Mrs Helen Harper, of Jamaica, New York, had an unusual ability — she could play the human voice with her fingers.

It was 1939, and the world’s first electronic speech synthesiser had just been invented at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey.  The Voder, as it was named, … Read the rest

The post Meet Siri’s Great-Grandfather, the Voder appeared first on Tremblings and Warblings.

Here’s a novel idea from the King’s College Choir:

In the video, one of the choristers gets help hitting a high note by taking a breath from a large helium balloon. (Obligatory warning: it’s dangerous to try this at home.)  So… does this actually work?  Does inhaling helium really make your voice higher?

In an earlier post, we looked at how the pitch of your voice depends on … Read the rest

The post Why Inhaling Helium Makes You Sound Like a Chipmunk appeared first on Tremblings and Warblings.

Here’s a recording of a woman reciting a line from the Catalan poem La Vaca Cega:

Speech-female.wav by xserra / CC BY.

Suppose that you wanted to take the recording and change the quality of the voice — change it into a male-sounding voice, for instance.  How would you go about it?  I did this recently for an online audio processing course I took, … Read the rest

The post Digitally Transforming a Female Voice to a Male Voice appeared first on Tremblings and Warblings.

Here’s a violin playing the note G (with frequency 784 Hz), followed by a flute playing the same note:

Sounds from the Philharmonia Orchestra’s free sound samples / CC BY-SA 3.0.

In part 1 of this series on what makes a musical sound, we looked at two basic properties of a musical note – its pitch and loudness. Since these two notes … Read the rest

The post What Makes a Musical Sound Part 2 – Tone Quality and Spectra appeared first on Tremblings and Warblings.