Texas Instruments Corporation

E Bryan George

Alan V McCree

Vishu R Viswanathan

Michael W Macon

James Oliverio

Leslie Jensen-Link

Mark Clements

A method of singing voice synthesis uses commercially-available MIDI-based music composition software as a user interface (13). The user specifies a musical score and lyrics; as well as other music control parameters. The control information is stored in a MIDI file (11). Based on the input to the MIDI file (11) the system selects synthesis model parameters from an inventory (15) of linguistic voice data units. The units are selected and concatenated in a linguistic processor (17). The units are smoothed in the processing and are modified according to the music control parameters in musical processor (19) to modify the pitch, duration, and spectral characteristics of the concatenated voice units as specified by the musical score. The output waveform is synthesized using a sinusoidal model 20.

Singing voice synthesis

A novel approach to parameter encoding is presented which improves coding efficiency and performance by exploiting the variable rate nature of certain classes of signals. This is achieved using an interpolative variable frame-rate breakpointing scheme referred to as adaptive frame selection (AFS). In the approach described in this report, frame selection is achieved using a recursive dynamic programming algorithm; the resulting parameter encoding system is referred to as adaptive frame selection using dynamic programming (AFS/DP). The AFS/DP algorithm determines optimal breakpoint locations in the context of parameter encoding using an arbitrary objective performance measure, and operates in a fixed bit-rate, fixed-delay context with low computational requirements. When applied to the problem of low bit-rate coding of speech spectral and gain parameters, the AFS/DP algorithm is capable of improving the perceptual quality of coded speech and robustness to quantization errors over fixed frame-rate approaches.

Variable framerate parameter encoding

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Carrollton, TX, United States of America

E Bryan George