Peter William Farrett

Speech synthesis and analysis of dialects

A set of intonation intervals for a chosen dialect are applied to the intonational contour of a phomene string derived from a single set of stored linguistic units, e.g., phonemes. Sets of intonational intervals are stored to simulate or recognize different dialects or languages from a single set of stored phonemes. The interval rules preferably use a prosodic analysis of the phoneme string or other cues to apply a given interval to the phoneme string. A second set of interval data is provided for semantic information. The speech system is based on the observation that each dialect and language possess its own set of musical relationships or intonation intervals. These musical relationships are used by a human listener to identify the particular dialect or language. The speech system may be either a speech synthesis or speech analysis tool or may be a combined speech synthesis/analysis system.

Melody composer and arranger

A method and system for automatically generating an entire musical arrangement including melody and accompaniment on a computer. The invention combines predetermined, short musical phrases modified by selection of random parameters to produce a data stream that can be used to drive a MIDI synthesizer and generate music.

Three dimensional speech synthesis

Method, product and system alters audio data for a synthesized voice so that when it is produced on a speaker system, it appears to emanate from a spatial position. First, the voice is synthesized into a speech waveform from a set of stored data representative of a text string using standard techniques. The speech waveform is converted into analog signals for a right and left channel. According to the invention, the analog signals to the right and left channels are altered according to position data stored with the text string so that the synthesized voice appears to originate at the apparent spatial position when the analog signals are sent to a speaker system.

System and method for speech synthesis employing improved formant composition

A method, system and process to improve the formant composition in a speech synthesis system so that the formants are more intelligible. The system employs a process in the memory of a processor to change the starting and ending frequency of phonemes from the frequency of the independent phonemes. The process examines preceding and succeeding ending phoneme frequency values to detect similar phoneme frequency values. If a dissimilar value is detected, then the invention provides for exchange of the formants to render the resulting speech more intelligible.