Courses on acoustic voice analysis

INTENSIVE COURSE ON CLINICAL ASSESSMENT OF ACOUSTIC VOICE SIGNALS

ONE-DAY PROGRAM

Click here for all information and registration.

Brochure in PDF: Brochure – Intensive course – February 2019.

When? 04 February 2019

Where? Wilrijk (Antwerp), Belgium

What? This one-day intensive course is especially designed to give participants theoretical insights in and background information on acoustic voice assessment. Practical focus is on the basic yet relevant functions of the program Praat. There will be:

presentations,
live demonstrations,
Q&A as well as discussion, and
exercises.

Why? To know about clinical voice acoustics.

TWO-DAYS PROGRAM

Fully booked: it is no longer possible to registrate for this 2-days course.

The 1-day course is still open for registration.

Click here for all information and registration.

Brochure in PDF: Brochure – Intensive course – February 2019.

When? 04 and 05 February 2019

Where? Wilrijk (Antwerp), Belgium

What? This two-days intensive course is especially designed to give participants theoretical insights in as well as practical mastery over acoustic voice assessment using Phonanium’s tools in the program Praat. There will be:

presentations,
live demonstrations,
Q&A as well as discussion,
exercises,
hands-on workshops with purchased software (Phonanium’s Clinical Voice Lab),
calibration of sound level measurements, and
laptop configurations.

Why? To know about and to do clinical voice acoustics.

PHONANIUM COURSES

Phonanium Courses

The PHONANIUM website offers information on voice/speech production and advice for high-quality sound recording, aided by solutions for accessible analysis of acoustic voice signals. However, if the information (i.e., the texts, the videos, or the scripts/plug-ins themselves) in this website insufficiently illustrate anything related to acoustic voice/speech analysis for mostly clinical purposes, there is always the possibility to organize or follow a course on how to use the program Praat and PHONANIUM’s scripts (and sometimes also other acoustics-based programs) in the assessment of voice and its disorders. All items in our courses are based on scientific findings as well as long-standing and daily clinical experiences in acoustic voice analysis. A course provided by PHONANIUM can be customized to meet your specific needs and questions, depending on factors such as:

duration,
instruction type (theoretical presentation, live demonstration, hands-on instructional course, on site configuration of one or more computers with explanations, or a mixture),
number of participants,
background of participants (level and profession),
number of computers (maximum 20 during a hands-on instructional course),
resources.

The main goal of this website in general, and a PHONANIUM course in particular, predominantly is “to learn participants to independently analyze well-recorded voice signals and interpret the findings of the acoustic methods”. To achieve that goal, one or more of the following modules can easily be implemented in a customized course.

COURSE MODULES

MODULE 1 – Introduction to acoustic voice analysis

Duration

30 minutes

Content

Warming up: a complete acoustic voice assessment with customized scripts in the program Praat
State-of-the-art clinical voice assessment … and the complementary role of acoustic methods

Form

Live demonstration
Theoretical presentation

MODULE 2 – Sound recording in clinical voice assessment

Duration

90 minutes

Content

The sound recording chain: criteria for high-quality voice/speech recordings … conditio sine qua non!
Signal-to-noise ratio
Room/architectural acoustics
Ambient noise
Microphone: type and placement
Analog-to-digital conversion: external sound card and amplifier, resolution and sampling frequency

Form

Live demonstration
Theoretical presentation

MODULE 3 – Calibrating intensity level measures in voice clinics

Duration

45 minutes

Content

Importance of calibration
Prerequisites for calibration
Clinical method for calibration of vocal intensity level

Form

Theoretical presentation
Live demonstration

MODULE 4 – Clinically fascinating facets of the acoustic voice signal

Duration

75 minutes

Content

Time-domain, oscillogram: fundamental frequency, sound intensity, perturbation
Frequency-domain, spectrum and spectrogram: harmonics, formants, noise, harmonics-to-noise ratio, tilt/slope
Quefrency-domain, cepstrum and cepstrogram: (smoothed) cepstral peak prominence
Other facets, lag-domain and autocorrelation function: pitch amplitude

Form

Theoretical presentation
Live demonstration

MODULE 5 – Hold on a minute … what about methodological aspects related to acoustic voice measures?

Duration

75 minutes

Content

Reliability: intersystem variability, interprogram variability, influence of vocal behavior, standardization
Validity: face validity, concurrent validity, diagnostic precision, change sensitivity
Norm-referencing data

Form

Live demonstration
Theoretical presentation

MODULE 6 – Speed-dating with Praat … basic functions of the program Praat

Duration

60 minutes

Content

Record sound, save as WAV-file, open a WAV-file
Rename sound object, copy sound object, remove sound object, information about object
Create sound by your own
Inspect the sound object: view and edit
Query the sound object
Use the calculator
Derive a spectrum of the sound object
Draw the spectrum
Reversing sound
Concatenating sounds

Form

Live demonstration
Hands-on intensive course

MODULE 7 – The “Acoustic Voice Quality Index” story … toward measuring dysphonia severity

Duration

90 minutes

Content

Initial ideas and development
Methodological issues: concurrent validity and diagnostic validity across studies, influence of vocal behavior, intersystem variability (including mobile sound recording), sound recording quality
AVQI as a treatment outcomes measures
Illustration with case studies
Future perspectives in acoustic voice quality measurement

Form

Theoretical presentation
Live demonstration

MODULE 8 – WYSIWYH … what you see is what you hear, and vice versa. Spectrographic explorations in the peculiarities of voiced sounds!

Duration

90 minutes

Content

Normophonia versus dysphonia
Fundamental frequency
Intensity level
Glottal noise versus harmonics
Irregularity
Multiplophonia
Multiphonia
Instability: tremor, unvoiced segments, pitch breaks, etc.

Form

Illustrated presentation
Group discussion

MODULE 9 – From theory to Praatice … clinical voice acoustics with the program Praat on your own desktop/laptop computer

Duration

120 minutes

Content

Maximum phonation time
Fundamental frequency
Intensity level
Praat’s voice report
Spectral analysis
Cepstral analysis
Draw several graphs

Form

Hands-on intensive course

MODULE 10 – Toward a more user-friendly Praat with scripts and buttons

Duration

90 minutes

Content

Installation of scripts in Praat: fixed menu, dynamic menu, layers
Speech-to-noise ratio and voice-to-noise ratio
Vocal fundamental frequency
Vocal intensity level
Vocal range estimation
Spectrography
Cepstrography
Acoustic Voice Quality Index
Dysphonia Severity Index
Voice Handicap Index

Form

Hands-on intensive course

Question(s) about a Phonanium course?

Are you interested in following or organizing a course on acoustic voice analyses?

Complete the ‘Courses’ form

Are you interested in the development of a script for acoustic voice/speech analysis?

Complete the ‘Development’ form

Is there something you like to ask us? Or do you have an idea to share with us?

Complete the ‘Contact’ form

INTENSIVE COURSE ON CLINICAL ASSESSMENT OF ACOUSTIC VOICE SIGNALS

Fully booked: it is no longer possible to registrate for this 2-days course.

The 1-day course is still open for registration.

PHONANIUM COURSES

COURSE MODULES

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Question(s) about a Phonanium course?

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Contact us