Printer Friendly"Nancy in a Box"
Presented by: Ayse Kalkan-Savoy, Senior Software Engineer and Rattima Nitisaroj, Computational Linguist, Lessactech, Inc.
Workshop Description
We will see the ways to analyze sound on a computer environment. We will use Praat software as our tool. Students will use this tool, with our help, to record their speech and then see its spectrogram and waveform. Rattima will give clues about how to read a spectrogram to identify what speech sounds it represents.
A spectrograph is an older device that displays the spectrum of sound when it is spoken to its microphone. We will try to bring a spectrograph for students to see the changes in sound during speech or any sound that is created by different movements of face.
We will look at the acoustic and linguistic features of sound. Using Praat software, we will change the duration and pitch of speech and hear and see the changes in the sound. Duration and pitch are acoustic features. To study linguistic features, which are related to environment of the speech segment, we will observe how the same spelling has different pronunciations, such as “c” in ‘car’ vs. ‘cell’, or ‘live’ as an adjective vs. a verb.
Students will create small sentences or words from several existing speech wave files. They can try very simple speech processing using a couple of filter applications (software). Students will use our software application to synthesize text. They will enter text and the software will produce a sound output for this text.
Leaders’ Job Descriptions
Ayse: I modify a previously built software application (text to speech synthesizer), so that the computer (artificial) speech sounds more human. I also write utility applications to automate manual work that might be needed to accomplish different tasks.
Rattima: I develop linguistic rules for use in expressive speech synthesis, making a computer read out a text with a humanlike sound.
Advice for Career Path
Ayse: Math, and physics. Not ignoring any other subject that you love to keep yourselves motivated and creative.
Rattima: Love to study languages. Ability to recognize patterns in a language, as well as similarities and dissimilarities among various languages.