Category: Talk Box

Talk Box Gallery

Feel free to send pictures, and I can embed YouTube videos.

Anita

Anita in Taiwan made talk boxes with her church craft class. She reports, ” We made the robot talk box this morning in my class, and the kids loved it.  I had decided to use three straws because it made the sound deeper, softer, and less annoying.  After class when we were re-making a couple of unsuccessful ones,  my helper and I discovered that two straws seemed to work better for us, were easier for the smaller kids to handle, and sounded almost the same.”

Thanks Anita.

Tony Carl

Tony Carl wrote, “I found that wrapping a garbage bag wire tie around the base of the reed makes it easier to adjust the reed opening. Just lightly squeeze the wire at the top and bottom close the opening a little or at the sides to open a little. A piece of tape wrapped around the wire to keep the ends of the wire from puncturing the balloon :)” Tony based this innovation on the construction of crumhorn and bassoon reeds.

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Robot Voice Ten Cent Talk Box

Important Update

I got a really interesting comment on the YouTube Talk Box instructional video from Tony Carl.

"I found that wrapping a garbage bag wire tie around the base of the reed makes it easier to adjust the reed opening. Just lightly squeeze the wire at the top and bottom close the opening a little or at the sides to open a little. A piece of tape wrapped around the wire to keep the ends of the wire from puncturing the balloon :)"

Tony based this innovation on the construction of crumhorn and bassoon reeds.
I found the twisty technique to be very helpful and I think it will help other people having trouble adjusting the reeds. Even sliding the wire a little forward or backward on the straw had an adjusting effect. If I squeeze it too hard shut, I can also push a pencil in to open it a little (in addition to squeezing the sides, as Tony recommends).

Part 1

Aside from the fun of speaking in a robot voice--and other cool harmonic sound effects--the 10 Cent Talk Box lets you step back and observe the amazing process of how our vocal tracts sculpt raw sound into speech. Musicians like Peter Frampton have been using talk boxes for decades to sing with an unworldly voices. When I heard a talk box the first time I thought that singer's voice was being run through a synthesizer and electronically modified. But it's a surprisingly simple accoustic trick. Set a column of air vibrating with the sound of an instrument. Channel said vibrations into the musician's mouth with a tube instead of using the musician's vocal folds. You can even form vowels outside your mouth with an artificial vocal tract (a plastic soda bottle). If YouTube is blocked at your school, try this SchoolTube equivalent.

Part 2

As with so many things, it's the details that make or break projects. Getting the "reeds" of the straw to vibrate can be maddening at first.

Part 2 shows some tips that I've found helpful. But there's no substitute for just trying different things and cultivating a feel for what works. Here is the SchoolTube equivalent.

Whether you do this project as an individual, family, school/scout/church group--whatever--please make a video of building/using your talk box. I will put links in the Talk Box Gallery. Here is my contact Information.

No one person has all the good ideas. Everyone brings a fresh perspective, and the straw Talk Box project is new--just waiting for people to discover cool new directions to go with it. Make a YouTube video response (not difficult). I can also put innovation links in the Talk Box Gallery.

Talk Box Great Links

Here are some cool links related to talk boxes, vocal tracts and speech.

Peter Frampton explains how the talk box works.

It's not at all unusual for doctors to thread a flexible scope into your nose and down your throat to observe the vocal folds.

In this video you can see vocal folds of four singers.

Here's a museum exhibit that artificially replaces lungs, vocal folds and vocal tract similarly to the was I did it with cut bottles.

And here is an explanation of the exhibit with pictures of vocal tracts.

Here is a robot vocal tract.

Ever heard of  throat singing?

This is a video about a Tuvan throat singers, who can sing more than one note at a time.

Sometimes vocal folds have to be removed because of cancer of other things. Then there are various strategies to facilitate communication.

This person uses a jaw-harp to create the speech vibrations instead of a talk box.

Wikepedia explanation of a talk box.

Here are some great talk box performances Stevie Wonder, Peter Frampton

This person, Meara O'Reilly, is an artist/scientist doing amazing creative things with sound.
Here is some research taking off from Alexander Graham Bell's work with "visible speech".
This video will take your breath away.
In her ethereal music, she doesn't only play instruments, she doesn't only make instruments, she invents instruments!

Here are some amazing videos relating to reeds and sound that Tony Carl found.

What American English sounds like to non-English speakers, a satire, starts about 40 seconds in. It's gibberish designed to sound like American English.