Professor David M Howard FREng, PhD (University of London) has been involved in research in fundamental frequency estimation for single-channel cochlear implanteesfor his PhD (a long time ago!), voice acoustics in speech and singing, music acoustics and the acoustics of various locations. His undergraduate, postgraduate and first years of lecturing were at University College London on a BSc in Speech Science. He moved to the department of Electronic Engineering at the University of York to be part of a team designing an MSc in Music Technology for which he taught with Acoustics and Psychoacoustics Dr Jamie Angus. David was part of the team who started a BSc in Music Technology at York. After two stints as Head of Department at York, he was head-hunted to start a new degree in Electronic Engineering at Royal Holloway (University of London) which is founded on the maxim: Creativity first science follows to underline the importance of creative thinking when designing electronic products.
David has given numerous research lectures over the years relating to voice production and perception. He has authored and contributed to a number of books including: ‘Acoustics and Psychoacoustics’ with Professor Jamie Angus (Taylor and Francis) which is now in its 5th Edition and has been translated into Chinese; ‘Music Technology: Acoustics and Psychoacoustics’ with Professor Damian Murphy (Plural Press); ‘Choral Singing and Healthy Voice Production’ (Willow Leaf Publishing). He has also contributed to a number of other books including ‘The larynx’ (Plural Press), ‘Occupational voice – care and cure Occupational voice – care and cure’ (Kugler), ‘Killers in the Brain’ (Oxford University Press), ‘Speech technology for telecommunications’ (Chapman and Hall’), ‘Hostile intent and counter-terrorism’ (Ashgate). David was one of the threeEditors for ‘The Oxford Handbook of Singing’ (Oxford University Press) to which he contributed a number of entries.
David has been involved in a number of research grants relating to speech, singing and music production, analysis and synthesis over a number of years totalling in excess of £29m. In 2020 he was first author on the paper that reported the recreation of a vowel sound from the 3,000-year-old Egyptian Mummy. This resulted in an invitation to give a Tedx talk in Vienna which has been upgraded to an international Ted talk (search: ‘Ted Nesyamun’) which has had over a million views.
David is Church Organist and Choir Director at St. Mary’s Thorpe and he is the Musical Director of Feltham Choral Society.