PURPOSE: To show how manipulation of formants allows a synthesizer to "talk."

DESCRIPTION: The synthesizer is set according to an accompanying patch sheet so that when any key is touched it says "WOW" at the pitch level determined by the key pressed.

The Moog Rogue is used for this demonstration. Click your mouse on the photograph above to hear it say a long "wow."

To achieve the sound in the mpeg video, use the sawtooth wave shape, put the modulator ring full up, and use triangle shape modulation. Use a filter cutoff of ~3, emphasis ~7.5, and adjust the amount from ~2.5 to 8 and back down while the frequency is rising and falling (see the adjustment in the video).

Click here to hear and see a video that compares the word "wow" said by a male voice with that created by the Moog Rogue synthesizer. The video, showing the wave shape and spectrum for each sound, has four short sections: (1) a sawtooth wave frequency modulated by a triangular wave, filtered by a fixed frequency low-pass filter; (2) the filter is then changed so that it is a bandpass filter, so that you can see the peak of the bandpass filter as the sawooth frequency becomes higher; (3) the same sound where the frequency of the bandpass filter is raised as the frequency of the modulated wave rises, so you can see the peak frequency tracking as the sound goes through the series of vowels "oo," "ah," "oo," of which the "wow" sound is comprised; (4) a male voice slowly producing the "wow" sound.

Click here for setup for the Moog Rogue Synthesizer.

SUGGESTIONS: A slide is available comparing the audio spectrograms of the word WOW of this synthesizer with that of an alleged adult male.

REFERENCES: (PIRA unknown.)

EQUIPMENT: Moog Rogue synthesizer with "WOW" setup.

SETUP TIME: 5 min.