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From: ron@vicorp.com (Ron Peterson)
Newsgroups: comp.music
Subject: Re: voice synthesizer
Message-ID: <1991Apr18.230956.20033@vicorp.com>
Date: 18 Apr 91 23:09:56 GMT
References: <71181@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU>
Reply-To: ron@vicorp.com (Ron Peterson)
Organization: V. I. Corporation, Amherst, Massachusetts
Lines: 40

In article <71181@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU> v092pxca@ubvmsb.cc.buffalo.edu writes:
>Does anyone know if anyone is working on building a voice synthesizer?  This

In the cyberpunk novel "Little Hereos" a device called a VoxBox is used
to create the lead and backing vocals for synthetically created music.
It is described as requiring a real human voice as input which is then
modified to give it zing.  Perhaps there is work of this nature going
on somewhere.  I know that Laurie Anderson has a device that she uses
to make her voice sound male.  Anyone know the details of how it works?

I've played with sending a voice through fuzzboxes, flangers, delays,
equalizers and even synthesizers (anyone have a PAIA Gnome they want to
sell me? Mine got stolen) like the ARP Avatar and while fun, it all
sounds robotic.  A memory of an ad in Electronic Musician comes to my
mind--the one that showed a box with hundreds of LED's on the front
and boasted real-time harmonic modification of guitar sounds.  Costs
more than 10K but might do some interesting things to a voice.  Anyone
ever try one?  I'd be interested in knowing how hard it is to program
and what it sounds like.
PAIA sells an affordable vocoder.  Perhaps this could be modified to
work with the digital recording systems that are appearing (or the
samplers that already exist) to function as an input device for 
altering vocals.  Like this: Record a lyric, isolate the first
word/sound, smooth the pitch fluctuations be specifying a pitch
glide rate limit, using your voice as input record an amplitude and
pitch history, then cut-paste-shift-alter-scale-stretch-impose rules
on the history, then apply it to the recorded lyric, then fiddle with it
to get it good.  Sounds tedious but not much more so than twiddling
sampled sounds.

Seems like real-time modification of voice via DSP is do-able.  Just
guessing, it seems like it would require recognising/detecting events
in song/speech (start, stop, click, resonance shifts, ?) in order to
know when to switch in the proper algorithm for modifying that part of
the sound (in addition to things like pitch shifting and equalisation.)

Hook it up to a Max Headroom and then any dweeb (like me 8v) who can
program can build themselves a new image and voice!  (Pretty hard to
take it into the bedroom though...robotics and telepresence?)
ron@vicorp.com or uunet!vicorp!ron