[DECtalk] text files
Mike S
underthetoaster at gmail.com
Sun Dec 28 15:37:32 EST 2014
Hi Blake, I did a lot of DecTalk files back in the late 90's when I
was in high school and bored out of my mind. But since that time I
learned a ton about phonetics, linguistics, and music and those early
files kind of make me cringe. If you want to chat off list, my e-mail
is with google, and the username is underthetoaster. Actually I am
very interested in any other DecTalk creations if others have web
pages or whatnot out there too. I am thinking of throwing a page up
somewhere ...
Mike
On 12/28/14, Ulysses Garcia via Dectalk <dectalk at bluegrasspals.com> wrote:
> Well, as long as we're on the subject of DECtalk singing. I wonder if
> anyone on the DECtalk archive can rename some of the files in the
> example folder, because right now some of them have names I never heard of.
> Like for example, the first file in the list is called Aladdin but I
> don't' recall hearing that melody in the film.
> Here is a MIDI version of what it sounds like. It's not much, but I
> think the melody sort of repeats as it changes keys. Unfortunately
> DECtalk couldn't finish the song, so it went to Genteel Aluette. I've
> been wanting to hear this song since 2007.
> Thanks in advance for any information,
> -Ulysses
> On 12/28/2014 11:05 AM, Jason Smith via Dectalk wrote:
>> This is not for anti-spam purposes to prevent people from harvesting Email
>>
>> addresses. Rather, it's to hopefully keep messages from this list from
>> being flagged as spam by certain large Email providers. Certain
>> providers, Yahoo being one of them, did not like to see Emails come in,
>> claiming to be from their domains, but originating from a server outside
>> their network, so they'd flag these messages as spam. The new way of
>> doing things fixes this problem.
>> Jayson
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: Blake Roberts via Dectalk <dectalk at bluegrasspals.com>
>> To: "'DECtalk'" <dectalk at bluegrasspals.com>
>> Date: Sun, 28 Dec 2014 10:10:26 -0500
>> Subject: Re: [DECtalk] text files
>>
>>> Mike, Did you create any other DT songs in addition to Yellow Submarine?
>>> I
>>> think that song was well done. I pulled your text file out of a zip
>>> called
>>> examples.zip generated years ago. I can't write to you off-list because
>>> listserv settings now hide email addresses, presumably for antispam
>>> purposes.
>>> Blake
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Dectalk [mailto:dectalk-bounces at bluegrasspals.com] On Behalf Of
>> Mike S
>>> via Dectalk
>>> Sent: Sunday, December 28, 2014 1:10 AM
>>> To: DECtalk
>>> Subject: Re: [DECtalk] the tone command
>>>
>>> Hi there. I can't believe those files are still around. I can
>>> embarrassingly admit to spawning that yellow submarine with the tones
>>> long long ago. All I did was use the pitch values that you use for the
>>> phonemes followed by the lengths. It's all charted out in the DecTalk
>>> Commands.txt file. Although, coming out of my old DecTalk PC2 it made
>>> a weird little flap before each tone like it was slapping the notes.
>>> Mike Sivill
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 12/27/14, master_j44--- via Dectalk <dectalk at bluegrasspals.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>> Interesting read!
>>>>
>>>> I've always wanted to make my Dectalk sing but didn't know how to go
>> about
>>>> it. Is it a matter of writing the lyrics/tone codes in a notepad file
>> and
>>>> running that through some Dectalk window program?
>>>>
>>>> Any help/instructions would be most appreciated. Thanks. :)
>>>>
>>>> James
>>>>
>>>> From: Raymond C. Grote via Dectalk
>>>> To: DECtalk
>>>> Sent: Saturday, December 27, 2014 8:48 PM
>>>> Subject: Re: [DECtalk] the tone command
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Hi,
>>>> It's been a ridiculously long time since I popped in here, but I've
>> been
>>>> fighting with e-mail settings forever and got tired of dealing with it.
>>> Now
>>>> I finally got it sorted.
>>>> The numbers used in Dectalk's tone command represent note
>>>> frequencies.
>>>> Basically, the number represents how many times the wave travels up and
>>> down
>>>> in one second. The higher the frequency, the higher the pitch of the
>> tone.
>>>> Unfortunately, all this isn't very useful when it comes to musical
>>>> synthesizers. So there are several methods to convert musical notes to
>>>> frequency.
>>>> One thing that holds true though, is that the A above middle C has a
>>>> frequency of 440 hertz, so you'd use 440 in Dectalk's tone command to
>>>> generate that A. If you wanted the octave above, you'd use 880, for the
>>>> octave above that, you'd use 1760, etc. And for the octaves below,
>>>> you'd
>>> use
>>>> 220, 110, etc. just doubling or halving the frequency depending on
>>>> which
>>>> direction you wanted to go. "Fine," you say, "What about other notes?"
>>>> The easiest way to get other notes is to go online and try searching
>> for
>>> a
>>>> frequency to musical notes reference table. Many exist, with varrying
>>>> degrees of accuracy. I wouldn't spend too much time nit picking on
>>> accuracy
>>>> at least for Dectalk use, because I think Dectalk can only do whole
>>> numbers
>>>> anyway. One or two values off the mark isn't going to make too much of
>> an
>>>> audible difference. The main thing to check for is that there is an A
>> 440
>>> on
>>>> the chart, and every A above that is doubling, and every A below is
>>>> half
>>>> like I said above.
>>>> Now, the really dirty approach that you can do if you don't feel like
>>>> looking at a chart but instead want to do your own math. Why you would
>> use
>>>> this approach over a simple chart is beyond me unless you're genuinely
>>>> interested in the maths, but here goes anyway.
>>>> If you want to calculate other frequencies for other notes yourself,
>> you
>>>> can multiply a bass frequency, such as 440, by the 12th root of two.
>>>> I'm
>>> not
>>>> sure what that is but I did have it written down before. I've done a
>> quick
>>>> calculation and if you multiply by 1.0594631, that is pretty close. So,
>>> 440
>>>> multiplied by 1.0594631 is about 466, so that 466 in Dectalk's tone
>>> command
>>>> would get you A sharp.
>>>> Now, that multiplication figure I gave above isn't totally accurate;
>> the
>>> A
>>>> an octave above, as I said, should be at 880 hertz exactly, but if you
>> do
>>>> the multiplication as suggested above, you'll get something like
>>> 880.00006.
>>>> Which won't make an audible difference to even the most trained ear.
>> Even
>>> if
>>>> you'd come up with 881, I doubt most people would notice, even if you'd
>>>> played 440 right before.
>>>> If you keep multiplying it out to get higher and higher using the
>> figure
>>> I
>>>> gave, you're not going to run into a huge margin of error until you get
>>> into
>>>> ultrasonics, and dectalk can only go up to 5512 HZ. Which is just a
>>>> step
>>> up
>>>> from telephony. In other words it's not high enough to pose a problem
>>> here.
>>>> That said, however, if you actually multiply by the 12th route of 2
>>>> properly, you'll avoid that margin of error, or at the very least, keep
>>>>
>> it
>>>> negligible.
>>>> I hope all of this has helped. Don't let the complicated
>> multiplication
>>> by
>>>> the 12th root of 2 and the like overwhelm you. I just put it here to
>> show
>>>> how to do it scientifically if you were interested to take that route.
>>> Like
>>>> I said, just looking them up on a reference table really should be all
>> you
>>>> have to do to get satisfactory results.
>>>>
>>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>>> From: Blake Roberts via Dectalk
>>>> To: 'DECtalk'
>>>> Sent: Saturday, December 27, 2014 8:20 PM
>>>> Subject: [DECtalk] the tone command
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> 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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