Hello there! I’m actually pretty new to using vocal synthesis, yet I’m kinda struggling with some things…
At the moment, I’d just like to know how to write English words like “but”, using a Japanese VB
I’ve been using phonemes charts so far when using both VB, as for now, Saki and Eleanor Forte, yet I kinda don’t get how to do something like that. I try writing “b a t u” and lowering the accent (I think that’s how it’s called) of “u” in the note’s properties, yet that doesn’t actually work for what I intend…
Any help regarding this would be pretty much appreciated. :,)
I haven’t done anything like this for Synth V and I avoid doing this whenever possible. But the first thing you need to understand is the Japanese Syllabet and how to form english phrases out of Japanese if your using a Japanese voicebank.
For ‘but’ there are two combinations I can think of: バット and ブット depending on your english accent. For some vocal synths it’s as simple as typing those words in there and working with the phonemes it gives you to painstakingly tune phoneme by phoneme into a more accurate sound until you have something you like or you hit the “good enough” point with how engrishy it sounds.
In others, like Utau which may not have a little tsu in it’s voicebanks, you’ll have to space and adjust the phonemes to work around it.
First, it helps SO much to know the Japanese Syllabet, just so these “tricks” become more second-nature, and less looking-stuff-up.
Next, it helps to know how to activate phoneme view on your notes, and how to check them in note properties. In my SynthV (studio 1.05 - with Saki full), typing “But” shows the phonemes “b a cl”
In your note properties you can edit this. I just tried “b a t” with “t” set to “Alt 1” pronunciation. Sounds great!
You can also get creative. If I want Saki to say “but why” I can use two words: “ba” “tuwai” - then turn down the U slider.
This is another reason we need more of a manual. Though in this case, the old manual still applies https://synthesizerv.com/manual/
Too true. Studying katakana rules will take you pretty far.
You’re probably aware that l and r are interchangeable in Japanese. The same applies to b and v.
The Japanese ‘u’ is often elided over (i.e. not really spoken). This means that transliterating consonants in clusters requires inserting u’s between them, and lone consonants will have a trailing -u (e.g. the word brag would become buragu). This holds true for every consonant except t and d. In those cases, you would use o. In Japanese, adding a -u to these consonants also inserts an s (e.g. tsu, dsu),
‘n’ is the only consonant in Japanese that can stand alone without a vowel.
For ‘m’ in dipthongs, you can often substitute ‘n’, or just ‘mu’.
For an english ‘f’ sound, always use ‘hu’.
For an english ‘sh’ sound, use ‘si’.
Japanese has no ‘th’ sound and instead uses ‘si’ like the case above.
For an english ‘ch’ sound, use "ki’ or ‘ti’.
For english ‘ki’, use '‘kei’
For english ‘ti’, use ‘tei’.
Trailing r’s and l’s in english are often dropped in Japanese. Sometimes they are replaced with ‘ru’.
For short ‘a’, short ‘o’, short ‘u’, ‘er’, or ‘ir’, use ‘a’.
For long ‘a’, use ‘e’ or ‘ei’
For long ‘i’, use ‘ai’.
For ‘oo’ and long ‘u’, use ‘u’
For ‘y’, use ‘i’ or ‘y’
I also found it necessary to add a short breath at the end of words, in order that an additional release sound - of a different phoneme - wouldn’t be added at the end.
I personally take a base (such as ka) and phoneme edit it. If you type in but, it should render as /b a ty/ in phonemes. This doesn’t work for fricatives like s or v though, so those you’ll have to directly edit into the word. cl, the glottal stop, is very useful if they aren’t pronounced properly.