DecTalk Singing Tutorial 1: Basics

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Druaga1

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Published on July 21, 2014 2:27:11 AM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nu_Pp3ptxTY

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Tutorial

Duration: 28:55

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I'm not sure if there are any other DecTalk singing tutorial videos on YouTube, but I figured I'd give it a shot, since I've been wanting to do this for quite some time.

One of the main reasons for making this was to properly inform people about the basics of DecTalk's singing capabilities, because there were some unnamed individuals on Youtube who, a few years ago, were just making videos showing off DecTalk in use, bragging about it, and not giving any explanation on how to get it working, where to get the hardware or software, etc. (one person was actually charging money for information on how to get DecTalk to sing, I'm not kidding.) Luckily, today, it's much easier to get information about DecTalk, thanks to MoonBase Alpha (The Unreal Engine has a DecTalk software module bundled with it) which has text to speech on for the chat by default, so copying and pasting phoneme data in the chat actually allows the game to sing (to everyone on the server as well). This has no doubt been featured in many gaming videos online which has kept the spirit of DecTalk alive to this day.... Well by making jokes and annoying noises with it, anyway. Either way, It's brought the joy of computers singing to people who otherwise would have never known about it.

There's also a very informative thread on Facepunch (which I didn't know about until I started uploading this video):
http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1323522
It has a link to the same DTdemo program that I have linked in the DecTalk pack below as well as a link to a huge library of DecTalk Phoneme files that you can use to learn from. (It is unknown whether this is a mirror from the original DecTalk.com site, probably not because it has Lady Gaga songs in it, either way the collection is quite impressive) Here's a mirror link for that archive:
https://app.box.com/s/p8c6hh472ni93c69yja6n6kx34aoow8q

Here's the ultimate DecTalk Pack, which contains all the DecTalk Files I have (Version 2, last updated 9-6-2015):
http://www.mediafire.com/download/6uv9ckl81sy9hen/Ultimate+DECtalk+Pack+v2.zip


I know I'm leaving out a lot of information in this video, which is why I plan to continue it as a series at some point, going in depth on programming a song (which is a formidable feat, requiring extreme patience. It is recommended to take frequent breaks while working on a project). But for now, these are the basics.