Praat scripts

Although Praat provides a graphic interface for the specification of the synthesiser s control parameters, all examples in this section will be given in the form of Praat scripts. A Praat script is a list of commands for Praat. The system comes with a useful and straightforward script editor for writing and running scripts and it is well documented in the user manual that is available via the program s Help menu. 

In many ways, a Praat script could be regarded as a score file in the style of a Music N type of synthesis programming language, as introduced in Chapter 1. The main difference is that one cannot build instruments in Praat. One can, however, change certain characteristics of the synthesiser in order to create different speakers. It is possible to customise the size of the vocal tract, the thickness of the vocal folds, the size of the nasal cavity, and so on. 

The folder contains examples of the scripts, including those mentioned in the book. You should copy this folder onto your hard disk manually as it is not part of the installable material. 

The folder contains examples of the scripts, including those mentioned in the book. 

In order to s)mthesise a sound using the Praat physical model one needs to indicate (a) the speaker and (b) a list of actions. In Praat parlance, the speaker is referred to as the Speaker object and the list of actions is referred to as the Artwork object. In practice, a script contains instructions for an Artwork object and a call for a Speaker object that should be defined beforehand in a separate file. For the sake of simplicity, the following examples will employ PraaPs default adult female speaker model and we will refrain from changing its physical characteristics. 

The complete script for this first example is given below and it will serve as the starting point for the examples that follow. This and other scripts (examplel.praat, examplel.praat, and so on) are available in the folder robovox, provided with the Praat system on the accompanying CD-ROM. 

It is also possible to activate Praat s commands using scripts. A script is a text containing sequences of Praat commands, the respective parameters and objects, as illustrated in Chapters 4 and 6 when we studied the physical modelling synthesiser. 

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