I recently came across an article that describes the duality between time and frequency. In most descriptions of the the topic, the math gets heavy very quickly and it isn’t easy for the dedicated reader to keep up. This article is interesting because it attempts to keep the discussion in a more subjective domain.

I found the article a number of months ago when I was searching for a way to take acoustic measurements in less than ideal conditions. Richard Heyser pioneered Time Delay Spectrometry, a method that can eliminate the influence of room reflections from audio measurements. I didn’t expect to find a number of articles, also by Heyser, about modeling subjectivity in audio. I ordered the anthology of his work and found his discussions fascinating. (You can find the anthology further down this page.)

If you are interested in frequency and the nature of the Fourier transform, but haven’t managed to get much out of it, I recommend that you check it out. The article was originally published in Audio magazine which quit operating in 2000. If you find the article interesting, I highly recommend that you order the anthology too.

I should have posted this a while ago, but while I was at MAGIC, I did some work on finding an appropriate mapping between hand locations in space and vowel formant frequencies. If you’re interested, you can download the poster.

The project that I’m currently working on has been written up in Maclean’s magazine. The DIVA performer in the image above is Marguerite Witvoet.

Academic Collaborators:

• Sid Fels, MAGIC, HCT Laboratory, UBC
• Bob Pritchard, MAGIC, School of Music, UBC

While working for TC-Helicon, I developed an audio effect to convert singing voices into the sound of a choir. For example, starting from four harmony voices (mp3 wav), the effect multiplies the apparent number of voices, resulting in a choir effect (mp3 wav).

This effect is included in one of TC-Helicon’s latest products, the VoiceLive 2. You can find another sample of the choir effect in action in the sidebar of the VoiceLive 2 web page.

Project

My PhD research started in collaboration with IVL Technologies and TC-Helicon, two voice processing companies in Victoria. TC-Helicon produces vocal effects products for the music industry with a focus on pitch correction and automatic harmony creation. IVL produces hand held karaoke products that produce a variety of vocal effects while being plugged into a TV. In recent years, vocal effects have become more common including chorus based effects and even distortion.

The goal of the research was to enhance a digital effect that adds noise to a voice to simulate breathiness. If a voice already sounds breathy, it is easy to add noise to increase the perception of breathiness. However, it is difficult to add noise to voices that exhibit high-effort (i.e. when the voice sounds strained). The added noise does not blend into the voice and instead sounds like a separate stream of noise. In my research, I developed a technique to adaptively manipulate the perception of vocal effort. This enabled the added noise to blend more effectively, thereby improving the breath effect.

An important outcome of this research is to highlight the fact that Linear Prediction (LP) (a common voice modeling technique) does not appropriately model the voice. I presented Adaptive Pre-emphasis Linear Prediction (APLP) as a technique to appropriately compensate for variations in vocal effort.

Academic and Industry Collaborators

• Peter Driessen, MISTIC, Electrical Engineering, UVic
• George Tzanetakis, MISTIC, Computer Science, UBC
• Glen Rutledge, 3dB Research (previously at TC-Helicon and IVL Audio)
• Kevin Alexander, TC-Helicon
• Brian Gibson, IVL Audio
• John Esling, Linguistics
• Mathieu Lagrange, MISTIC, Computer Science

Publications

• papers
• dissertation

Original voice:
I started with this sound sample: wav. With this kind of voice, it is difficult to add breathiness in a way that sounds natural.

Breath effect with constant pre-emphasis linear prediction (LP):
Constant pre-emphasis LP was carried out, noise was added to the residual, and the voice was resynthesized: wav. This is the technique used in current voice processors to apply a breath effect.

Breath effect with APLP:
APLP can be used to transform the spectral envelope of the voice to match that of a typical breathy voice. This reduces the perceived vocal effort and improves the blending of noise into the voice: wav.

Breath effect with APLP and breath modulation:
The amount of breathiness in a voice varies with the amount of effort. As such, it makes sense to add less breathiness during times of excessive effort. The APLP algorithm was further improved by modulating the quantity of added noise according to the quantity of vocal effort: wav.

Now listen to the original voice again.

With the breath effect, some voices work better than others. Here is how the breath effect sounds on another voice:

Original voice: wav.
Breath effect with constant pre-emphasis LP: wav.
Breath effect with APLP: wav.
Breath effect with APLP and breath modulation: wav.

________________
Technical Note:
Previous iterations of the algorithm included glottal closure detection to improve the blending of noise into the voice. Glottal closure detection was eliminated from this iteration of the algorithm. This ensures that the sound samples are representative of what can be achieved on real-time voice signals in a musical context.

I like to analyze and understand everything. However, one of the things that I came to realize is that I don’t understand the writing process. I don’t understand how I convert ideas into words. When I attempt to analyze writing, the writing stops. Analysis may be fine in the later editing stages but I find analysis deadly to the process of synthesizing new text. While writing, I have to force myself let go of my impulse to analyze and to write without trying to write.

I also have a tendency to focus on problems and details. I like to ensure that I have covered every possible issue and exception. As a result, I tend to focus in on problematic details, forgetting the context of the entire work. This results in blockages within the writing process. To reduce my focus on problematic details, I exported notes that I had made out of the main document and into a separate file that I don’t see while writing. I also forced myself to skim the entire work each day to remind myself of the big picture.

Here is my personal list of techniques. Keep in mind that everyone writes differently. While I found these techniques helpful, the same techniques may or may not work for you.

1. Trust that the process of writing will, sooner or later, result in something good. It’s not necessary to understand how ideas are converted into words. Just sit down and write and see what happens. The act of writing is an act of faith and analysis shuts down the writing process.
2. Write what you know and keep it simple. Don’t try to write beyond your knowledge. Just write what you understand and write it as clearly as possible.
3. Keep working on a creative project that generates new content, even if only a little time each day. This creative work will feed into and accelerate the writing process. Writing 100% all day every day leads to burnout.
4. Know that the core ideas meet or exceed the requirements of the final product. This makes the writing go smoothly. You don’t need to understand how ideas are converted into words. You do need to understand the ideas themselves.
5. Realize that other people probably have lower expectations than you do. Don’t aim for perfection. Just write.
6. Gloss over problems and gaps in the main document as though there is no problem at all. Present everything in the best light possible, as though anyone could read it tomorrow and feel like it is complete. If you have to, keep a list of notes in a separate document that you don’t see while writing.
7. Do not put notes in the document. Extra notes create blockages in the writing process as the mind focuses on fixing problems rather than writing. Extra notes also bring problems to the attention of reviewers. This distracts them from the writing that you have already completed. If something is missing, let them bring it to your attention. Keep extra notes in an extra file that you don’t see while writing.
8. Skim the entire work daily. This provides context. It will prevent you from writing in a way that does not fit into the rest of the document.
9. Freely delete low quality material. Holding onto junk text will block the writing process. If you can’t bear deleting, cut and paste that material into a separate document that you won’t see while writing.

   Two more points for techies…

10. If you are using an editor such as latex, make sure that you can easily see, navigate and edit the product in its final form. When reading the final product, you will see things that you cannot see in the editor.
11. Use source control so that you can easily delete or rewrite low quality work throughout the document, knowing that you can always get it back.

These techniques were helpful to me and they may be helpful to you. If you would like more ideas about defeating writing blocks, I highly recommend Understanding Writing Blocks by Keith Hjortshoj.

In manipulating the voice, I am attentive to the particular sound texture of the voice (also known as voice quality). I want to find ways to manipulate that texture without creating something that sounds unnatural. This is very subjective. The voice is a complex instrument and it can create a diversity of sound textures. For example, voice quality has been described with more than thirty different terms as various researchers have attempted to better understand the voice. In my research, I am attempting to translate the subjective perceptions of breathiness and vocal effort into an engineering context where they can be quantified and manipulated. However, my deeper interest is in creating a pleasing sound that matches a subjective ideal.

This search for a particular sound texture in the voice parallels my search for what guitarists call “tone” in playing the guitar. It’s an aesthetic judgment about how good or bad the instrument sounds. It’s possible to analyze this “tone” on a spectrogram and artificially mimic the “tone” of a great guitarist, but ultimately the judgment about “tone” is an artistic judgment made by the listener. In theory, it may be possible to quantify “tone” but the point of creating a “tone” is not to be quantified and controlled. The point in the guitarist having “tone” is to create something aesthetically pleasing. It’s the same with my interest in the sound texture of the voice. I want to create voices that sound aesthetically pleasing.

While I find myself primarily in an engineering context, my motivation is to create sounds that are artistically appreciated. However, it’s not easy to do large transformations that sound natural. The complexity of the voice makes transformation difficult. After all, I’m working with an instrument that has no fixed dimensions. It is easy to make small changes, but most large changes sound bad. The techniques that I have developed are more effective than the prior technology, but there is still a long way to go before large voice transformations sound good. As a result, the artistic side of me is often disappointed. Yes, I find the work interesting, but there is still so far to go.

Here is the original high effort voice.

I want to transform that high-effort voice into this target breathy voice.

If I attempt to transform the high-effort voice by adding artificial aspiration noise while using constant pre-emphasis linear prediction (LP), the transformed voice sounds like this. The voice exhibits more aspiration noise but still retains the perception of high vocal effort.

A breathy effect from a commercial voice processor was also used to add breathiness to a high-effort voice. This LP-based effect uses some additional filtering to shape the voice spectrum and to shape the added aspiration noise. However, the core of the algorithm operates as a constant pre-emphasis LP algorithm.

The presence or absence of aspiration noise is only one of the differences between high-effort and breathy voices. When a voice changes between high-effort and breathiness, the spectral envelope of the voice also changes. High effort voices contain more high-frequency content than the corresponding breathy voices. Constant pre-emphasis LP does not modify the spectral envelope of the voice.

Adaptive pre-emphasis linear prediction (APLP) can be used to change the perceived vocal effort by modifying the spectral envelope of the voice to match the spectral envelope of the breathy voice. After the spectral envelope has been re-shaped, artificial aspiration noise is added. The results vary slightly depending on the order of the spectral emphasis filter that is used to shape the spectral envelope: first-order spectral emphasis filter or third-order spectral emphasis filter.

The transformation is not perfect but APLP results in a transformed high-effort voice that more closely matches the target breathy voice.

The Sons of Mary seldom bother, for they have inherited that good part;
But the Sons of Martha favour their Mother of the careful soul and the troubled heart.
And because she lost her temper once, and because she was rude to the Lord her Guest,
Her Sons must wait upon Mary’s Sons, world without end, reprieve, or rest.

It is their care in all the ages to take the buffet and cushion the shock.
It is their care that the gear engages; it is their care that the switches lock.
It is their care that the wheels run truly; it is their care to embark and entrain,
Tally, transport, and deliver duly the Sons of Mary by land and main.

They say to mountains “Be ye removèd.” They say to the lesser floods “Be dry.”
Under their rods are the rocks reprovèd—they are not afraid of that which is high.
Then do the hill-tops shake to the summit—then is the bed of the deep laid bare,
That the Sons of Mary may overcome it, pleasantly sleeping and unaware.

They finger Death at their gloves’ end where they piece and repiece the living wires.
He rears against the gates they tend: they feed him hungry behind their fires.
Early at dawn, ere men see clear, they stumble into his terrible stall,
And hale him forth like a haltered steer, and goad and turn him till evenfall.

To these from birth is Belief forbidden; from these till death is Relief afar.
They are concerned with matters hidden—under the earthline their altars are—
The secret fountains to follow up, waters withdrawn to restore to the mouth,
And gather the floods as in a cup, and pour them again at a city’s drouth.

They do not preach that their God will rouse them a little before the nuts work loose.
They do not preach that His Pity allows them to drop their job when they damn-well choose.
As in the thronged and the lighted ways, so in the dark and the desert they stand,
Wary and watchful all their days that their brethren’s ways may be long in the land.

Raise ye the stone or cleave the wood to make a path more fair or flat;
Lo, it is black already with the blood some Son of Martha spilled for that!
Not as a ladder from earth to Heaven, not as a witness to any creed,
But simple service simply given to his own kind in their common need.

And the Sons of Mary smile and are blessèd—they know the Angels are on their side.
They know in them is the Grace confessèd, and for them are the Mercies multiplied.
They sit at the feet—they hear the Word—they see how truly the Promise runs.
They have cast their burden upon the Lord, and—the Lord He lays it on Martha’s Sons!

- Rudyard Kipling

I often feel this way:

They do not preach that their God will rouse them a little before the nuts work loose.
They do not preach that His Pity allows them to drop their job when they damn-well choose.

I often feel like there are many things that I have to do before I can have fun, that if I don’t do my job, the world might fall apart. I would prefer to be more like a Son of Mary, able to just enjoy of life.

For me, Kipling’s poem captures my feelings of conflict between engineering that is often subject to strict constraints and artistic expressions that seem more free. That said, the dichotomy is not entirely true. There is a joy in engineering technology. It’s fun to figure out how technology works and to create things using that knowledge. Besides, art isn’t entirely free. It’s a hell of a lot of work to carry out an artistic project of any consequence.

The assumed segregation between art and engineering has annoyed me for a long time. That’s why I’m happy to see projects that bring the two approaches together.

Before I talk about it, I’ll describe my musical background. I started out playing the trumpet. I started playing the guitar when I was 15 years old. Some friends and I tried starting a band and we played publicly a few times. I had a serious repetitive strain injury in 1994 that would not get better until I stopped playing altogether. I sold my guitar and amplifiers. It took about 7 years for the repetitive strain injury to heal.

I entered UVic with an interest in computer music, wondering whether I could get into it as a substitute for the guitar. I took a year long course in which I had fun playing with computer music. It was interesting and fun but I didn’t produce anything that I could imagine non-academics enjoying. Around the same time, I was building an electric guitar:

I find computer music interesting. I like to understand how music is constructed and I like learning how to manipulate sounds in a way that produces new possibilities. I love investigating the connection between a physical system and the acoustic waves that we hear by modeling that on a computer. I have developed a computer model of the acoustic guitar and my research manipulates the perception of breathiness in the singing voice based on physiological knowledge of the voice.

That said, I remember driving home one day after the computer music seminar and hearing on the radio a simple guitar line. The feeling in the bending string moved me more than all the work I had done in computer music. After my guitar was playable, I experienced that directly through my hands.

It is hard to create the feeling of working with a physical vibrating system on a computer. I think that I have too much history with the guitar for me to achieve something that feels equivalent on a computer without undergoing years of work. I love the sound and feeling of working with strings, touching them with my fingers to change their tonality in subtle ways. I love the sound of a small tube amp turned up loud, the feedback and compression sustaining the notes with a rich warmth. It’s an electric-acoustic system that feels powerful and expressive to me.

On a computer, I find it difficult to achieve the subtle control and the physical feeling of an acoustic instrument. I’m all for using computers to play with sound and music but I’m not sure that I will ever match my experiences with the guitar.

• Paavo Alku, “Glottal wave analysis with Pitch Synchronous Iterative Adaptive Inverse Filtering,” Speech Communication, vol. 11, pp. 109–118, 1992.

It looks good on my laptop but not as great on another desktop that I tried.

Consolas was designed to work with ClearType, which I have been using for a couple years. For that reason, not everyone likes it.

If you have XP, you can get Consolas at least three ways:

• Get it with MS Visual Studio 2005.
• Download PowerPoint Viewer 2007
• Download the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007

In the adaptive pre-emphasis algorithm, it’s necessary to choose an order of filter for the pre-emphasis. If the order is too low, the pre-emphasis does not have enough dynamic range. If the order is too high, the pre-emphasis will capture formant information.

I’m using LPC to estimate the pre-emphasis filter. As long as it is a first order filter, the pole of the filter is at zero hertz and the pre-emphasis filter looks like a spectral tilt. This is the typical configuration for the pre-emphasis filter. At orders higher than one, LPC can estimate a pre-emphasis filter with pole(s) at higher frequencies in the voice spectrum. This happens with high-effort voices and the resulting pre-emphasis looks like a spectral tilt plus a mid-range resonance. You can find a plot of this result in the DAFX paper.

I can make a number of arguments about whether the pre-emphasis should have a resonance in it or not. I’m not going to explain it now except to say that perceived vocal effort is the result of both changes to the voice source and changes to the vocal tract filter.

The above explanation was very brief. Whether you understand it or not, you can listen to some of the resulting samples, below:

We want to make the high-effort voice sound like this target breathy voice: wav.

Here is the original high-effort voice: wav.

One common way to try to simulate breathiness is to add aspiration noise to the LPC residual. This is what it sounds like when we do that with the high-effort voice: wav.

The voice conversion algorithm uses adaptive pre-emphasis LPC to reduce the perceived vocal effort in the voice before adding noise to simulate breathiness. Here is the transformed high-effort voice:

1rst order pre-emphasis filter: wav.
2nd order pre-emphasis filter: wav.
3rd order pre-emphasis filter: wav.

I have opinions about the sounds of these samples but I’m curious about your opinion. Which sample do you think gets closest to the target breathy voice? Which sample sounds the most natural to you? Which sample sounds the most unnatural?

My goal is to convert a high-effort voice into a breathy voice.

Here is the breathy voice that I’m using as my target: wav.

Here is the high-effort voice that I’m trying to transform: wav.

And here is the transformed voice with the pre-emphasis modified to simulate reduced effort. Pulsed noise has also been added to simulate breathiness: wav
Same thing with more aspiration noise added: wav.

The transformed high-effort voice sounds more relaxed and breathy even if it has not been fully transformed into the target voice.

The main problem with the DAFX voice samples is that there is too much gain and spectrum modulation in the LPC filter (the LPC filter bounces around). When there is just one LPC filter, this problem is not as large. However, my algorithm has two LPC filters in series. The filter modulation from the pre-emphasis filter (low-order LPC) exacerbates the filter modulation from the following vocal tract filter (high-order LPC), making the artifacts worse.

I reduced the artifacts by keeping the pre-emphasis filter constant for the short voice segments that I am synthesizing. The pre-emphasis still varies from sample to sample. The next step would be to use time-varying pre-emphasis but to smooth the filter coefficients in time.

I also reshaped the added noise to make it more similar to the breathy noise in the target voice.

PS: You can hear even more recent sound samples here.

What happens when we use LPC to estimate formant filters from voice samples with two different voice qualities while keeping all other variables constant?

Here we have three pairs of voice samples. In each pair, the same voice is singing the same note but one sample is breathy and the other sample exhibits higher vocal effort. These are the original samples: popeil, low, hi.

LPC was carried out on these samples. New voices were resynthesized using an artificial excitation that remains constant across the two samples in the pair. Since the artificial excitation remains the same, the perceived differences between the samples are due to the LPC formant filters. If you listen to the pairs, you will find that the breathy formant filter sounds like it has more breathiness and the high-effort formant filter still sounds like it has more effort: popeil, low, hi. LPC captures in the formant filter some of the differences between a high-effort voice and a breathy voice. Ideally, this change should not be in the formant filter.

I am working on a variable preemphasis algorithm as an extension of LPC to eliminate variability in the perception of vocal effort from the formant filter. Variable pre-emphasis LPC (VPLPC) results in formant filters that are more uniform across varying voice qualities. VPLPC was carried out on the original samples. New voices were resynthesized using an artificial excitation that remains constant across the two samples in the pair. Since the artificial excitation remains the same, the perceived differences between the samples are due to the VPLPC formant filters. If you listen to the pairs, you will find that the breathy formant filter sounds similar to the high-effort formant filter: popeil, low, hi. The formant filters derived by VPLPC sound more neutral with respect to voice quality than the formant filters derived by standard LPC.

The VPLPC algorithm uses a variable preemphasis (VP) filter to capture variation in the spectral envelope. The variation in the spectral envelope primarily relates to the perception of vocal effort. By manipulating the VP filter, it is possible to increase or decrease the perception of vocal effort. The following samples have been modified solely by changing the VP filter. (It will be easier to hear the differences if you have high-quality speakers or headphones).

Reduce vocal effort:
original popeil_higheffort, popeil_lesseffort
original low_higheffort, low_lesseffort
original hi_higheffort, hi_lesseffort

Increase vocal effort:
original popeil_breathy, popeil_moreeffort
original low_breathy, low_moreeffort
original hi_breathy, hi_moreeffort

Manipulation of the VP filter does not fully transform the perception of vocal effort because our ears expect to hear simultaneous changes to the mix of harmonic and noise content. Our ears expect to hear less aspiration noise in voices with high effort. This makes the VP filter transformation less effective when the original voice has significant aspiration noise.

When reducing the perception of vocal effort, our ears expect to hear more aspiration noise. The following VP filter transformation also adds aspiration noise in an attempt to make the sample sound more natural: original popeil_higheffort, popeil_lesseffort_plusnoise.

In summary, VPLPC produces formant filters that are more resistant to changes in voice quality and the VP filter has some influence on the perception of vocal effort. For a fuller tranformation, more work needs to go into finding an appropriate way to modify the mix of harmonics and noise in the residual.

This is the first attempt to use the VP filter to manipulate the perceived voice quality. More sophisticated techniques could provide more effective control.

All in all, it’s definitely worth checking out if you’re interested in analyzing acoustic voice data.

I also finished reading On Writing by Stephen King. I found it entertaining and easy to read. King’s book is mostly about his life as a writer and his attitude and approach to writing. He has some good tips too.

Technical description of the latest improvement:

Problem: My algorithm estimates LPC filter coefficients for each block of voice data. The filter stays the same for each block. When the filter changes between blocks, this can result in a discontinuity if the filters are dissimilar. I perceived a “grainy” sound that I thought might be due to discontinuities between filters.

Solution: To smooth out the differences between filters, I implemented an algorithm to interpolate between LPC filter coefficients. Right now, it’s just linear interpolation. I might do something more sophisticated later.

Now I have found a desktop search that I like even more: Copernic. It uses fewer system resources than Yahoo and looks a bit cleaner.

The first thing that I do when I setup a desktop search is to ensure that it searches only in the directories where I keep my papers. That speeds up the search by making the results more relevant and uses less RAM and CPU in the background.

__________
If you want to hear what the algorithm sounds like, then listen to this sample.

__________
Technical:
For the unvoiced sections, the original voice was passed through unmodified. For the voiced sections, I used LPC to represent the vocal tract filter. For the glottal source (sound from the vocal folds) I used an LF model with settings for a modal voice. (You can learn how to control the LF model here.) Some noise was added to the glottal source to represent aspiration noise.

__________
Aside:
My hard-drive died on my laptop. My laptop is now in the shop and I bought an inexpensive desktop that will carry me through until it gets back.

Acoustical Society of America: Speech Communication

Worse yet, the rootkit leaves you open to viruses that can piggyback on the rootkit and mess with your system while remaining hidden from your anti-virus software. Since the rootkit came out, hackers have created viruses to take advantage of this flaw. Even Microsoft, who is big into DRM, considers the code to be malicious. A number of lawsuits have been filed in California because the rootkit violates two anti-fraud statutes and an anti-spyware statue.

Sony also uses the software to spy on you.

Under duress from the consumer, Sony has agreed to temporarily stop putting the rootkit on their CD’s but, for those infected, it is almost impossible to remove it. By filling in some forms on a Sony website, it is possible to make the rootkit visible to your system but Sony BMG has not provided a way to get rid of it altogether. They have taken the minimum steps that they think will soothe the consumer but they have not fixed the problem and they have only promised to stop temporarily.

It is hard to understand what Sony BMG was attempting to accomplish with their rootkit. Do they think that people want infectious viruses on their music CD’s? Do they want people to stop buying their CD’s altogether? As a result of Sony’s actions, many are planning to boycott all Sony products until they get their act together. To me, this seems like a reasonable response.

There’s another article that gives an overview and moral opinion on the situation.

Using voice conversion as a paradigm for analyzing breath quality

Here are some sound samples to go along with the paper. Read the paper if you want to know where the samples came from.

Original breathy voice
Original non-breathy voice
Synthesized: breathy excitation, non-breathy vocal tract filter
Synthesized: non-breathy excitation, breathy vocal tract filter

• the original voice
• an approximate reconstruction of the original voice using the LF model
• making the voice breathier with the LF model
• making the voice even more breathy

There are some glitches to fix up but it is a start in the right direction. After that I need to find a way to control the model in a more refined way.

The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr.
This thin book provides basic rules for plain and clear writing. I found it an easy read and a good start for improving my writing.

Style: Toward Clarity and Grace by Joseph M. Williams
This book starts by focusing on how people read and develops principles on how to make writing more clear and powerful. I find it easier to understand than the English courses that I took so long ago. The book seems to stay close to the meaning to be communicated rather than breaking sentences into tiny pieces. I have been slowly working my way through this book for the last year and have gleaned many insights into writing. I’m about 2/3′s of the way through now and am looking forward to the rest of the book.

________________
Also, here are some writing tips from Barbara Kingsolver:

• Your first sentence (or paragraph) makes a promise that the rest of the story (or novel) will keep.
• Give your reader a reason to turn every page.
• Keep a very large trash can beside your desk.
• Show, don’t tell. Everybody knows this rule, and most of us still break it in every first draft. Be ruthless. Throw out the interior monologue.
• Be relentlessly descriptive. Use details from every sense you own.
• Set your scenes in places you know well. Otherwise, your details will be bogus.
• Know what your theme is. If you can’t express what you intend to get across in a concrete sentence or two (or for a novel, a few paragraphs), do you really think anyone else is going to get it? Write it out for yourself, point blank. Then toss it, and return to your story with a better sense of direction.
• Write with nobody looking over your shoulder. After your book’s published, you can worry about whether the subject is commercial, how your mother will like the steamy sex scenes, etc. But while you’re writing, your only worthy concern is defining your particular passion and giving it a voice.
• Revise, revise, revise, revise. Fill up that recycling box. A first draft is a work of construction; the seventh one is the work of an artist.
• Don’t wait for the muse. She has a lousy work ethic. Writers just write.

________________
I was introduced to the idea of eliminating the copula verb by reading a friend’s website. Since then, I’ve found a couple interesting sites about E-Prime. The title “E-Prime” annoys me but I find the idea intriguing. I would be curious to hear your opinion.

Feel free to share your thoughts on writing and writing resources in the comments.

The web2c directory of a texlive/tetex TeX distribution contains a file updmap.cfg. Check that the line ‘pdftexDownloadBase14 false’ is commented out and the line ‘pdftexDownloadBase14′ is uncommented and (re)run updmap.

Alternatively, let dvips/config/pdftex.map point to or be a copy of pdftex_dl14.map or specify pdftex_dl14.map as mapfile in pdftex.cfg. Then (re)run updmap.

After fighting with it for a day, I finally have a solution.

This approach of transforming the voice treats breathiness as an effect to be added to the voice in much the same way that electronic effects are added to guitars and other instruments. The breathy effect on the voice is different in that our ears are tuned to the nature of the voice since before birth. As such, we have particular expectations about how the voice should sound. It isn’t enough to just add breath-like noise. The addition will sound like a separate entity from the voice unless it closely fits our expectations about the nature of the voice. As such, this project requires involves exploration into the physiology of voice production and into our perception of the voice.

This research proposal presents a plan to transform the voice quality of a singing voice by adding or removing breathiness. Current attempts to add breathiness to the voice do not blend well for pressed voices. The breath effect sounds incompatible with the original voice. An algorithm will be developed to convert a pressed voice into a soft, breathy voice and vice versa. The proposed algorithm will be based on the physiology of voice production as much as possible while retaining the ability to analyze and synthesize the voice easily. A source-filter model of the voice will be used with the source being a parametric model of the glottal volume-velocity wave. The model parameters will be estimated from the acoustic signal of a singing voice. The breathy effect will be created by modifying the model parameters and re-synthesizing the voice. To evaluate the effectiveness of the source-tract separation, a technique borrowed from voice conversion is proposed. This technique should be able to indicate the level of source-tract interaction and whether the vocal tract needs to be modified to achieve a desired voice quality. The application of voice conversion techniques to the analysis of voice quality is the primary contribution of this research. The model will be evaluated perceptually by expert listeners from the field of linguistics.

If you want to know the details you can download the full text.

Karl Nordstrom – Monster Guitar Feedback.mp3

Karl Nordstrom – BoomBell.mp3

1. This is the sound of a very basic waveguide. AU WAV
   (waveguide alone)
2. This is the sound of the waveguide with frequency dependent
   decay on the string. Note how the high frequencies die away quicker. AU WAV
   (waveguide + frequency dependent decay)
3. This is the waveguide with a filter to simulate the
   acoustic response of the guitar body. AU WAV
   (waveguide + frequency dependent decay + filter to simulate the body)
4. This is the final sound. In this case, a better filter is
   used to simulate the acoustic response of the body. AU WAV
   (waveguide + frequency dependent decay + better filter to simulate the body)

Discomfort Transmission: A Method for Measuring the Ride Comfort of Full-Suspension Mountain Bicycles

In the thesis, you can find a grainy picture of a Rocky Mountain Pipeline, the bike that I have right now.