How to Use Digital Media

… in lab & conferences:

students can record & play voice files
instructor can record voice files for students to hear
students can instantly compare their voice with instructor’s voice
students can perform listening discrimination tasks
students can upload lab work over the web – instantly available anywhere
students can do their lab work in the lab or at home
rewind & fast forward are faster & more accurate
instantly go to a segment you want to hear
cassette, CD, and VHS can easily be converted to digital
visual feedback of pitch and other phonetic phenomena

…for different kinds of analysis

visual pitch contour for intonation and stress work: sentence stress, word stress, rising, falling & level sentence intonation, jumps & glides
visual loudness contour for work on linking & pausing, consonant aspiration, syllabic N, consonant clusters, voiceless & voiced consonants and more
work with students on problems such as devoicing of vowels, inserting vowels in consonant clusters, bad linking, and more

…in class:

Screenshots for handouts

Disadvantages Compared To Tape

· some lab setup is necessary

· some web site setup is necessary

· sound files take up a lot of storage space

Some software sources:

Speech Analyzer (free) www.sil.org
Goldwave (free evaluation version, $40 registered) www.goldwave.com
Windows Media Player, Windows Sound Recorder (free with Microsoft Windows)

Using GoldWave to listen to speech samples

1. First we will open a file. Use “File Open,” “Control-O,” or the “Open” button on the toolbar.

2. First we will look at long and short consonants. Open “he’d like to be Tom” and “he’d like to beat Tom.” These two files are on the desktop.

3. Pull down the “window” menu, and select “tile.”

4. Select one of the files by clicking the mouse there.

5. You can play the file using the space bar on your keyboard or the play button in the GoldWave window.

6. We are going to measure the length of [t]. Find the beginning of the silent space that represents [t]. Point the mouse there and left-click.

7. Find the end of [t] and right-click there.

8. Along the bottom of the GoldWave window, in parentheses, is the length of [t] in seconds.

1. Repeat these steps for the [t] in the other file and compare.

Other files to look at and listen to Using GoldWave

· voiced and voiceless consonants: “time” and “dime”

· syllabic N (“it’s cotton”) and non-syllabic N (“it’s cotton”)

· long K (“back cars”) and short K (“black R’s”)

Using GoldWave to record your voice and save it to a disk

1. First we create (“initialize”) a new blank file. Use either “File New,” “Control-N,” or the “New” button on the toolbar.

2. We will create a 5-second file, which is long enough to hold a typical sentence. In the new file dialog, there are three categories: “channels,” “sampling rate,” and “length.” In “channels,” select “mono,” in “sampling rate,” select “22kHz,” and in “length,” select 5 seconds.

3. Save your file to the Windows desktop.

4. Decide what you are going to say.

5. Locate the record button, marked with a red dot, in the GoldWave button window (“device controls” window). Click on the record button. The vertical cursor should begin to move in the main window.

6. As soon as the cursor is moving, you can begin to speak into the microphone. Speak in a natural volume, neither louder nor softer than if you were having an ordinary conversation. Hold the microphone about six inches from your mouth to begin with.

7. Observe the level indicators in the device controls window. If the level indicators go too high and become red, you are holding the microphone too closely. If the level indicators don’t move much, and never become yellow or orange, you are holding the microphone too far away.

8. You can re-record until you are satisfied.

9. When you have finished one sentence, find the stop button (a pink square) and click there.

10. Play back your sound. Make sure the recording is free from distortion, which happens when the microphone is too close, and make sure it is reasonably free from background noise, which happens when the microphone is too far away. Re-record the sentence if necessary.

11. When you are satisfied with this sentence, use the mouse to select and copy the sentence to new file. Move the mouse pointer to the point where the waveform graph begins, and use the left mouse button to click there. Then move the mouse pointer to the point where the waveform ends, and use the right mouse button to click there. Your sentence should be highlighted in blue against a black background.

12. Select “Edit Copy To” from the menu bar, or click the “Copy 2” button on the toolbar. This opens a “Save As” dialog window.

13. Give your sentence a name. Then save it.

Using Speech Analyzer to analyze intonation

1. First, open a file. Use “File Open,” “Control-O,” or the “Open” button on the toolbar.

2. Find the file that contains the sentence you recorded in the previous section of this tutorial.

3. Select “Graphs Types” from the menu bar.

4. From the Graph Types dialog, click on the check boxes to select Raw Pitch, Choose Pitch, Smoothed Pitch, and Auto Pitch. Click to de-select Raw Waveform. Click “OK.”

5. In each window, you’ll see the intonation as a graph where time is on the horizontal axis and pitch (rise or fall) is on the vertical axis. Which of the graph types looks clearest? You may close the windows for all but the clearest graph if you wish.

6. Play the file. Use “Playback Between Cursors” from the menu bar or the “play between cursors” button (the leftmost of the blue arrows) on the toolbar. You will hear the portion of the file that lies between the left and right cursors.

7. Try moving the left and right cursors. Move the mouse pointer toward a cursor until the pointer changes into a hand icon. Then click and hold the left mouse button to drag the cursor to a new position. By moving the cursors, and using “play between cursors,” you can isolate a syllable or group of syllables.

8. Is there a rise or fall to indicate primary sentence stress? Where in the sentence does the rise or fall occur? Try using the mouse to select and play different syllables or groups of syllables in isolation. Does the rise or fall happen where you expected?

9. Next try opening one of the instructor recordings for comparison. Locate the file containing my voice reading the same sentence as the one that you have just recorded.

10. You may view your file and the instructor’s file at the same time. Select “Window” from the menu bar and then select “Tile.” How does your intonation compare to mine?