Melina’s Status Report for 2/15/2025

EGG Hunt

• Picked up all hardware components associated with the EGG EG2-PCX from Prof. Helou, along with the corresponding digital user manual
• This includes a simple microphone which we plan to replace with a more sophisticated microphone

Ground-Truth Research

• Annotated reading “Results from a pilot longitudinal study of electrolaryngographically derived closed quotient for adult male singers in training” (David Howard)
• Annotated reading “The Physiology of Vocal Damping: Historical Overview and Descriptive Insights in Professional Singers” (Marco Fantini)
• Annotated reading “Musical Theater and Opera Singing—Why So
  Different? A Study of Subglottal Pressure, Voice Source, and Formant Frequency Characteristics” (Eva Björkner)
• Concluded that identifying a “proper” CQ would not be the most appropriate solution approach since the number of years in singing experience and genre would be required for such a metric. This data is limited at this time and would not be reliable for the purposes of our project
  • Because of this we have adjusted our scheduled tasks to reflect this change
    • Understand/identify improper CQ CANCELLED – we want to stray away from defining a universal truth for what a proper CQ is, instead focusing on helping vocalists track and understand their formant tuning
    • Inform about change in CQ ← changed from detect/warn about improper CQ
• Proposed our project solution approach should shift from warning of “improper” CQ to providing more flexible analysis tools (2) for tracking CQ over time
  • Analysis tool 1: Allowing user to view their CQ at a given moment for a specific recording playback
  • Analysis tool 2: Providing user with a visual representation of an evaluation of their CQ range over time
    • This would be approached by asking the user to record a controlled vocal exercise, such as an octave warmup that covers their tessitura (comfortable vocal range)
    • The CQ ranges for these controlled (constant) exercises can be summarized visually over time as suggested by David Howard’s graph of idealized changes in CQ
    • 
  • Proposed our use case and solution approach should shift to focus on advanced vocalists in one genre, opera singers
    • CQ can be significantly more difficult to measure for untrained singers, in fact, David Howard had to completely throw out some data samples from untrained singers due to unreliable CQ measurements
    • Unreliable CQ measurements are detrimental to our project, as an incorrect analysis could mislead a vocalist to make unhealthy decisions
    • CQ has also been found to vary significantly with genre, and as of now, we only have guaranteed access to opera singers
  • Created a ground-truth metric
    • EGG passes calibration test with the laryngeal simulator before and after usage
      • This is handy dandy calibration hardware component that came with the EGG itself thanks to Prof. Helou
    • Use built-in Larynx Tracking & Signal-Strength indicators
    • CQ measurement must be at least 20% to be considered detected

Schedule

• COMPLETED Acquired sensor
• COMPLETED Create a “Ground-Truth” metric

My scheduled tasks are on time, and have been slightly adjusted as described above (I will reiterate below)

• Understand/identify improper CQ CANCELLED – we want to stray away from defining a universal truth for what a proper CQ is, instead focusing on helping vocalists track and understand their formant tuning
•  Inform about change in CQ ← changed from detect/warn about improper CQ

Next Steps

My goals for this next week include the following deliverables

• Present Design Review Slides
• Draft Design Review Report with the team
• Ensure the team has a repository set up along with agreement on code style/organizational expectations
• Drafting wireframes for the frontend with feedback from Susanna
• Draft code for pitch analysis