The three speech science and engineering laboratories that comprise the Voice Science Consortium at UCLA organized to participate in World Voice Day on Wednesday, April 16, 2014.

World Voice Day is an international event that celebrates the human voice. (For more information about World Voice Day, see http://world-voice-day.org/.) It began in 1999 but so far has never been celebrated at UCLA. This year, UCLA’s Phonetics, Speech Processing & Auditory Perception, and Voice Perception labs brought World Voice Day to UCLA for the first time, with help from UCLA musicologists and singers. The Daily Bruin published a front-page story about our event on April 16.

Scientific demonstrations around North and South campus highlighted the significance and excitement of the human voice. Voice science exhibits were at our three locations. All three locations had "see your own voice" spectrograms and pitch tracks, high-speed videos of vocal folds in action, a larynx model, and an artificial voice source. Information about voice health was available near the Medical Plaza clinics, engineering demos were in the Court of Sciences, and singing-related activities were in Bruin Plaza. 

Thanks to all the volunteer students from the participating departments who staffed our exhibits! 

Schedule:

11:30-1:30: Medical Plaza (in front of building MP300) - voice science and voice health information and exhibits, staffed by members of Head & Neck Surgery and volunteer undergraduate and graduate students

12:30-2:30: Court of Sciences (south end, near Student Center) - voice science and engineering demos, staffed by Prof. Abeer Alwan of Electrical Engineering, with volunteer undergraduate and graduate students (including their iPhone App that calculates your height from your voice, and birdsong audio analysis)

1:00-3:00: Bruin Plaza - voice science demos, staffed by volunteer undergraduate Linguistics students; pop-up/drop-in voice lessons by Prof. Nina Eidsheim of Musicology, Terri Franklin, voice DMA student, and Alexandra Grabarchuk, PhD Musicology student; how's your vibrato? interactive exhibit; 1:00-1:30 - singing performance by Datvebis Gundi (Georgian for "Chorus of Bears", UCLA's Kartvelian chorus); other singing groups welcome at other times - feel free to pop up!

UCLA Chorale event: In honor of World Voice Day, the UCLA Chorale hosted the Chaffey Community College Choir, as part of their Choral Outreach Program. Dr. Rebecca Lord, Associate Director of Choral Activities and Conductor of the UCLA University Chorus, provided a clinic for the Chaffey Choir, demonstrating different singing and performance techniques and methods. The Chaffey Choir then performed for the UCLA Chorale and sat in on the Chorale rehearsal.

The Voice Science Consortium's participation in World Voice Day was supported by NSF grant IIS-1018863, with organizational assistance from UCLA Linguistics undergraduate Martha Clayton. 

contact information: Prof. Patricia Keating, keating@humnet.ucla.edu