Music Thing: Singing speech synthesizers
posted July 22nd 2005 4:30PM
So, today I was hoping to provide a roundup of exciting new products launched at the NAMM trade show, which opened
in Indianapolis this morning. Unfortunately, so far it seems to be mainly new types of drum heads, and a
vile-looking guitar designed
by Bono out of U2. Also, Sting has designed some kind of overgrown ukulele that's friendly to the rainforest because it
doesn't use much wood.
Instead, the coolest thing I've seen all week is not new at all. It's the $55
Speakjet Development Kit, a DIY,
hack-friendly speech synthesizer on a chip, perfect for impersonations from Kraftwerk to Stephen Hawking. It comes with
various buttons and LEDs, a serial interface to your PC and numerous digital and analog ins and outs. One MT reader
says "The chip sounds very good with delicious robotic feeling," and he's planning to build a "computer
controlled musical speech synthesizer" around it. He's not alone. One small company has already built a Speakjet chip
into a synthesizer module, which lets it interface with big
modular synths for major weirdness.
Obviously, you can do all
kinds of speech synthesis
in software, but it's just not as much fun.
Looks awesome, I've always loved voice synth stuff. Now to pursuade my school's physics department to buy one - i'm working there at the moment, so anything I can pursuade them to buy I get to use ;).
While at NAMM, you should check out my guitar stand! I developed it and then licensed it to the Shubb Company.
You can also check it out at their website: www.shubb.com/talon/index.html
It's just a guitar stand, so no Bluetooth or OLED screen... But it's got a unique breakaway hinge feature, so the stand shouldn't break when your drunk bandmate steps on it.
I'm an avid Engadget reader. Cheers!
Big Deal, I made one of those in electronics class last year when I was 14 YEARS OLD!