[DECtalk] An update RE: Vocaloid Manual
Ulysses Garcia
birdlover2002 at hotmail.com
Wed Mar 12 05:57:52 EDT 2014
Hi, I added new stuff to the vocaloid manual as I just happened to do
some experiment. For proof, here's an example.
Hi everybody: Today, I will be showing you some ground-breaking
discoveries many of you
thought would never come. But it was my perseverance and patience that
did it, and
collaboration with other people who were like me but who lacked
motivation in some ways. Now,
I am trying to reach out to as many blind people, whom I know have a
major interest in singing
synthesisers, that there is a way after all, a way that many, including
myself would never be
here. Sometimes I ask for directions, but the person giving it to me
does not give me detailed
step-by-step documentation-style directions, which has lead me to be
hampered with all of the
work. Soon I discovered this new method and now I am sharing it. Sadly,
there has been very
little enthusiasm throughout the forums to which I am subscribed to.
I first remember being fascinated with singing synthesisers back in June
of 2007. I did not know
much about linguistics at that time, neither did I know about music
notation. I just learned how
to make Dec talk sing using my knowledge of time and note and after
understanding phonemes I
cranked out quite a number of songs. Then I learnt how to harmonise and
then two years later I
learned how to back-mask with phonemes. Eventually though I came across
speech synthesisers
that sounded much better than Dec talk that somehow made me feel that
Dec talk was now
inferior because it sounded so bright where as the others sounded dark.
The first one that I
really liked was Vocal Writer, and I was doing research on it.
Unfortunately, however, it was
meant for the Macintosh. So I put that in my to do list, and when I
found a Mac I could work
with, I installed Vocal Writer. Then I found out that Voice-over was not
working well with it, so I
asked about it. It turned out that two people learned how to use it.
Hugh Emerson and Flint
Million. However, there were no links to these external resources, so I
was stumped. At that
same time, however, I learned about Vocaloid, and I remember trying to
find a way to get a hold
of it. Eventually I gave that up and I assumed it was going to be only
in Japanese. Then, in 2013,
I finally found away to obtain Vocaloid, and for about four months I
kind of did not use it until I
got a hunch that lead me to try something. Apparently someone said you
had to have someone
select the first note for you before you could insert lyrics. Well, what
if you selected all? So I
tried that and sure enough, it worked perfectly. But guess what? I was
surprised that I was not
even excited. Maybe because I knew it was right there, but have not yet
figured it out? I knew I
learned ow to make eloquence sing based on learning and my creativity,
and someone helped
me how to make Orpheus sing, but I lost interest in those right a way.
But with this, it will be
something I will be using for a long time.
Soon after my big discovery, I spent one week exactly turning a lot of
my MIDI collections into
real songs. And this struck me as funny because a few days before this,
someone posted on the
Dec talk mailing list that they heard of a MIDI to Dec talk converter. I
knew there was no such
thing because now we already know how Vocaloid and Vocal Writer and
Flinger work. So, now I
am willing to share the directions with anyone who is interested and I
hope we can recruit more
blind people and renew the enthusiasm.
After you read the below steps, you will finally learn how to make
Vocaloid sing just about
anything you wanted to. Note that Vocaloid Editor 3 only provides the
voices. To mix in
instruments you will need some kind of a sound editor. You will also
need this if you are to make
choral pieces of some sort.
To begin, use a midi sequencer like Quick Windows Sequencer. Make sure
the notes are
precisely timed with the metronome though, or else you will have to
normalise with Vocaloid.
Not only that but Vocaloid will count any irregular notes in your song
and this can mess up your
project.
Once you set up your MIDI roll, open Vocaloid, and when you open a file,
choose Vocaloid MIDI
from the files of type drop down menu list. Locate the file and press
enter. A list of tracks will
appear. Check only one and do not bother with any of the others. Before
adding lyrics, you will
need to press space to play, and when it tells you that there are
overlapping notes, go to the
jobs menu and press enter on normalise.
Next, go to the edit menu, and find the select all. Alternatively, press
control+A. This will select
all the notes in the musical editor window, which is where you need to
be or else this will not
work. Once you have done this, go back to the jobs menu and find the
insert lyrics item.
When an edit multi-line appears, you will see 'ooh ooh ooh' depending on
how many notes there
are. Note that each ooh represents one syllable tied to that note, so if
you had a word that had
more than one you would have to separate them using dashes. You cannot
write any nonsense
words because it will check the dictionary.
Lyrical notation: For those of you who are music Braille readers or just
musicians in general,
this might be easy for you to understand. A syllable is simply a combo
of vowel and consonants
like this 'word' in single quotes. When a word is more than one syllable
and it evenly ties to each
note, you or Vocaloid will put dashes, like this. Hel- lo I am
des-cri-bing how to write ly-rics with
Voca-loid. For words that stretch across multiple notes such as in the
example Angels we have
heard on High in the word Gloria, write a dash after the first syllable,
like this. 'Glo- - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - ria'. Also make sure your MIDI file has the right number
of notes for` each syllable.
Some people try to hush a two-syllable word into one note that is tied
only to find out that it
does not work, so instead, separate them with MIDI and try again.
Sometimes, you may find
yourself that you are dealing with a word you think has one syllable,
when it really has two.
These kinds of words are tricky, because there are words that sound like
they have two syllables
when they count as one. examples are words like our or soil. Our is a
two-syllable word while
soil is a one-syllable word.
Vocaloid is pretty good at analysing words though, and if you want you
can use phonemes if you
are dealing with a tricky word Vocaloid cannot pronounce or if you want
to be really accurate.
Once you have finished, check the song to make sure you have the words
right. This may take
time and I nearly gave up on it. After you finished, save the VSQX to
your hard drive, and then
you can export the result as a wave file.
From now on, you will have to repeat the above steps if you want to do
the same thing to the
other tracks. Eventually you will want to establish a suffix for each
wave file you are working
with so you can mix them later.
Note: To change voices, press control+tab to go to the track editor,
press control+a to select all
parts, press alternate+p for parts menu, and up arrow for part
properties. Depending on how
many voices you have installed, you can select which voice you would
like to use for that part.
After selecting your voice press enter. You will have to experiment with
really slow work-
arounds, like mixing and rendering. It is a pain, but this is the best
method that does not require
any other form. And as always, you can experiment on your own, to learn
how to make Vocaloid
sound more human. These include things like adding breath sounds,
portamentos, vibratos, and
more.
Now that I am a pro, it takes me about five to ten minutes to write up a
short song. I hope you
found these directions simple to read and feel free to ask any
questions. I am sure that from this
point on, experimentation will be entirely up to you to be creative in
the long run. I know I did.
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