Talkloid Tips?

[mobius017]

Does anyone have tips for how to make a talkloid that sounds good?

(I've done a few segments before, and am currently working on a much larger project, so I'm looking to learn more than I currently know.)

In my experience, the main things that produce better results seem to be

• Very careful editing of note duration and pitch
• Quite few changes in pitch
• Generally shorter notes than music--longer than 1/8 (at 120 BPM) is probably rare

 

[InstallGentoo]

I assume 1/8th in 120 bpm. Maybe try setting bpm to around hear rate and then try speaking sentences monitoring heartrate and voice.
So there's different kinds of speech, then seperate talkaloid from resting speech to exhausted speech and uptempo jog speech?
Setting the tempo to be the same as heartrate will base the speech patterens in a more comprehensible matter and it becomes less arbitrary especially when explaining it to others.
I wonder what is the appropiate pitch range to settle around to transcribe a singing voicebank to talking one.

 

[mobius017]

Yep, I'm using 120 BPM.

Generally, I suppose a person's pitch would tend to be either lower/the same while speaking than singing. It would depend on the person, though, and maybe what kind of music they usually performed. (For example, Bing Crosby's speaking voice seemed surprisingly high to me when hearing it in movies in which he also sang.)

 

[PearlStarLight5]

I use 150 bpm and vary the note lengths based on what words I'm emphasizing. I think a faster pace better gives the illusion of talking than singing (although, in the state I live in we talk very fast and that might contribute to how I tune Talkloids). I also generally have the pitch go down in a phrase and pick it back up when a word is being emphasized. At the end of a sentence, I have the pitch bend go down to indicate a complete sentence, go up to indicate a question or upward inclination that some women use (depending on the character. I would advise against overusing this technique in particular), and either go up or stay in the middle to indicate a pause in a complete sentence.
I think the best way to learn the pitch inclination of speech is to listen closely to actual speech. What musical pitches does their speech sound like?

 

[mobius017]

What Pitch Bend Sensitivity value would you recommend?

I'm inclined to say there would be 2 different reasons to use Pitch Bending in Talkloid:

1. Sometimes changes in pitch don't correspond neatly to semitones, so you want to use PIT/PBS to place your pitch between them. A PBS of 1 would probably be most useful here.
2. For things like the ends of words/sentences (e.g., questions), the change in pitch could be greater. In that case, it's more "to taste."

Possibly answering my own question, I guess that invites the idea of automating a change in PBS depending on if you're dealing with situation 1 or 2.

 

[PearlStarLight5]

I would say either of those sounds good. Although, in Vocaloid in particular, with Talkloids I usually only note bend.