BVA ARCHIVE: Profiles
Interview by Stephanie Martin
Adrian Fourcin and Evelyn Abberton
Huntley and Palmer, Morecombe and Wise, Luchsinger and Arnold, Fourcin and Abberton, you are not only a famous double act, but part of British Voice folklore. Did you have a plan or was it serendipity?
"Happy discoveries by accident" did come into it. People can hear in the voice what still can't be measured and the laryngograph was originally intended to help in voice pitch experiments
Laryngograph (TM ) has transformed our understanding of voice and a plethora of new developments from the Laryngograph stable continues to provide tools which have both clinical and research relevance, aiding our understanding of voice.
Can you explain the process of invention to readers - is the inventor's gene inherited or acquired?
To an important degree invention is the process of doing what is obviously useful. So, to make useful measurements on voice at least look at vocal fold action, the more directly the better, and at least check how the hearing mechanism seems to process voice. But interaction with clinicians and people interested in singing gives fresh insights into the complexities of voice and needs and possibilities become evident that were originally unsuspected.
If you had unlimited funding and time, for what particular vocal 'holy grail' would you search?
The ultimate aim is to make physical measurement perceptually relevant. Current methods of research funding present largely insuperable obstacles to real progress in voice work. The peer review system can't handle really original ideas. Even quite modest unfettered funding would help, not only for example towards a better understanding of how voice and speech skills are acquired and learnt - but also how to make speech recognisers that really recognise and speech synthesisers that are not synthetic.
Both of you have played and continue to play significant roles in the British Voice Association, yet Speech Scientists and Phoneticians are poorly represented in terms of the BVA membership. Have you a) any theories as to why that is the case and b) any suggestions as to what could be done to 'encourager les autres'.
Phoneticians tend to be more concerned with segments - vowels, consonants and symbols - rather than with voice quality and pitch patterns. This is seen, for example, in most descriptions of regional and social accents of English and in descriptions of normal and delayed speech development in children. The study of voice is perhaps more difficult and, for some, too near the heart rather than the head. Speech Science nowadays is closely linked to and depends for its funding support on Spoken Language Engineering and this is blinkered by the need to show short term results. Decade after decade real progress has been hampered by the lack of encouragement for fundamental work. Voice as it is seen and heard in the BVA has nothing to offer Markov modelling!
What has sustained your interest in and support for the BVA in the face of this apparent lack of interest by colleagues?
The BVA is a microcosm that provides the basis for the advances that can only come from interaction between disciplines. It is a constant pleasure to find laryngologists, therapists, teachers, singers and the occasional scientist all together in the same room and all with linked interests.
Employing a masterful reductionist technique, Adrian and Evelyn managed to give one response to the three following questions:
If you could fast forward to 2020 what developments in voice can you predict, and what would you wish to see?
Garcia and his mirror, Fourcin and Abberton and Laryngograph.
What other mysteries of voice would you like to uncover?
Employing some 'blue sky thinking' what do you think the next big breakthrough in the visual representation of the voice in action will be?
This was their response:
By 2020 we can expect that truth will out - at least a little. Clinicians will no longer rely so much on sustained vowel measurements to quantify voice pathologies. Diagnosis will begin to benefit from a better knowledge of the structures of ordinary running speech. Singers and singing teachers will be given better help in the identification and visual and auditory feedback of voice quality. The beautiful hierarchical organisations of infant voice and speech development will have just begun to influence Spoken Language Engineering. The modest advance of voice knowledge combined with the brute force of nano-technology may just begin to lead to hearing aids that are truly able to process voice and speech - as opposed to any environmental sound…and
matching aids to stages of speech development will not be totally heretical. But we bore you…
To paraphrase Wordsworth, (1807) 'Two Voices are there …each a mighty Voice'. Are there ever occasions professionally when one 'mighty voice' is silenced by the other, or do you work effectively in tandem?
Neither of us is ever, totally, silenced by the other - despite great efforts on occasion. Two voices are generally better than one.
Alongside your work in partnership, do you each have a well-defined separate working identity and area of specific interest and if so can you expand on that?
Evelyn's approach is influenced by her background in languages and Speech and Language Therapy. Adrian's is biased by his earlier work in engineering and science and leavened by more than fifty years exposure to work and workers concerned with voice.
You have recently returned from the Voice Conference in Philadelphia, was there anything innovative there that really engaged your interest and which you would recommend being imported to the UK?
It was a privilege to be at the Philadelphia meeting. The Voice Foundation benefits from closer links with surgeons and scientists than the BVA but we do think that the UK has the edge in some respects.
There is Brit Art and Brit Pop but no Brit Voice? Who would you nominate as rising young stars of British Voice in the field of Speech Science?
Our ex-students are now part of the "establishment"...
I met you both for the first time thirty years ago when your enthusiasm for voice was evident and your energy boundless. How have you retained your enthusiasm, energy and drive for the topic?
The topic is self-sustaining; voice is endlessly fascinating.
While it is said that 'sixty is the new forty', neither of you shows any sign of 'slowing down'. Do you ever think that there will come a time when retirement will beckon, or will there always be another project on the horizon?
As long as we can be of use and as long as new thoughts come, we hope to go on.
