| David Howard is a Professor of Music
Technology in the Department of Electronics at the University
of York, UK. His teaching and research interests include
the analysis of singing, music and speech. He manages
to combine his professional interests in the human singing
voice with practical singing activity as a Deputy Tenor
Songman at York Minster, musical director from the tenor
line of The Beningbrough Singers and music director of
the Vale of York Voices. (See menu on the left.) |
He has placed his first two Applications
(Apps) on the iTunes store for the
iPhone/iTouch.
The first (Organ Stops)
lists the footages of all manual and pedal pipe organ
stops that can be found on all existing instruments
along with a large selection of stop names - somewhat
anorakish I know - but prepared as a way of finding
out what is involved in creating an App. Bottom C for
each stop footage can be played, including that for
a 128' pedal rank (I know there is no 128' rank in existence
but this is available when a 64' and a 42 2/3' are drawn
together; a so-called "virtual pitch").
The second (8ve Oscillator
and the "try it and see" version 8ve
Oscillator Lite) is an octave oscillator with
various waveforms (sine, square, pulse, sawtooth, triangular)
available at fundamental frequencies spaced at the octaves
usually used for acoustic and audiological (hearing)
testing (125 Hz, 250 Hz, 500 Hz, 1 kHz, 2 kHz, 4 kHz,
8 kHz) as well as white noise. In addition and for interest
it will also include 16 kHz which is generally only
heard by those under about 25 years of age (the so-called
"teen scarer" or "mosquito" sound).
Fundamental frequency can also be set to an arbitrary
value in the range of human hearing (20 Hz to 20 kHz).
Output level can be adjusted in steps of 1, 3, 6, or
10 decibels (dB).
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| Other musical interests
include organ and bassoon playing; whilst he does play
the organ when asked for services, his bassoon playing
is still rather lonesome. He is on the look out either
for a small wind group or an orchestra in the Yorkshire
area that might be interested in taking on a bassoonist
of approximately grade 6-7 standard. Away from music,
David is very keen on sailing (he achieved
his RYA Day Skipper during 2008 in order to hire a yacht
in the Ionian Sea over the summer) and he is now slowly
gaining sea hours twoards the Coastal Skipper. More recently
he has taken up photography. |
His interest in singing
is not just performance related (David directs
the Beningbrough Singers and conducts the Vale of York
Voices and he sings as a Deputy Tenor in York Minster);
he researches aspects of the singing
voice relating to how it changes with training and this
has led to the development of software that has been
piloted in singing lessons to provide real-time visual
feedback of acoustic parameters of the voice.
Further idetails are available on David's
work
website. |
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