Matt Gilbert (who blog-watchers will remember as the creator of the scrollbar scarf) has been thinking about speech synths: "Speech synthesis is usually about converting text to speech, but what if you approached it differently?" He designed a great-looking instrument out of curved wood, string, rubber bands and faders. As you press on the strings, it triggers a Max/MSP patch which emulates a voice. It's can't speak, but gets pretty close to singing. As ever, this makes no sense until you see this slightly freaky demo video [QT](thanks, Roberto)
5/21/2006
VowelSynth - Playable DIY speech synthesizer
Matt Gilbert (who blog-watchers will remember as the creator of the scrollbar scarf) has been thinking about speech synths: "Speech synthesis is usually about converting text to speech, but what if you approached it differently?" He designed a great-looking instrument out of curved wood, string, rubber bands and faders. As you press on the strings, it triggers a Max/MSP patch which emulates a voice. It's can't speak, but gets pretty close to singing. As ever, this makes no sense until you see this slightly freaky demo video [QT](thanks, Roberto)
This is awesome. It's yet another way to play that totally useless "yow-I-yah" quasi vocal patch found on all Korg and Yamaha synths since around the time of the Prophecy and the EX5. Nothing musically valid has yet come from it.
ReplyDeleteI also waste my time. But, unlike me, at least he's trying eh.
I like it. The design is simple and graceful, and I think the usage of rubber bands is brilliant, especially if the tension is sending CCs, not just on/off. Hard to tell from the video exactly what's happening there, but I'm impressed!
ReplyDeleteThere's a typo in the copy for this blog entry. Where it says "almost singing" it should say "almost farting".
ReplyDelete...you've obviously never tried south african shark paté.
ReplyDeleteJesus man....use two hands.....or do something different in that video....you did the same exact hand motion for all two minutes of it.....
ReplyDeleteAutechre will no doubt be making use of this for their next tour
ReplyDelete