How to make OS X sing

Posted by admin on 2nd May , 2010

Here is the result of an experiment that I did. The first chorus is with vocoder and the second without for comparison.

tobiah - even machines

This is what I used to make the track. This not an absolute, other set-ups works as well but with different methods.

  • OS X Snow Leopard (For speechsynthesis and OS)
  • Ableton Live 8
  • Chipsounds (For the C64 lead and Carrier on the Vocoder)
  • MicroTonic (Drum synthesizer)
  • Synplant (Pads and Bass)

In the Terminal application, write the following:

say “I am the robot”

This makes OS X’s synthesis to speak out loud, but if you add the following, it will write the audio to a file with the name you specify. (I used the file ending *.aac because it was the only format I got to work)

say -o “audiofile.aac” “I am the robot”

Now you can make short samples of synthesized speech that you can include in your music projects.

What I did after that was to import the speech into Audacity and convert it to AIFF format so that I could import it into Live 8. In Live 8 you have a function to stretch and beatmatch transients. So it doesn’t matter so much that the output from the OS X speech synthesis isn’t made for musicmaking.

A general tip about vocoders that I picked up from Kraftwerk, is that if you use an EQ on the voice (modulator) and add gain to the higher portion of the audio frequency range. You will get a much clearer sound.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 2nd, 2010 at 11:36 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

14 Responses to “How to make OS X sing”

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    Hands down, Apple’s app store wins by a mile. It’s a huge selection of all sorts of apps vs a rather sad selection of a handful for Zune. Microsoft has plans, especially in the realm of games, but I’m not sure I’d want to bet on the future if this aspect is important to you. The iPod is a much better choice in that case.

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    Will this work for both men and women?

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    Marvelous web site! I’ll possibly be referencing some of this information in my next speech.

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