The test was a success.
I ended up over on a sister blog site, I have a few, where nobody subscribes to the posts. It turns out, once you consume a wordpress post into https://anchor.fm you can’t re-consume it. Rather than pollute your inboxes with trashed versions, I used another site.
I didn’t quite know how anchor.fm would convert the text into audio. Turns out my attempts at placing pauses in the reading resulted in odd “Huh!” or “Doh” sounds coming from the AI engine that translated the script. So I had to publish, consume, translate, listen, repeat to get it right.
In the end, Cassidy’s (a dude) voice served well.
Here’s where some of these posts-to-podcasts live: https://anchor.fm/anonymole
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Turns out Google Text2Speech capability is getting pretty fine, too. They have a demo you can search for. They have waveform voices and you can alter the pitch and speed. You have to setup an account to actually use it to save recordings. But, you can hear your text at least on their demo page. There’s also SSML Synthetic Speech Markup Language which allows you to customize things like numbers and initials and whatnot.
Anonymole - apocryphal agitators 
I really want to try this!
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Yea, I’ve tried that a couple of months ago. Once.
Many people turn to ebooks nowadays so I thought it would be cool to give my readers that option to listen to my posts. It didn’t really seem to do much. Those that read my blog read my blog. They did mention they might enjoy the author reading the posts, but I am not comfortable with that at this time. I don’t just want to duplicate content and fill the Internet with doubles, so for now… I stick to the written word.
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How about I post on word press, have it sucked into the audio, then I remove from WP? So only the audio remains. That might be so cool!
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Or, use Google’s T2S, which works pretty well too.
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I did this in 197x with an 8 track RTR, a razor blade, a beep generator and 4 slide projectors. The true beauty of today’s tech is that you can read into a mic and regardless of your speaking voice you can send it to a vocoder or any number of other processors, dial in your masculine or feminine nasal and get it to follow a mono or polyphonic MIDI musical line as well as reharmonize, morph formants and plosives and add granular effects. The last thing any of us needs is more For customer service press numero uno, for sales press numero tres…get creative, man. Text to Vox is so Y2k. Gotta go, a basement full of angry hookers cornered a pimp on The Untouchables.
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Text to Vox doesn’t have a readerly feel. It’s like quantized single layer sampling. Read yourself out loud. If you need a presentation, overcome the fear, eat the mic, get after it.
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Ain’t gonna happen. Google Text2Speech is the future. Change the text, re-generate, done. None of that “Ah, fuck, I messed up again. Stop the damn tape, start over.”
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Until they model the nasal cavity, the mouth cavity, the larynx and the throat it ain’t gonna happen. Right now it’s audio component driven. You’re telling the guy who brought the first physically modeled piano to market. In the 90s. If you think it sounds good it’s yours. But do you honestly think putzing with spaces and 15 takes for a robotic reading is saving time? One of these days you people will put the excuses and toys aside and hit a solid lick. But I quit holding my breath.
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After 30 attempts at recording the sequence, clicking, speaking, failing, I gave up. So I tried a new technique.
You can trash it all you like, it works and works well.
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I read their white paper in 2016. It’s convolution based. Like guitar amp and reverb models. The assignation of the device is generative raw audio samples. No sound truly exists in a vacuum. You can fan a stack of polaroids as fast as you like, it’s still not motion. But then there was a time when we’d have robbed a bank and kidnapped a sheikh for what passes today as a decently shitty $200 digital piano. Party on.
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Microphones 🤮
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Headset. Or laser. Did you know they had laser listening devices? There is no instrument more versatile than the human voice.
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I was thinking of your post about how gross microphones. I had a flashback when you said the word mic. I have never heard of a laser listening device.
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Laser mics as well. Yes mics are gross. Why it’s best to pack your own.
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Yeah, I’ll never view Steven Tyler screaming into that microphone the same way again.
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This might be better than putting it on WP at all!
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Damn, that’s incredible! Too bad it’s not your real voice. Great way to “proofread” your writing see if it flows. PH! PH! Where are you?!
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Damn, indeed, GF. That’s a great idea.
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No it’s not, see below.
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Yes it is. See above.
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Heard about it, never tried it, though. Why do I think all new things are complicated?
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Learning new software languages, platforms, tools, on a monthly basis it seems, I’ve had to adopt the philosophy: “it’s OK to be frustrated with ignorance for ignorance can be cured.”
And sure enough, if I don’t throw my hands up and walk away (which I am wont to do), little by little, I overcome my frustrations.
My voice is scratchy, and when I open my mouth, my brain shuts down, so I needed an alternative to my own recitation.
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Fair enough.
Now if you come from a different field, like myself, technology can be overwhelming at times, though it often aims at simplifying things. What bothers me is a different kind of ignorance, when people say don’t know geography or history (not to mention art and literature), not even their own let alone other people’s. In that case, we can’t really speak about mutual understanding and empathy, can we?
We’ve seen how ignorant and selfish many people are during the pandemic. It laid bare all our weaknesses, it seems.
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Intentional ignorance. No cure for that, it seems. And it’s rampant, unfortunately.
I’d say that the worse type is the anti-enlightened variety. Not only do they refuse to learn, what they do know is categorically wrong, adamantly claiming that it’s correct.
There’s no conversing with such folk.
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Smart people know their limits and are not ashamed or afraid to admit they don’t really know EVERYTHING. Smartasses, the majority, don’t. Unfortunately, the jack of all trades very often get to decide our future. When I see what dumbasses sit in the Serbian parliament, I feel like throwing up.
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There’s your conundrum: The very people who WANT to be in politics and be elected and attain power are the very people we DO NOT WANT to be in power. Maybe that’s a test. Do you want to be president? No? Well then, you’re hired.
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Good thinking.
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Hey that’s pretty cool. I’ve wondered what it’d be like to convert my things to an audio to hear how truly dumb they sound in a different voice.
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It’s easy. And free. And built right into allow anchor.fm to suck posts from wordpress.
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Very interesting! Sounds like your hard work paid off.
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That anchor.fm service provided a damn good audio file I could add application screens to. What worked out the best was the audio was scripted, so I knew exactly what I wanted to show in the presentation. And when I missed clicks or got the wrong screen, the audio didn’t change, rewind, start the “tape” and try again for the final recording.
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Hi A. Mole,
This is the first hardwired poem coming from technological metal and electrical passages I have ever read. The tongue tastes of money. A shiny thing with a POV, expectations, hopes for turning into something that flashes human. It is waiting. You know. It is waiting to feel you. Love. Duke
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