The British Voice Association

   

A day in the life of... David Howard

Professor in the Department of of Electronics, University of York

Academia is a somewhat strange existence with its mixture of teaching, research and administration. For me at the moment, teaching is off the agenda as I am a Senior Media Fellow funded by the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC) to popularise science with the objective of encouraging more young people into engineering and technology careers.

As part of this Media Fellowship work I have been involved in a number of activities which are not so normal for academics including two TV programs (The Voice shown twice in January 2008 on BBC4, and Castrato shown twice in July 2006 on BBC4 and again on BBC2 in June 2007), Science and Engineering Weeks (2006 on Voice food and drink; 2007 on Human Voice Production Revealed, and in 2008 it will be Warning Sounds of the Railway in the National Railway Museum in York – for train fans I shall have the whistle from the Flying Scotsman on the stand which I am hoping to be sounding at regular intervals!

I have also been involved in a session on How Scientists Work for Primary School Teachers and on Science and The Media for Secondary School Teachers at the National Science Learning Centre in York, school science events on music technology and voice, four one-day visits each year to village primary schools in North Yorkshire where there is little or no music to bring live singing from our vocal trio Voice Matters as part of the Music for Life cheme run by Sowerby parish church and funded by benefaction, and appearances at the British Association Festival in 2007 in York where much media attention was gained discussion the possible threat of Vocal Terrorism. Alongside planning and running these activities as well as looking for new opportunities in relation to the Fellowship, research and administration work continue and I am a regular contributor to the BVA Road Show to Music Colleges around the UK.

The most novel day in the life work recently has been with television filming. I was the presenter for The Voice, and it started with a telephone call and then a half day filming as a screen test to be the presenter. After funding was granted, I had a meeting with the producer, Andrew Hutton to discuss the content which we decided between us. I first met Rory Bremner prior to a Voice Research Society (forerunner of the BVA itself) day at which he was speaking, to add a scientific side. It struck me then that even when he sounded like the person he was imitating the spectrograms (a picture of approximately what each ear send to the brain) were not identical (I had assumed they would be). I suggested we looked at this in more detail in The Voice, along with Jeremy Hardy’s singing (his singing one song to the tune of another on Radio 4’s I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue is truly awful) and Ingo Titze’s Pavarobotti singing synthesizer and animal larynxes in Denver.

These ideas were all taken up for the program. It was during this initial discussion that the produced also asked me if he could organise me a haircut and an outfit to wear for filming – this was fine by me! The filming experiences were quite something else – I really loved it. There was no script except for the voice over at the end, and I was able to chat to people and structure the interviews myself as I went along. We filmed a sequence in a car – the casually driving along speaking to camera scene that is quite common. In the end this was not used, but having done it, I can report that it is far from casual – there is a large camera on the bonnet, the camera person in the front seat, the producer crouched down in the back seat with a monitor and the sound person in the boot (of an estate car), and I had to drive up sun without the sun visor (for lighting) at between 25 and 30mph so the driving speed did not appear to be too slow or fast. I also conducted an octet at the end of the program with soloists Alfie Boe, Jackie Dankworth and Annette Bowman – for me this was very special as it combined on TV, my professional work, with my music making. As a very personal feature, my daughter appeared in The Voice and my son appeared in Castrato, both as York Minster choristers.

The filming work for these two programs has resulted in some extremely varied special days in my life (there were around 25 full days of filming for The Voice), and I treat every day as a new one. Multidisciplinary work on the voice, singing and music has so many aspects – it is wonderful to be able to explore them as much as possible. I also give healthy voice use sessions within the university about four times a year with a colleague who trained as an actor, because so many colleagues and graduate students complain of voice problems when lecturing or giving conference papers – this is now recognised by the staff development section. There have also been opportunities to become involved in forensic acoustics work, including in recent years the Who wants to be a Millionaire trial.

I have also been able to get a co-authored book (with Damian Murphy – a York colleague who is expert in recording) out in December 2007 titled Voice Science, Acoustics and Recording (Plural Press), which captures some of the scientific aspects as well as practical tips for vocal performers of voice production, the effects of room acoustics on vocal performance and how to make a high quality voice recording.

Above all, every day in all our lives is about communication. What I find especially wonderful in mine it that I can spend time on the multi disciplinary aspects of our three key communication channels, speaking, music making and singing.