[DECtalk] the tone command

Ulysses Garcia green_gables_fan33 at yahoo.com
Sat Dec 27 21:01:40 EST 2014


I'm no big techie myself, but having studied physics in regards to
sound, plus the fact that I tune pianos as a hobby has me thinking about
this.
So the first thing you should try to think about is what kind of tone is
DECtalk generating. Is it a sine, a square, sawtooth, etc. In this case
it's a sine, which has zero harmonics, or overtones that give it that
unique texture.
Melodies are based on notes, but notes are defined by a pitch in
frequency that are equally distributed over something call cents. Cents,
as you might already know, stands for a hundred. So there are a hundred
cents between each chromatic note. Let's start with A-440. This is the
standard tuning for concert pitch. A semitone below it would be the
twelfth root of two divided in half, which will give you 415.2 I think.
If you multiply that by two, you get 466.2.
According to the piano school for the blind, they told us that there is
a ratio of one to two. From A0 to A#0 is only one difference, but
between A4 and A#4 there is a twenty-six HZ difference. So the higher
you go, the more bits you'll have in between. I suggest you look up the
theory behind equal temperament.
While this HZ may be useful to know when creating music with tones, it
isn't enough to help me understand sample rates, bit depth, and all
those other stuff that particularly refer to digital computation.
On 12/27/2014 5:20 PM, Blake Roberts via Dectalk wrote:
> I have known for years about the Dectalk command for generating musical
> tones.
>
> [:tone]
>
> However, I have never understood which tones represent what notes. Does
> anyone know of a method for figuring that out? As an example of a file with
> tones, I am attaching We All Live In A Yellow Submarine text file. I have no
> idea who made it. The fact that the tone command is used near the end to
> create a melody amazes me.
>
> Blake
>
>
>
>
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