Title :
Speaker-specific pitch contour modeling and modification
Author :
Chappell, David T. ; Hansen, John H L
Author_Institution :
Robust Speech Process. Lab., Duke Univ., Durham, NC, USA
Abstract :
This paper describes new techniques for modeling and generating speaker-dependent pitch contours for sentences. Speech synthesis applications could generally benefit from such speaker-specific pitch contours. The proposed algorithms begin with an existing pitch contour for an utterance and use data from training utterances to modify the contour to be appropriate for a second speaker. One approach modifies the original pitch values to statistically match the desired speaker at each point in time. A second novel approach uses dynamic time warping (DTW) to select a new pitch contour from a pre-determined code book and time-align the chosen contour to the original sentence. Such contour mapping can transfer one speaker´s natural pitch characteristics to another person´s speech. Informal listener evaluations suggest that while shifting the frequency range of the original pitch contour yields some improvement, better results are obtained by applying DTW techniques to time-warp the contour from an existing sentence produced by the desired speaker
Keywords :
Gaussian processes; speech coding; speech synthesis; statistical analysis; Gaussian normalisation; algorithms; code book; contour mapping; dynamic time warping; frequency range shifting; informal listener evaluations; natural pitch characteristics; scatterplot pitch modelling; sentences; speaker-dependent pitch contours; speaker-specific pitch contour modeling; speaker-specific pitch contour modification; speech synthesis applications; statistical algorithms; training utterances; utterance; Books; Communication system control; Frequency; Laboratories; Natural languages; Psychoacoustic models; Robustness; Speech processing; Speech synthesis; Stress;
Conference_Titel :
Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing, 1998. Proceedings of the 1998 IEEE International Conference on
Conference_Location :
Seattle, WA
Print_ISBN :
0-7803-4428-6
DOI :
10.1109/ICASSP.1998.675407