The Correlation Analysis of Vocal Speech as a Nonstationary Random Process
Abstract
The Correlation Analysis of Vocal Speech as a Nonstationary Random Process
Incoming article date: 25.09.2013Vocal speech is a random process. Taking into account the fact that the main characteristics of a singing voice vary with time, in the article vocal speech is studied as an acoustic nonstationary random process. To describe this process we should calculate one of its informative parameters – the autocorrelation function. The findings show that there are some differences between the autocorrelation functions for professional and nonprofessional singers. This helps to make a quantitative assessment of a singer’s professionalism which, alongside with a vocal teacher’s subjective assessment, can present an objective view on a singer’s voice and provide a good basis for optimization of academic voice training. Moreover a teacher does not have to be technically educated because this quantitative assessment is presented in diagrams which are quite easy to assess visually. It is especially important to consider when we use the given voice assessing method in music schools, colleges and universities.
Keywords: Vocal speech, acoustic signal, nonstationary random process, autocorrelation function, the maximum autocorrelation interval, quantitative assessment