Harmonic-Frontier-Audio/Nasalization_and_Velum_Control_Preview

Harmonic Frontier Audio – Nasalization and Velum Control (Preview, v0.9)

A high-fidelity human vocal dataset designed for AI training, speech research, and expressive voice modeling.

Nasalization and Velum Control (Preview), created by Harmonic Frontier Audio, provides a compact reference set demonstrating the quality, formatting, and metadata conventions used in the Harmonic Frontier Audio Human Vocality Primitives series.

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🔎 Summary

This dataset provides high-quality, rights-cleared recordings of nasalization and velum-controlled resonance adjustments — controlled changes in oral vs. nasal airflow that reshape the spectral profile of voiced and semi-voiced sounds.

The recordings emphasize:

• velopharyngeal opening and closure control
• resonance shifts between oral-dominant and nasal-dominant configurations
• airflow redistribution across the vocal tract
• subtle timbral variation without semantic speech content

These characteristics make the dataset valuable for AI speech modeling, phonetics research, resonance-aware synthesis, nasality detection systems, and human-aligned vocal control architectures.

Developed by Harmonic Frontier Audio, this preview follows The Proteus Standard™ for dataset provenance, transparency, and ethical AI use.
Learn more about the Proteus Standard → https://harmonicfrontieraudio.com/proteus-standard

Full dataset details and licensing information are available at:
https://harmonicfrontieraudio.com/datasets/nasalization-velum-control

If you find this dataset useful, please consider giving it a 🤍 on Hugging Face to help others discover it.

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👃 About Nasalization and Velum Control

Nasalization occurs when the velum lowers to allow airflow through the nasal cavity during phonation, altering resonance and introducing nasal formant energy.
Velum control refers to the deliberate adjustment of velopharyngeal closure, shaping how airflow is distributed between oral and nasal cavities.

These mechanisms are foundational to:

• speech production across languages
• resonance modeling in voice synthesis
• nasality classification and detection systems
• expressive vocal timbre control
• physiological and articulatory research

This dataset presents a neutral, non-linguistic, non-performative representation of nasal and velum-controlled resonance behaviors.
It is not designed to encode semantic speech content, but rather to isolate resonance-level acoustic primitives driven by velopharyngeal configuration.

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📂 Contents

Audio Files (.wav)

• Recorded at 96 kHz / 24-bit WAV format
• Exported as mono
• Fade-ins and fade-outs of 3–5 ms applied for consistency
• No compression, normalization, or creative processing applied
• High-pass filtered at ~40 Hz to remove subsonic rumble

This preview includes 4 representative audio files, selected to demonstrate:

• oral-dominant resonance
• partial nasal coupling
• fully nasal-dominant airflow
• controlled transitions between resonance states

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Metadata (.csv)

Includes structured fields for:

• file name
• sound source type
• airflow type
• phonation type
• gesture and articulation descriptors
• microphone and recording chain
• sample rate, bit depth, and dataset version

Metadata follows the Harmonic Frontier Audio – Foundations schema.

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🎤 Recording Notes

• Recorded in a treated studio environment using a single-mic setup:
  • Microphone: Rode NT1-A condenser microphone
  • Recording chain: Rode NT1-A → Zoom F8n Pro
• Captured at 96 kHz / 32-bit float, rendered as 96 kHz / 24-bit mono WAV for release.
• Natural room tone and subtle airflow variations were preserved to retain acoustic realism.

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🌈 Spectrogram Preview

Below is a spectrogram illustrating the resonance shifts, nasal formant reinforcement, and airflow redistribution characteristic of velum-controlled phonation gestures:

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⚡ Usage

This preview pack is designed for:

• Evaluation of Harmonic Frontier Audio dataset quality and structure
• Testing AI systems that model resonance control and nasality
• Research in phonetics, speech synthesis, and articulatory modeling
• Creative sound design involving nasal or resonance-shifted vocal timbres

👉 Note: This is not a full dataset.
The complete Nasalization and Velum Control dataset includes a substantially larger and more varied set of resonance primitives and is available for licensing.

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💡 Full Dataset Availability

This is a preview pack of the Nasalization and Velum Control Dataset.
The complete dataset is available for commercial licensing.

For licensing inquiries:
📩 info@harmonicfrontieraudio.com

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📥 How to Use This Dataset in Python

You can load the Parquet-converted version of this dataset directly with the datasets library:

from datasets import load_dataset

dataset = load_dataset(
    "Harmonic-Frontier-Audio/Nasalization_and_Velum_Control_Preview",
    split="train"
)

print(dataset)

⚙️ Note: Parquet conversion and load_dataset() support will be available within 2–3 days of publication.

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🔗 Explore More from Harmonic Frontier Audio

• Breathy & Semi-Modal Phonation (Preview)
• Nasalization and Velum Control (Preview)
• Whisper and Aspiration (Preview)
• Plosives and Non-Lexical Consonant Bursts (Preview)
• Subharmonic Phonation / Vocal Fry (Preview)
• Overtone Singing (Preview)
• Scottish Smallpipes (Preview)
• Highland Bagpipes (Preview)
• Irish Tin Whistle in D (Preview)
• Kalimba (Preview)
• Kazoo (Preview)

(All datasets follow The Proteus Standard™ for ethical dataset provenance and licensing.)

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📜 License

Released under CC BY-NC 4.0.

• Free for non-commercial use, testing, and research
• Commercial licensing available via Harmonic Frontier Audio
• A formal rights declaration is included in this dataset bundle

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📧 Contact

Harmonic Frontier Audio
📩 info@harmonicfrontieraudio.com
🌐 https://harmonicfrontieraudio.com/

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🗒️ Release Notes

Version 0.9 (March 2026) – Initial Preview Pack release for Nasalization and Velum Control.
See CHANGELOG.md for detailed version history.

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Citation

If you use this dataset in your research, please cite:

Pullen, B. (2026). Nasalization and Velum Control Dataset (Preview) [Data set]. Harmonic Frontier Audio. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18862706

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0003-4527-0178

BibTeX

@dataset{pullen_2026_nasalization_velum_control_preview,
  author       = {Blake Pullen},
  title        = {Nasalization and Velum Control Dataset (Preview)},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Harmonic Frontier Audio},
  version      = {0.9},
  doi          = {10.5281/zenodo.18862706},
  url          = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18862706}
}