Speaking Piano - Now with (somewhat decent) captions!
Speaking Piano - Now with (somewhat decent) captions! on HackerTube: recommended by 3 Hacker News commenters across 3 separate months, 2010–2023.
A player piano is made to reproduce human speech, here reciting a European Environmental Criminal Court proclamation in German at the 2009 World Venice Forum. This upload adds subtitles so the words become understandable.
What HN commenters said
5 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.
gizajobAug 2023Recommends
It's the Shepard tone effect running in the background of the actual notes, which produce a mild illusion that they're ascending when they're not, but nevertheless they're moving up and then down in pitches so it's not a brilliant example. I think the author is a little confused in this short essay about a few things. His "talking piano" effect is just standard vocoding, which has made me think this is all fairly new to him and he's not an expert. THIS is a talking piano: ▶ this video
in “Auditory illusions with examples from Daft Punk” · View on HN
ssfrrMay 2020Recommends
I love this demo. It’s a good example of how much our perception is affected by our priors. This is a other great example, where speech is synthesized with an acoustic piano (though the keys are controlled digitally, the sound is just from the hammers and strings). Without the subtitles you probably couldn’t understand, but it sounds pretty clear when you know what it’s saying already. ▶ this video
in “Sine-wave speech audio encoding” · View on HN
jacquesmMar 2015Recommends
A loudspeaker is nothing but a coil, a magnet and a piece of cardboard and it too is capable of incredible tonal quality and a huge range of polyphonics. This one really got me: ▶ this video
in “Dot matrix printer playing “Eye of the Tiger” [video]” · View on HN
merelysoundsJul 2022Cites it
Loosely related, MIDI standard can be used to generate all kinds of sounds, even human speech on a real life piano. Here's a demonstration from 2009[1] and a recent article with more context [2]. [1]: ▶ this video [2]: [link]
in “Black MIDI” · View on HN
jacquesmMay 2010Cites it
talk about complex to play: ▶ this video eerie! You're correct about the 'reproducing pianos', I didn't know the correct English term.
in “Computer program writing great, original works of classical music” · View on HN