A Multi-Sensor Helmet to Capture Rare Singing, an Intangible Cultural Heritage Study

A portable helmet based system has been developed to capture motor behavior during singing and other oral-motor functions in a non-laboratory experimental environment. The system, based on vocal tract sensing methods developed for speech production and recognition, consists of a lightweight “hyper-helmet” containing an ultrasonic (US) transducer to capture tongue movement, a video camera for the lips, and a microphone, coupled with a further sensor suite including an electroglottograph (EGG), nose-mounted accelerometer, and respiration sensor. The system has been tested on two rare, endangered singing musical styles, Corsican “Cantu in Paghjella”, and Byzantine hymns from Mount Athos, Greece.  The versatility of the approach is furthermore demonstrated by capturing a contemporary singing style known as “Human Beat Box.”