[praat-users] Applying a new intensity tier to a sound - Intensity Manipulation

[[e-mail] [praat-users]]

Dear Praat Users,

I am manipulating a CVCV production to have varying duration, pitch, as well as intensity. I have had no problems manipulating the duration and pitch, as one can create new duration and pitch tiers and simply replace the tiers. However, for the intensity tier I created, the only option I have is to 'multiply' it with the sound I want to add it to, and the intensity values are not at all what I want them to be.

Does anyone know how to accurately manipulate the intensity values if I know the time and the intensity values I want the sound to have?

Your help would be very much appreciated!!!


Best,
Noelle

[José Joaquín Atria [e-mail] [praat-users]]

You'll want to use an IntensityTier, as is explained in the documentation [1].

[1]: http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/manual/Intro_8_3__Manipulation_of_intensity.html

José Joaquín Atria

www.pinguinorodriguez.cl

Post by ***@yahoo.ie [praat-users]
Dear Praat Users,
I am manipulating a CVCV production to have varying duration, pitch, as well
as intensity. I have had no problems manipulating the duration and pitch, as
one can create new duration and pitch tiers and simply replace the tiers.
However, for the intensity tier I created, the only option I have is to
'multiply' it with the sound I want to add it to, and the intensity values
are not at all what I want them to be.
Does anyone know how to accurately manipulate the intensity values if I know
the time and the intensity values I want the sound to have?
Your help would be very much appreciated!!!
Best,
Noelle

[Paul Boersma [e-mail] [praat-users]]

Post by ***@yahoo.ie [praat-users]
I am manipulating a CVCV production to have varying duration, pitch, as well as intensity. I have had no problems manipulating the duration and pitch, as one can create new duration and pitch tiers and simply replace the tiers. However, for the intensity tier I created, the only option I have is to 'multiply' it with the sound I want to add it to, and the intensity values are not at all what I want them to be.
Does anyone know how to accurately manipulate the intensity values if I know the time and the intensity values I want the sound to have?

This is impossible; that's why it is not available in Praat. You cannot give a sound the exact intensity curve that you want. An intensity curve is computed on the basis of a smoothing window; otherwise, the intensity would go up and down within a period (for voiced sounds). Therefore, an intensity measurement reflects more time points than just the one at which it is reported. This also means that if a point in the intensity curve is at e.g. 90 dB, the following point cannot be below 85 dB or so (with standard settings). Thus, in general, the shape of an intensity curve is quite restricted and you cannot generally change the sound in such a way that its intensity curve obtains exactly the shape that you want.
_____

Paul Boersma
University of Amsterdam
Linguistics
Spuistraat 210, room 303
1012VT Amsterdam, The Netherlands
http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/paul/

[[e-mail] [praat-users]]

Noelle, You're probably facing a problem similar to what I have seen in the past, which is seeing that the intensity contour of one sound is multiplied on top of the intensity contour of another sound, rather than being simply superimposed. The solution is to first flatten the contour of the sound that you are trying to manipulate, and *then* multiply the contour of the reference sound. Here's a short script that accomplishes this for a single sound (you might be able to imagine how it could be turned into a procedure for batch processing). There's an extra pause in there in case you want to make further modifications to the new contour (including omitting any wild values like -298 dB or something).


# superimpose intensity contour of one sound


pause select the sound that you want to modify
.name$ = selected$("Sound")


pause select the sound with the new intensity contour
.ref$ = selected$("Sound")


# constant
minpitch = 80


select Sound '.ref$'
To Intensity... minpitch 0 yes
Down to IntensityTier


select Sound '.name$'
originalIntensity = Get intensity (dB)


select Sound '.name$'
To Intensity... minpitch 0 yes
Down to IntensityTier
select Intensity '.name$'
mean = Get mean... 0 0 dB
select IntensityTier '.name$'
Copy... flipped
Formula... -(self-mean)
select Sound '.name$'
plus IntensityTier flipped
Multiply... no
Rename... '.name$'_flattened




select IntensityTier '.ref$'
Edit
editor IntensityTier '.ref$'
pause adjust the intensity contour as you wish
Close
endeditor


select IntensityTier '.ref$'
plus Sound '.name$'_flattened
Multiply... no
Rename... '.name$'_adj_int
Scale intensity... originalIntensity


select Intensity '.name$'
plus IntensityTier '.name$'
plus Intensity '.ref$'
plus IntensityTier '.ref$'
plus IntensityTier flipped
plus Sound '.name$'_flattened
Remove

[Dan McCloy [e-mail] [praat-users]]

I'm working now on a paper describing this method, but in the meantime you
can see my dissertation [1] (section 4.2.3 and script B.3) for one approach

to imposing the intensity of one speech signal onto another. It is based
on a method first published by Yoon [2].




[1]: https://digital.lib.washington.edu/researchworks/handle/1773/23472
[2]: Yoon, K. (2007). Imposing native speakers’ prosody on non-native
speakers’ utterances: The technique of cloning prosody. 현대영믞얎묞학회 (The
Journal of Modern British & American Language & Literature), 25(4), 197–215.


-- dan


Daniel McCloy
http://dan.mccloy.info/
Postdoctoral Research Associate
Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences
University of Washington

Post by ***@yahoo.ie [praat-users]
Dear Praat Users,
I am manipulating a CVCV production to have varying duration, pitch, as
well as intensity. I have had no problems manipulating the duration and
pitch, as one can create new duration and pitch tiers and simply replace
the tiers. However, for the intensity tier I created, the only option I
have is to 'multiply' it with the sound I want to add it to, and the
intensity values are not at all what I want them to be.
Does anyone know how to accurately manipulate the intensity values if I
know the time and the intensity values I want the sound to have?
Your help would be very much appreciated!!!
Best,
Noelle