TheMcphearson
3 HN recommenders · recommended in 5 months, 2010–2023
2:41 · 2.2M views · Oct 5, 2009
A player piano is made to reproduce human speech, here reciting a European Environmental Criminal Court proclamation in German at the 2009 World Venice Forum. This upload adds subtitles so the words become understandable.
HN recommends it as the canonical talking-piano example, uncanny and impressive once you read the captions.
5 comments from Hacker News
It's the Shepard tone effect running in the background of the actual notes, which produce a mild illusion that they're ascending when they're not, but nevertheless they're moving up and then down in pitches so it's not a brilliant example. I think the author is a little confused in this short essay about a few things. His "talking piano" effect is just standard vocoding, which has made me think this is all fairly new to him and he's not an expert. THIS is a talking piano: this video
I love this demo. It’s a good example of how much our perception is affected by our priors. This is a other great example, where speech is synthesized with an acoustic piano (though the keys are controlled digitally, the sound is just from the hammers and strings). Without the subtitles you probably couldn’t understand, but it sounds pretty clear when you know what it’s saying already. this video
A loudspeaker is nothing but a coil, a magnet and a piece of cardboard and it too is capable of incredible tonal quality and a huge range of polyphonics. This one really got me: this video
Loosely related, MIDI standard can be used to generate all kinds of sounds, even human speech on a real life piano. Here's a demonstration from 2009[1] and a recent article with more context [2]. [1]: this video [2]: [LINK]
talk about complex to play: this video eerie! You're correct about the 'reproducing pianos', I didn't know the correct English term.