[DECtalk] text files

Ulysses Garcia green_gables_fan33 at yahoo.com
Sun Dec 28 15:48:27 EST 2014 

Hi Mike,
What a coincidence. I was working blind pun intended like you were until
I also learned about that stuff, and music in general to be able to
produce better music. Unfortunately DECtalk is getting kind of boring,
so I now stick to others like Flinger and Vocaloid. If the Mac was
accessible with Vocal Writer, and if the processor was compatible I
would have used it by now.
On 12/28/2014 12:37 PM, Mike S via Dectalk wrote:
> 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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>>>>>
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