Srdečně zveme na přednášku Mapping Vocal Expression: The Acoustic Drivers Behind How We Sing.

Kdy: pátek 12. 6. 2026 od 13:30

Kde: hlavní budova FF UK, místnost P016

The voice is a fundamental form of human communication. While speech comprises the majority of our vocal production, voice is also central in musical expression. In both contexts, our ability to recognize expressive meaning relies on the perception of timbre (aka, tone color), shaped by spectral properties of the voice. Our study aims to identify spectral properties of the singing voice to better understand how expressive meanings are communicated vocally. 36 female singers were recruited to perform a set of simple melodies using 36 different instructions across 3 categories – 12 affective, 12 metaphorical and 12 descriptive. These instructions were based on adjectives commonly used to describe voices. By stripping away individual vocal baselines, we discovered that singers share an ‚acoustic recipe book.‘ Whether they are told to sound, for instance, ‚Angry‘ (affective), ‚Firm‘ (metaphorical), or ‚Harsh‘ (descriptive), they navigate the same spectral dimensions – primarily driven by a small set of features including Alpha Index, Spectral Entropy, and the Spectral Moments two to four – to create ‚Acoustic Synonyms‘. In this talk, we will take a tour through the acoustic landscape of expressive vocalisation.

Přednášející:

Oliver Tab Bellmann earned a bachelor’s in music design from the Trossingen University of Music and a master’s in musicology from the University of Cologne. He is currently pursuing his doctorate as a fellow of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (DOC) at the Acoustics Research Institute and the University of Vienna (VDS CoBeNe), focusing on timbre and extended perspectives on the biocultural evolution of musicality and music. In his free time, he sings with the Wiener Singverein and the Concert Collegium Wien.

Melina Witt completed her undergraduate studies in Biology at the University of Salzburg. She then began the Master’s program in Behavioral, Neuro-, and Cognitive Biology at the University of Vienna, which she completed in fall 2024 with a thesis supervised by Dr. Marisa Hoeschele, who is now supervising her PhD. The goal of Melina’s research is to investigate the biological foundations of human musicality through cross-species studies. Her work focuses primarily on the comparative study of how consonant and dissonant tone combinations are perceived. Additionally, Melina is a soprano in Viennese choirs and is pursuing vocal training.

Adléta Hanžlová is a PhD student at the Institute of Phonetics, Charles University. Her doctoral research focuses on the spectral characteristics of the singing voice. Recently, Adléta has completed a research stay at the Acoustics Research Institute in Vienna, where she collaborated with Tab and Melina on a study of singing voice timbre. She is also pursuing a degree in voice pedagogy with the Voice Study Centre, University of Essex.