[DECtalk] the tone command

Blake Roberts beroberts at hughes.net
Sun Dec 28 10:01:31 EST 2014


Thank you Ulysses and Raymond for providing an explanation of how to
generate tones with the tone command. James, To make Dectalk sing you need
to use phoneems, pitches for notes and time values. Phoneme-based singing is
different from tone generation because different numbers are used. That and
the use of phonemes to represent sounds. The pitches for singing range from
1 (low c) to 37, or maybe 38 I don't quite remember. Anyway, 13 is middle C,
15 is D, 17 E, etc.

Blake

 

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From: Dectalk [mailto:dectalk-bounces at bluegrasspals.com] On Behalf Of
master_j44--- via Dectalk
Sent: Saturday, December 27, 2014 10:34 PM
To: DECtalk
Subject: Re: [DECtalk] the tone command

 

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 <mailto:dectalk at bluegrasspals.com>  C. Grote via Dectalk 

To: DECtalk <mailto:dectalk at bluegrasspals.com>  

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 <mailto:dectalk at bluegrasspals.com>  Roberts via Dectalk 

To: 'DECtalk' <mailto:dectalk at bluegrasspals.com>  

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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