Estimating the time to reach a target frequency in singing.

The ability to match pitches quickly and accurately is essential for proficient singing. We describe a new technique for estimating the time to reach a target frequency that uses adaptive optimal-kernel (AOK) time-frequency representations, designed to optimize the time-frequency tradeoff at each time point. We show in two experiments that this measure is more sensitive to tonal priming effects than an onset latency measurement. This analysis is applied to the vocal productions of untrained singers to reveal effects of tonality and pitch height.