found that singing. A number of studies in vibrato production of µSarticipants were more influenced by the initial phase of professional opera singers have produced common WKHVHFRQGPRGXODWHGWRQHWKDQWKHHQGSKDVHRIWKHILUVW¶ standards of vibrato rate and extent associated with good [9]. Gockel et al.[15] presented a model based on the rate of singing. A vibrato rate of 5 ± 8 Hz and peak to peak extent frequency change on the overall pitch, based on the theory of up to a tone are generally considered to be indicative of of perceived pitch of vibrato tones corresponding to time good vocal quality [1, 2]. The regularity of the vibrato is weighted aspects of the F0 across a vibrato tone. also significant: based on combined analysis of vibrato Recorded rather than synthesised tones have been used tones with listening tests, Diaz et al. IRXQG µD GLUHFW by Brown et al. [16]: tones of approximately one second relationship between the periodicity of the vibrato wave and played on a viola were used to perform a pitch matching its perceived quality¶[3]. listening test using experienced musician participants. The Vibrato has also been found to have characteristic results were found to be consistent with the synthesised treatments in different genres of classical singing. Daffern experiments using long tones in that participants matched to conducted a study comparing professional singers of grand the mean fundamental frequency. Based on the research of opera compared to professional singers specialising in early Brown et al., Yoo et al. conducted a study using recorded music and found that there were noticeable differences in YLROLQ WRQHV DQG IRXQG WKDW µRQH-second length of vibrato vibrato production between the two groups of singer [4]. In tone is more than enough for subjects to be able to resolve addition to slightly larger average vibrato extent employed WKHWRQHWRLWVPHDQSLWFK¶ [17]. by the opera singers compared to the early music singers, The pitch perception of recorded sung tones rather than there was a noticeable difference in the production of synthesised vowels has not yet been considered in detail, vibrato throughout long tones. The trend was for opera and in particular the effect of different treatments of vibrato singers to begin vibrato production with the onset of a tone, throughout long tones which is commonplace in modern whilst the early music singers would often produce a large classical performance conventions has so far been proportion of the note as an essentially µstraight¶ tone overlooked. before adding vibrato as a stylistic affect. Vibrato studies tend to focus either on the analysis of vibrato produced by real singers, to assess acoustic factors 2 Experiment such as rate, extent, regularity and physical factors such as the production of vibrato by singers [5,6,7,8], or on the 2.1 Listening test perception of vibrato by listeners[9,10,11]. Howes et al. conducted studies which combined vibrato analysis of Participants were required to listen to a set of vibrato recorded sung tones with listening tests, focussing on the tones and tune a second, synthesized straight tone to the OLVWHQHU¶V DHVWKHWLF UHDFWLRQ UDWKHU WKDQ SHUFHSWLRQ RI WKH perceived pitch of the first. A method of adjustment was analysed characteristics of vibrato [2]. Perception studies in used based on the experimental protocol by van Besouw [9] vibrato rely heavily on listening tests and often use but in this case using recorded tones rather than synthesised synthesised tones to allow the many variable features of stimuli. A Contour Designs ShuttleXpress (2003) allowed vibrato to be controlled. listeners to adjust the step size and gradually tune an One important factor of vibrato is the perception of adjustment tone to the pitch of the vibrato tone by rotating pitch associated with a vibrato tone. Research using the wheel in the centre of the shuttle (Figure 1). Whilst in synthesised tones suggests that listeners perceive the mean YDQ %HVRXZ¶V VWXG\ WKH PRGXODWHG YLEUDWR WRQH ZDV fundamental frequency as the pitch of a long vibrato tone. played before and after the adjustment tone. In this However, Sundberg [12] found evidence that the linear experiment the modulated tone was played only once, average of the fundamental frequency contour was before the straight tone. This sequence (vibrato ± straight significant, whilst Shonle & Horan [13] found the mean of tone) could be played multiple times until the participant the extreme fundamental frequencies in a vibrato tone to be ZDV VDWLVILHG ZLWK WKH PDWFK $V LQ YDQ %HVRXZ¶V more consistent with perceived pitch. A similar study that experiment the initial frequency of the adjustment tones used short-duration vibrato tones of 0.5 to 2 vibrato cycles was 15 ± 20% above or below the centre frequency of the IRXQG WKH IXQGDPHQWDO WR µFRUUHVSRQG WR D ZHLJKWHG WLPH vibrato tone (in this case C5), which is the written pitch of DYHUDJH RI WKH ) SDWWHUQ¶ DQG QRW WKH PHDQ RI WKH the recorded tone. frequency of the peaks, they a OVR IRXQG WKDW WKH µSLWFK 3950 Proceedings of the Acoustics 2012 Nantes Conference 23-27 April 2012, Nantes, France S1 ALL 100 0 Cents -100 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 Time (secs) beg mid end 100 0 Cents -100 0 1 0 1 0 1 Time (secs) Time (secs) Time (secs) Figure 1: Diagram of the shuttle device used to play, tune and accept adjustment tones Adapted from van Besouw [9] S2 ALL 100 The tones were presented in a random order to the 0 participants over Beyer Dynamic DT100 Headphones. Each Cents tone was presented twice, with the adjustment tone above -100 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 0 1 and below the mean F0 of the vibrato tone. Participants Time (secs) were able to adjust the volume and were encouraged to take beg mid end breaks when needed. The number of repetitions before a 100 match was made and the time taken for each match was 0 also recorded. Any difficulties in pitch matching specific Cents -100 0 1 0 1 0 1 tones were reported to the experimenter during the test. The Time (secs) Time (secs) Time (secs) experiment was conducted in the Listening Room of the Audio Lab at the University of York. S4 ALL 100 2.2 Vibrato tones 0 Cents -100 The first note of HDQGHO¶Vµ2PEUD0DL)X¶ZDVVHOHFWHG 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 Time (secs) from the recordings made by Daffern [4] which include the beg mid end first section of the aria sung unaccompanied by 16 100 professional singers, eight specialising in opera (O) and 0 eight specialising in early music (EM). Four vibrato tones Cents -100 0 1 0 1 0 1 were selected from the data, two from each group of singers Time (secs) Time (secs) Time (secs) which were idiomatic of the vibrato characteristics for each S3 ALL genre based on the results of the study conducted by Daffern (2008). S1 and S2 represent EM and S3 and S4 the 100 O group. 0 Cents From each selected tone four example tones were -100 created: the note in its entirety as produced by the singer 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 (Sx-ALL); a one second sample taken from the beginning Time (secs) beg mid end of the tone after the onset (Sx-BEG); a one second sample 100 taken from the middle of the tone (Sx-MID); a one second 0 sample taken from the end of the tone before the offset (Sx- Cents -100 0 1 0 1 0 1 END).
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