A Cross-modal Approach for Karaoke Artifacts Correction

Karaoke singing is a popular form of entertainment in several parts of the world. Since this genre of performance attracts amateurs, the singing often has artifacts related to scale, tempo, and synchrony. We have developed an approach to correct these artifacts using cross-modal multimedia streams information. We first perform adaptive sampling on the user's rendition and then use the original singer's rendition as well as the video caption highlighting information in order to correct the pitch, tempo and the loudness. A method of analogies has been employed to perform this correction. The basic idea is to manipulate the user's rendition in a manner to make it as similar as possible to the original singing. A pre-processing step of noise removal due to feedback and huffing also helps improve the quality of the user's audio. The results are described in the paper which shows the effectiveness of this multimedia approach.

Aggressive responses to broadband trills are related to subsequent pairing success in nightingales

In sexually selected signals, distinct components often have specific signal value in mate choice or male-male competition. In songbirds, structural song traits such as trills, that is, a series of repetitive notes, can be important in female choice. However, little is known about their signal value in male-male interactions. Here, we investigated the hypothesis that males assess the competitive abilities of rivals based on the use and performance of rapid broadband trills produced within songs. Using a 2-speaker playback experiment, we exposed territorial male nightingales, Luscinia megarhynchos, that differed in their subsequent pairing success, to a simulated vocal interaction between 2 unfamiliar rivals. The singing of the 2 simulated rivals differed in the number of songs containing rapid broadband trills. Subjects responded significantly more strongly to the loudspeaker that broadcast songs containing such trills than to the loudspeaker that broadcast exclusively songs without such trills. Moreover, responses also depended on the fine structure of trills. Males that became paired later in the season significantly increased their response intensity with increasing trill performance, whereas males that remained unpaired responded in the opposite way and decreased their response intensity with increasing trill performance. These results indicate that rapid broadband trills are a signal of aggression and that the nature of the response in vocal interactions reflects aspects of the challenged male's fitness. © The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Society for Behavioral Ecology. All rights reserved.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Reaxys Database Information|

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Behavioral plasticity allows short-term adjustment to a novel environment

Many species are currently experiencing anthropogenically driven environmental changes. Among these changes, increasing noise levels are specifically a problem for species relying on acoustic communication. Recent evidence suggests that some species adjust their acoustic signals to man-made noise. However, it is unknown whether these changes occur through short-term and reversible adjustments by behavioral plasticity or through long-term adaptations by evolutionary change. Using behavioral observations and playback experiments, we show that male reed buntings (Emberiza schoeniclus) adjusted their songs immediately, singing at a higher minimum frequency and at a lower rate when noise levels were high. Our data showed that these changes in singing behavior were short-term adjustments of signal characteristics resulting from behavioral plasticity, rather than a long-term adaptation. However, more males remained unpaired at a noisy location than at a quiet location throughout the breeding season. Thus, phenotypic plasticity enables individuals to respond to environmental changes, but whether these short-term adjustments are beneficial remains to be seen.

Phenotypic plasticity affects the response of a sexually selected trait to anthropogenic noise

Sexually selected traits are shaped by an interaction between sexual selection and other natural selection pressures in the environment. However, there is little understanding of how recent anthropogenic environmental change affects the elaboration of sexually selected traits. Most sexually selected traits are complex displays comprising multiple components that interact in a functional way, thereby affecting overall trait expression. To understand how environmental change may shape the expression of sexually selected traits, we have to consider not only (i) the phenotypic plasticity of individual components of traits but also their (ii) phenotypic integration, that is, the correlations among trait components, as well as (iii) plasticity integration, that is, the correlations among the plasticities of trait components. Here, we show that background noise is a considerable pressure in shaping a sexually selected multicomponent acoustic signal, bird song. We compared singing behavior of European robins (Erithacus rubecula) in territories that differed in levels of anthropogenic noise and conducted noise-exposure experiments to test if behavioral plasticity caused immediate changes in song components, for example, minimum frequency, song complexity, and song length. We found that song components differed in their plasticity to background noise and that plasticity integration between components may further restrict the elaboration of song. Thus, the altered expression of song components under noise exposure leads to increased phenotypic integration, which is linked with reduced song complexity. Our findings demonstrate that plasticity integration restricts the elaboration of a sexually selected trait, which raises the question of how changing environments may modify sexual selection.

Coelum non animum muto? Milton's Neo-Latin Poetry and Catholic Italy

Milton’s Elegiarum Liber, the first half of his Poemata published in Poems of Mr John Milton Both English and Latin (1645), concludes with a series of eight Latin epigrams: five bitterly anti-Catholic pieces on the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605, followed by three encomiastic poems hymning the praises of an Italian soprano, Leonora Baroni, singing in Catholic Rome. The disparity in terms of subject matter and tone is self-evident yet surprising in an epigrammatic series that runs sequentially. Whereas the gunpowder epigrams denigrate Rome, the Leonora epigrams present the city as a cultured hub of inclusivity, the welcome host of a Neapolitan soprano. In providing the setting for a human song that both enthrals its audience and attests to the presence of a divine power, Rome now epitomizes something other than brute idolatry, clerical habit or doctrine. And for the poet this facilitates an interrogation of theological (especially Catholic) doctrines. Coelum non animum muto, dum trans mare curro wrote the homeward-bound Milton in the autograph book of Camillo Cardoini at Geneva on 10 June 1639. But that this was an animus that could indeed acclimatize to religious and cultural difference is suggested by the Latin poems which Milton “patch [ed] up” in the course of his Italian journey. Central to that acclimatisation, as this chapter argues, is Milton’s quasi-Catholic self-fashioning. Thus Mansus offers a poetic autobiography of sorts, a self-inscribed vita coloured by intertextually kaleidoscopic links with two Catholic poets of Renaissance Italy and their patron; Ad Leonoram 1 both invokes and interrogates Catholic doctrine before a Catholic audience only to view the whole through the lens of a neo-Platonic hermeticism that may refreshingly transcend religious difference. Finally, Epitaphium Damonis, composed upon Milton’s return home, seems to highlight the potential interconnectedness of Protestant England and Catholic Italy, through the Anglo-Italian identity of its deceased subject, and through a pseudo-monasticism suggested by the poem’s possible engagement with the hagiography of a Catholic Saint. Perhaps continental travel and the physical encounter with the symbols, personages and institutions of the other have engendered in the Milton of the Italian journey a tolerance or, more accurately, the manipulation of a seeming tolerance to serve poetic and cultural ends.


First reviewer:
Haan: a fine piece by the senior neo-Latinist in Milton studies.

Second reviewer:
Chapter 7 is ... a high-spot of the collection. Its argument that in his Latin poetry Milton’s is a ‘quasi-Catholic self-fashioning’ stressing ‘the potential interconnectedness of Protestant England and Catholic Italy’ is striking and is advanced with learning, clarity and insight. Its sensitive exploration of the paradox of Milton’s coupling of humanistically complimentary and tolerant address to Roman Catholic friends with fiercely Protestant partisanship demonstrates that there is much greater complexity to his poetic persona than the self-construction and self-presentation of the later works would suggest. The essay is always adroit and sure-footed, often critically acute and illuminating (as, for example, in its discussion of the adjective and adverb mollis and molliter in Mansus, or in the identification in n. 99 of hitherto unnoticed Virgilian echoes). It has the added merits of being very well written, precise and apt in its citation of evidence, and absolutely central to the concerns of the volume.

Let The People Sing? Irish Rebel Songs, Sectarianism, and Scotland’s Offensive Behaviour Act

Irish rebel songs afford Scotland’s Irish diaspora a means to assert, experience, and perform their alterity free from the complexities of the Irish language. Yet this benign intent can be offset by how the music is perceived by elements of Scotland’s majority Protestant population. The Scottish Government’s Offensive Behaviour Act (2012) has been used to prosecute those singing Irish rebel songs and there is continuing debate as to how this alleged offence should be dealt with. This article explores the social function and cultural perception of Irish rebel songs in the west coast of Scotland, examining what qualities lead to a song being perceived as ‘sectarian’, by focusing on song lyrics, performance context, and extra-musical discourse. The article explores the practice of lyrical ‘add-ins’ that inflect the meaning of key songs, and argues that the sectarianism of a song resides, at least in part, in the perception of the listener.