Subject: VOQUAL: A workshop on voice perceptual attributes From: Jean-Sylvain Lienard <jean-sylvain.lienard(at)LIMSI.FR> Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2003 13:09:18 +0100Dear List, A workshop on the perceptual attributes of voice ("voice quality") is being organized at the University of Geneva in August 2003. One of its most interesting features is that a common voice material is proposed to all the participants, in order to compare approaches and tools. See below the complete announcement. -- Jean-Sylvain Liénard LIMSI-CNRS : BP 133 91403 Orsay Cedex tél 33 1 69 85 81 13 fax 33 1 69 85 80 88 E-mail jean-sylvain.lienard(at)limsi.fr -- ***************************************************** VOICE QUALITY: FUNCTIONS, ANALYSIS AND SYNTHESIS GENEVA - AUGUST 27-29, 2003 ISCA Tutorial and Research Workshop International Speech Communication Association CALL FOR PARTICIPATION LOCATION AND DATES University of Geneva, Department of Psychology 27-29 August 2003 (week before EUROSPEECH'03) Submissions due: May 2, 2003 Notification of Acceptance: June 16, 2003 Deadline for Final Papers: June 30, 2003 Deadline for Regular Registration: June 30, 2003 Workshop: August 27-29, 2003 AIMS Until recently, voice quality and its functions in speech communication has been only marginally considered in the speech communication community. However, there is today some evidence that voice quality settings and voice quality modulations are playing a central role in human voice-based communication, i.e. speech, singing and other kinds of expressive vocalizations. Voice quality: a prosodic feature ? ---------------------------------- A challenging problem is the relationship between voice quality and prosody. Prosodic parameters are usually restricted to pitch, duration, pauses and some sort of intensity parameter. Voice quality is not usually considered in the prosodic field, which is more focused on intonation, accentuation and rhythm. However, synthesis of expressive speech has demonstrated that convincing natural sounding results are impossible to obtain without dealing with voice quality parameters. Voice quality: a support for emotions ? ----------------------------------------- Vocal expression of emotions and attitudes is one of the main domains of interest for this workshop. Although it has been studied for a long time in psychology, it can be considered as an emerging research domain not only for speech recognition and synthesis, but also for speech coding and other areas of speech communication. What definition for voice quality ? ----------------------------------- Voice quality is still a rather fuzzy concept: what is the timbre of a voice? How to measure and quantify vocal effort? What are the domains of variation of everyday speech? What are the physical and perceptive correlates of voice quality? What are the relationships between voice quality and others aspects of prosody? These matters and others will be addressed in the workshop, which aims at gathering together people involved in voice quality research in the fields including (but not limited to) speech communication, psychology, voice physiology and pathology, voice and singing pedagogy. Test your approach on a common voice material. ! ---------------------------------------------- An active approach to the workshop will be encouraged. Therefore, a common voice material (speech and singing voice) will be provided on the workshop website (http://www.limsi.fr/VOQUAL/voicematerial.html). Tentative participants will be asked to take this material into account when preparing their contributions to the workshop and their paper proposals. We hope that this common material will help us for presentation and discussion of our methods for voice quality analysis and synthesis, of our models of voice quality perception and voice quality description, of our analyses of voice quality functions in human communication. TOPICS * Analysis of voice quality * synthesis of voice quality * signal processing of voice quality * physical modeling of voice quality * automatic recognition of voice quality * voice quality aspects of prosody * prosodic aspects of voice quality * expressive speech * singing and other kinds of non-speech expressive vocalizations * vocal correlates of emotions and attitudes * acoustics and phonetics of vocal effort and everyday speech * perception of voice quality * physiology and pathology of voice quality * other topics related to voice quality functions, analysis and synthesis TUTORIALS The first day of the workshop will be a Tutorials Day. Four tutorials will be given by renowned experts of the domain and discussed by the audience on the following topics: Signal processing for voice quality processing ---------------------------------------------- Paavo Alku, Helsinki University, Finland: "Different parameterization methods of the glottal flow estimated by inverse filtering" Voice quality and the singing voice ----------------------------------- Janice Chapman, London, UK Physical modeling of voice and voice quality ------------------------------------------- Brad Story, University of Arizona, USA Phonetics and measurements of voice quality ------------------------------------------ Adrian Fourcin, University College, London, UK SUBMISSION Submission requirements ------------------------ Full papers of 4-6 pages in length are to be submitted by May 2nd, 03. Authors will be allowed to make changes based on reviewers suggestions before submitting the final versions of the papers for publication. Proceedings ----------- Workshop proceedings will be available upon registration at the conference center and subsequently on the workshop web site. Language -------- The official language of the workshop will be English. ISCA ---- A small number of grants covering registration and possibly cheap accommodation costs will be offered to students and young scientists to attend the workshop. The International Speech Communication Association (ISCA) is a non-profit organization for promoting Speech Communication Science and Technology internationally. For membership and other information, please contact the ISCA secretariat at: c/o Institut fuer Kommunikationsforschung und Phonetik Universitaet Bonn Poppelsdorfer Allee 47 D-53115 Bonn, Germany Fax: (+49) 228-735639 Email: info(at)isca-speech.org http://www.isca-speech.org/ COMMITTEES Organizing Committee -------------------- * Christophe d'ALESSANDRO, LIMSI-CNRS, Orsay, France * Klaus SCHERER, University of Geneva , Switzerland * Nick CAMPBELL, ATR, Kyoto, Japan * Boris DOVAL, LIMSI-CNRS, Orsay, France * Nathalie HENRICH, LAM, Paris, France * David SANDER, University of Geneva , Switzerland * Blandine MOURON, University of Geneva , Switzerland International Scientific Committee ---------------------------------- * Paavo Alku, Helsinki University, Finland * Veronique Auberge, ICP, Grenoble, France * Gerrit Bloothooft, Utrecht University, The Netherlands * Noel Chateau, France Telecom, Lannion, France * Maria-Gabriella Di Benedetto, Roma University, Italy * Thierry Dutoit, Faculte Polytechnique, Mons, Belgium * Adrian Fourcin, University College, London, UK * Daniel Hirst, LPL, Aix-en-Provence, France * Hideki Kasuya, Utsunomiya University, Japan * Hideki Kawahara, Wakayama University, Japan * Jody Kreiman, University of California at Los Angeles, USA * Jean-Sylvain Lienard, LIMSI-CNRS, Orsay, France * Parham Mokhtari, JST-CREST, HIS-ATR, Tokyo, Japan * Ailbhe NED Chasaide, CLCS, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland * Peter Pabon, Utrecht University, The Nederlands * Kenneth Stevens, MIT, Cambridge, USA * Jan Svec, The Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Denver, USA * Sten Ternstrom, KTH, Sweden Supported by ------------ * SynSIG * SProSIG * SFA (Societe Francaise d'Acoustique) * AFCP (Association Francophone de la Communication Parlee) * other societies forthcoming REGISTATION AND ACCOMMODATION Registration ------------- Registration will be opened in April 2003. Workshop fee ------------- Regular fee (until June 30) 200 EUROS Late registration (after June 30) 250 EUROS Student fee (until June 30) 100 EUROS Late student fee (after June 30) 150 EUROS The workshop fee includes admission to the sessions, CD-ROM, coffees, lunches, and a banquet dinner. Paper proceedings will be available at an extra cost of 30 Euros per copy. Students must present a verification of their university affiliation and student status at the workshop in order to be entitled to the reduced conference fee. The fees do not include personal Insurance: participants are advised to make their own arrangements regarding travel insurance and medical assistance during the Workshop. Accommodation ------------- Participants are asked to manage their own accommodation in Geneva. A limited number of rooms for student accomodation are available at the "Cite universitaire" : http://www.unige.ch/cite-uni Please contact directly the "Cite universitaire" by Email for reservation. Email : cite-uni(at)unige.ch A list of hotels in the vicinity of the University will be provided soon. For hotel information and on-line reservation, please contact directly the Geneva tourist office http://www.geneve-tourisme.ch. Cancellation of Registration ---------------------------- Notification of cancellation must be made in writing and sent to the organizers. Registration cancellations will be accepted until 14 July 2003, up to which date the total amount will be refunded less 50 euro for administrative expenses. For cancellations made after 14 July, 2003 we regret that no refunds can be made. VOICE MATERIAL The following speech and singing databases are at your disposal on the web site of the workshop for any analysis you might find interesting for the workshop. There are 5 databases built to study the great diversity of voice quality that the human voice is able to produce in the case of speech and singing. Speech database 1 (American english) ------------------------------------ * 1 male * Sentence : "She has left for a great party today." * EGG * Author : Christophe d'ALESSANDRO, (c)03, LIMSI-CNRS, France Speech database 2 (Japanese) ----------------------------- * 1 female * Sentences : spontaneous speech, various sentences * Author : Parham MOKHTARI, (c)00-03, ATR, Japan Speech database 3 (French) -------------------------- * 1 female * Sentence : "Il est sorti avant le jour." * Author : Blas PAYRI, (c)1999, LIMSI-CNRS, France Singing database 1 (English) ---------------------------- * 1 male / 2 females, professional singers * Phrase : short extract of the musicals "cats", "belting" technique. * EGG * Author : Nathalie HENRICH, (c)02, KTH, Stockholm, Sweden Singing database 2 (French) --------------------------- * 1 counter-tenor * Sentence : "Vos mepris chaque jour." * EGG * Author : Nathalie HENRICH, (c)01, LIMSI-CNRS/LAM, France ***************************************************************