Bird Song Synthesis Based on Hidden Markov Models

Jordi Bonada, Robert Lachlan, Merlijn Blaauw

Research output: Contribution to journalConference articlepeer-review

Abstract

This paper focuses on the synthesis of bird songs using Hidden Markov Models (HMM). This technique has been widely used for speech modeling and synthesis. However, features and contextual factors typically used for human speech are not appropriate for modeling bird songs. Moreover, while for speech we can easily control the content of the recordings, this is not the case for bird songs, where we have to rely on the spontaneous singing of the animal. In this work we briefly overview the characteristics of bird songs, compare them to speech, and propose strategies for adapting the widely-used HTS (HMM-based Speech Synthesis System) framework to model and synthesize bird songs. In particular, we focus on Chaffinch species and a database of recordings of several song bouts of one male bird. At the end we discuss the synthesis results obtained.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)2582-2586
Number of pages5
JournalProceedings of the Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association, INTERSPEECH
Volume08-12-September-2016
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Sept 2016
Event17th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association, INTERSPEECH 2016 - San Francisco, United States
Duration: 8 Sept 201616 Sept 2016

Keywords

  • Bird song synthesis
  • Context-dependent HMM
  • HMM based synthesis
  • Parametric synthesis

Cite this