BVA
Awards and Prizes
The Van Lawrence Prize
Van L Lawrence was an outstanding American otolaryngologist who was known and admired by all those specialising in voice. To honour his contribution to the voice world in the UK, the BVA has instituted an award in his name to be offered biannually, provided there are sufficient applicants of a suitable standard.
The British Voice Association is pleased to announce that the Van Lawrence Prize 2008 was awarded to Jude Brereton and David Howard, from the Department of Electronics, University of York for their paper “The Effect of Different Acoustic Environments on Singing Voice Performance”. We offer our congratulations to them and wish them well for their future work.
The Van Lawrence Award took place at the BVA Research Day which was held at the Institute of Education in London on 22nd of February, 2008. The Award Committee were delighted to receive 8 papers to consider this year and would very much like to thank all those who submitted papers and encourage them to continue with their research.
The next Van Lawrence Award will be offered in 2010
The following abstract, from the 2008 winning submission, is published courtesy of Jude Brereton and David Howard:
The Effect of Different Acoustic Environments on Singing Voice Performance
Jude S Brereton and David M Howard
Audio Lab. Department of Electronics, University of York, YO10 5DD
The acoustics of the performance space is one of the most important factors in singing performance. However, the effect of the acoustic environment on the singing voice has not yet been systematically investigated. A professional singer, asked to perform in a variety of venues, has to constantly adapt many aspects of their performance such as tempo, vibrato, dynamics and articulation of the text as well as aspects of voice production, over which the singer may have less direct control, such as vocal fold function and the resulting spectral balance of the sound.
This paper describes a recent investigation of performance, voice source and spectral characteristics of the singing voice in two very different acoustic environments: the Chapter House of York Minster, and an acoustically treated hemi-anechoic chamber at the University of York. Recordings of speech, vocal tasks and a prepared piece were made in the two acoustic environments by two experienced singers, one female, one male. The output waveform from an electrolaryngograph (Lx) was also recorded to enable analysis of the larynx closed quotient and the fundamental frequency.
Analysis of the recorded data indicates that the singers produced lower voice amplitude level and used less efficient vocal fold function in the anechoic environment. Singers also reported that singing in the anechoic environment was “harder work” and resulted in difficulty maintaining good intonation and a pleasing voice quality especially in the higher and lower extremes of the voice range.
Jude Brereton is a Research Assistant in the Audio Lab. Department of Electronics, University of York. Since 2003 she has worked on two AHRC funded collaborative projects: “VoxED: towards meaningful application of technology in the singing studio” and “Exploring the Effect of Musical context on Vibrato Pitch”. She was coordinator of the EPSRC research network “Netvotech: technology and the healthy human voice in performance” and currently coordinates the EPSRC funded “SpACE-Net: the spatial audio creative engineering network” Her research interests include singing voice and acoustics, real-time visual feedback for singing training and the relationship between speech and singing.
Click here to read more about the Van Lawrence Prize (page contains information correct at last publication (2008) - submission criteria and details may be different for future awards).
For further details please contact the BVA at: bva@dircon.co.uk